The first thing that hit me in Auschwitz when I got off the cattle car with my mother was a nauseating smell.
He was five.
“What does it smell like?” I asked my mother, and she pointed to the smoke coming from the chimneys: “It's the smell of burning bodies.”
Did your mother always tell you the truth?
Yes. They told us to get naked and I asked why: “If we are not healthy, we will end up in the chimneys.” He always told me everything and always told me the truth.
...
When they killed my grandmother she told me: “They shot the grandmother and killed her.” When a woman was murdered before our eyes, she forced me to watch: “Do you see what happens if you don't do what I tell you? They shoot you. Learn it.”
And how did you live those truths?
My mother wanted me to live in reality and take care of myself, that saved me. Knowing reality is better than continually wondering what is happening and not understanding anything. I understood the difference between life and death.
What memories do you have of that childhood?
A terrible hunger that no one who has not been through it can understand, and many dead everywhere, because in our barracks, both when I was with my mother and when they took me to the children's barracks, if you got sick they killed you; At that age I already knew how to hide if she made me sick.
How did you experience that horror?
I didn't know anything else, I was one year old when the war broke out, I thought that all Jewish children lived like me, and I saw how every day they gassed people and killed them, it was normal.
Were the other children as aware as you?
I had a friend there who knew nothing about reality and suffered terrible nightmares. She survived and committed suicide at age 75. When we left there she didn't remember anything and she went crazy.
Is there anything that keeps you up at night today?
Yes, books like mine and obviously what is happening in Israel, all the deaths on both sides, all the hatred in the world and anti-Semitism, no again! I spend many sleepless nights.
What was the world of children like there?
Children playing with death, we made cruel jokes: “I've seen your parents.” "Is not true". “Come to the window.” And we pointed out the smoke. The children find out everything. One day they gave us a good breakfast and we already knew what it meant.
The gas chamber?
Yes, but no one cared because having something to eat was the most important thing. Days before they took the children from the next hut. I believed that all Jewish children should go to the gas chamber, I didn't even know that a world existed outside of Auschwitz.
Do you remember the day?
Yes, the women asked us loudly where we were going and I told them: “To the gas chamber,” and they all started screaming and crying. "What happen to you? –I told them–, all Jewish children have to go to the crematorium.”
¿Children's logic?
Yes, after a while they asked us to get dressed, we never knew what happened. Years later, when I was already in the US at the age of 12, I met children who told me that when they were six years old they went to piano lessons and they didn't like it. While some are murdered, others go to the movies; I still have a hard time understanding it.
It's not understandable.
I am a Zionist, but the world has to cry for what is happening on both sides.
Have you never cried?
No, I am still incapable of crying, even when my husband died I did not shed tears. In Auschwitz the important thing was to last one more day and I was lucky. They used to kill the children when they arrived, but we arrived on Sunday and they didn't start the fifth gas chamber, and something happened that day when they were going to gas us. They didn't work there, they were going to die.
I understand.
On the streets there were wheelbarrows full of half-dead people to be taken to the crematorium.
How did he escape from Auschwitz?
You have to lend a hand to luck. My mother escaped and hid me among the corpses when the Nazis were already fleeing and trying to erase all vestiges of their crimes.
What have you understood as a therapist?
That we all have our traumas and that we should not compare.
Have you overcome your trauma?
He always accompanies me, but I felt the obligation to speak for those children; In my town there were hundreds and only five survived. I do not feel guilt but I do feel responsibility, I want us to be aware of what hate can do if it is not stopped.
Aren't you angry with God?
In the last religious celebration I told him: “Tell me your sins and I will tell you mine.” I have a complex relationship with God, sometimes I get very angry.
