1389.4 Holocaust A

Child survivors of Auschwitz, wearing adult-size prisoner

jackets, stand behind a barbed wire fence.

 

Among those pictured are Tomasz Szwarz; Alicja Gruenbaum;

Solomon Rozalin; Gita Sztrauss; Wiera Sadler; Marta Wiess;

Boro Eksztein; Josef Rozenwaser; Rafael Szlezinger; Gabriel

Nejman; Gugiel Appelbaum; Mark Berkowitz (a twin); Pesa

Balter; Rut Muszkies (later Webber); Miriam Friedman; and

twins Miriam Mozes and Eva Mozes wearing knitted

hats.

 

STILL PHOTOGRAPH FROM THE SOVIET FILM of the liberation of

Auschwitz, taken by the film unit of the First Ukrainian

Front.

 

Eva Kor (born Etu Mozes) is the youngest child of Alexandru

Mozes and Zseni (Jaffa) Mozes. She and her twin sister,

Miriam (Matu), were born on January 31, 1934. The twins

also had two older sisters, Edit (Rivku), born in January

1930 and Aliz (Hencsi), born in July 1932. The family

lived in Port, a small farming village in Transylvania.

They were the only Jews in the village. Alexandru was

deeply religious and quite prosperous owning many cows,

sheep, and thousands of acres of fields. In 1940, after

Hungary assumed control of the previously Romanian region,

antisemitism increased, and Jews could no longer travel

freely. By 1942, Jews were forbidden to hire Aryan

laborers, and Alexandru had to fire all his farm hands. In

1943 Jews were required to wear the yellow star. In

October, Alexandru and Zseni, having decided the situation

was becoming increasingly intolerable, woke up their

daughters in the middle of night and told them to put on

their warmest clothes. They decided to try to sneak over

the border to Romania, but before they reached edge of

their property, Hungarian Nazi youths stopped them and

forced them to return. Soon after returning, Zseni became

extremely ill with typhoid and spent most of the following

months in bed. The following March, shortly after her

recovery, Hungarian gendarmes came to the Mozes home and

told the family to pack clothing and two weeks of food for

their immediate relocation to a labor camp. In fact, they

sent the family to the nearby town of Simleul Silvaniei

where they were sealed in a ghetto with approximately 7000

other Jews. Alexandru was tortured to force him to reveal

where the family had hidden their valuables. After about a

month, the family was deported by cattle car to Auschwitz

in early May. Throughout this period, Eva and Miriam were

dressed identically. Upon their arrival at the camp,

guards spotted that they were twins and pulled them aside.

Eva assumes that her mother, who was still weak from

typhoid, was probably killed immediately. She does not

know exactly what happened to her father and older sisters,

but none survived the war. Besides Miriam and Eva, there

were sixteen other sets of twins on the transport including

the Csengeri sisters from Simleul Silvaniei. Their mother,

Mrs. Csengeri, was selected to accompany the children to

camp II b. The twins were tattooed, given short haircuts

but allowed to keep their own clothes since there were no

prison uniforms small enough for them to wear. However, a

big red cross was painted on the back of their dresses to

prevent their escape. For the next half-year, Eva and

Miriam were subjected to medical experiments about three

times a week, for six to eight hours at a time. Josef

Mengele and other Nazi physicians took blood samples,

measurements and photographs of their bodies, and injected

them with various pathogens. As a result of these

experiments, Eva became deathly ill and had to remain in

the infirmary for three weeks. Though not expected to

live, she recovered to find Miriam also near death. Eva

managed to smuggle in some potatoes from the kitchen for

Miriam and nurse her back to health. When Auschwitz was

evacuated in January 1945, many of the twins including Eva

and Miriam remained behind. They were more or less on

their own for the next few weeks, scavenging food that had

been left behind until Soviet troops liberated the camp in

late January. About two weeks later, the Soviets brought

the children to a convent in Katowice. Eva and Miriam felt

uncomfortable in the convent and wanted to return home to

Port to search for surviving relatives. Though they were

free to roam around the city, they could only be released

from the orphanage if an adult relative took them under her

care. They discovered that Mrs. Csengeri was living in

town in a DP camp with her twin daughters. Mrs. Csengeri

agreed to tell the convent she was an aunt so that the Eva

and Miriam could leave to live with her. Eva and Miriam

stayed with Mrs. Csengeri from February until September

1945 first in Katowice and then in Cernauti. After

additional time spent in Schultz, in the Soviet interior,

Mrs. Csenghery and the four girls eventually arrived in

Simleul Silvaniei. Eva and Miriam returned to Port to find

their home looted, their farm overgrