Reflections from Auschwitz II-Birkenau: A real-life 'survivor' triumphs over Nazis
No reality show on any television network could ever compare to the reality of the survivors of Auschwitz.
How each one must have recoiled when they heard the name and the ensuing ratings bonanza for CBS when an entertainment program on the television network awarded $1 million to the last contestant to “survive” whatever tough challenges the producers could concoct.
What an insult to use that word to title a fantasy.
There was -- and is -- no fantasy at Auchwitz II-Birkenau: Let's be clear about that.
A horror story unfolds
Irene Zisblatt was 13 years old when she and her family were forced onto a train on the second night of Passover in 1944.
Her first attempt at surviving was to not choke on the thick German air filled with smoke and human ash.
“Just one deep breath of fresh air would have been so nice,” she recalls.
Some 74 years later, Irene shares her story with me on a bus from Krakow, Poland to the death camps.
She vividly remembers the first step off the train after she was snatched from her beloved homeland of Hungary.
Her memory and her words are unwavering.
“I was only 13 but I thought, 'Who could do this?'" she says. "How could the most civilized and sane place on the earth be this way? It doesn’t make any sense.”
It still doesn’t.
Irene was 13 years old.
My granddaughter turns 13 next month.
All of the survivors of the most prolific hell on earth the world has ever known have their stories.
Irene’s begins in Hungary, where as a child she road her bicycle and played with dolls. She ran with her friends and laughed.
“There was always laughter in our home,” she recalls.
Her father operated a spa filled with mineral water from the Hungarian mountains.
“People came because the water helped heal their muscles," she said. "People were always coming to see (my father) Moshe. I loved him so much.”
Her eyes reveal how much her father loved life and his family.
She says she was a good student and enjoyed her classmates.
“I loved them,” she says. “And they loved me. At least I thought they did.”
Her world of love and laughter began to crumble in the spring of 1944 and the first fissure happened at school.
That's where her teacher told her she could no longer come to class. She cried all the way home and fell into her father’s arms.
“I’ve done nothing wrong," she told her father. "I don’t understand. Why? Will you talk to my teacher?”
“Of course I will,” he told his young daughter.
Irene felt better because her father “could fix anything.”
Usually.
Not this time.
He talked with the teacher and the principal.
They both had orders from their superiors: Jews would no longer be allowed.
The next day after school her life-long friends shunned her.
“You killed Jesus,” they taunted. “You killed our God!”
She had no idea what they were talking about.
“I didn’t kill anybody,” she told them. “I thought you loved me.”
A few days later, her mother asked her to set the table for a Passover meal.
Normally, the extended family would attend such a meal, but her mother said, “Just for us.”
Everything in the home was exquisitely set since her mother -- and the family -- understood the importance of this season.
Candles were lit and lace napkins folded just so.
The Zisblatts had just sat down for the meal when the peace was shattered.
A fateful journey
Members of the Gestapo burst in with guns and German shepherds.
"Get up all of you Jews!" the family was told. "You have five minutes. Get up (and) grab your suitcases.”
Irene was initially paralyzed by fear but she followed orders. Not the commands issued from the Nazis, but those that came from her father.
“Get the suitcase Irene,” Moshe calmly said.
The Nazi yelled back: “Get it now you dirty Jew! All of you are going to work in the vineyard. You must leave now!”
With those harsh words, the family was ordered out of their home.
At the depot in her hometown of Poleno, all five Zisblatt family members were crammed into a railroad car with more than 100 other Jews.
There was precious little room to move.
Irene sat and held Hinda, her 4-year-old sister.
Moshe found a slit between the boards of the wall just large enough so he could see outside.
As the train chugged along and light faded, he saw the vineyard.
The train never slowed.
He realized that and told his family: “We’ve left Hungary. We’re in Poland.”
Crossing that border was terrifying because word had spread: Many people who end up in Poland never return.
This was not fake news. The fears were not unfounded.
About 3 a.m., the trained slowed, then stopped.
The door was pushed open by German soldiers and all hell broke loose.
Irene remembers: “It was chaos, with dogs barking and mothers screaming. Babies were crying and Nazis yelling, 'Get out now!'”
Irene’s 13-year-old eyes were witnessing terrorism for the first time, the first of so many times that she lost count over the years.
Her mother said firmly to Irene, “Hold Hinda’s hand. Do not let go. Do not let go.”
They began walking.
Orders again to "keep moving" and "don’t stop.”
Then the words that still chill Irene’s heart, "Men to the left, women to the right.”
From the Birkenau tower and for the next half-mile, thousands of Hungarian Jews stood shivering in the cold and trembling with fear.
Irene looked around and saw what she thought were factories.
“We can all work here," she said to herself. "They need workers.”
She had no idea the work forced on the Jews would be the most disgusting and heinous humankind can conjure.
Nor did she understand why the air she was trying to breathe was so different from the air in her homeland. That's because the crematorium at the camp was blazing day and night.
Within minutes, she was separated from her mother, but she held on tightly to her sister's hand.
She kept holding until a Nazi beat her fingers with a baton. The breaking of the bone broke her grip.
Hinda was gone.
Forever.
As was all her family.
For the next 14 months, her world would spiral downward even more.
Everyday she wondered, “Is today the day I die? Is it my turn?”
She was always scared.
Never a moment to let your guard down, to smile, to even think about freedom. There was no room in her psyche to dream.
Instead she became a subject of Josef Mengele, Adolph Hitler’s lead doctor who was trying to create and perfect the perfect society.
“He was a Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” Irene told me, recounting how he was nice at first.
“He was handsome. Smiled at me. His white coat was starched and smelled fresh," she recalls. "His gloves were even pristine. Then he asked my name. I answered in Hungarian and told him my Hebrew name.”
Mengele bristled and began to hurl insults at her.
He was livid.
She endured dozens of needles and was often injected and her blood drawn.
To this day the only words she can use to describe him is “monster.”
“What would Hippocrates say about Mengele? I think I know.”
A new beginning
Irene made it through and found ways to stay alive.
When liberation came to the camp, she found her way to New Jersey and discovered a new life with an uncle.
Her life slowly began to return to some form of normalcy.
She married, began a family and tried to sleep through the night without dreaming about the hell she had survived.
She also made a vow she has kept for more than seven decades.
That vow is to keep the history of the Holocaust from fading. She will tell her story to anyone who will listen no matter the age.
Young people are her passion.
It’s clear.
When she walked the March of the Living, it was the 19th time she had done so -- 19 out of a total of 30.
She’s written a book. And a movie has been made about her, and she loved telling me how the name of both came to be.
When Anti-Semitism was on the rise in Europe, Irene’s mother sensed trouble would not be far behind.
She took one her daughter’s favorite dresses and sewed diamonds in the hem. More than once she reminded Irene, “As long as have these diamonds you can always buy bread. Don’t’ forget that.”
The night the Nazis broke the family door, Irene quickly changed into that dress before they were taken away.
When she was processed at Birkenau she ripped the hem and secretly shook four diamonds out of the shredded hem.
“There may have been more," she said. "I don’t know. I just took what I could before a guard saw. They were taking all the jewelry.
"I clutched them until the doctor was getting closer and I put them in my mouth but quickly saw they were checking teeth and pulling gold fillings without anesthetics. So, I swallowed them. The next day I got them back. Over the next year, I swallowed them several times. I still have them. I will never part with those four diamonds.”
After people began to hear Irene’s story of survival someone said to her, “You’re a diamond. In fact, you’re the fifth diamond.”
The Fifth Diamond had sold several copies.
I ordered one from Amazon on my flight to London today.
Irene is a rare gem.
Her facets brighten humanity’s darkness.
She makes us better and I am better for having the gift of her friendship.
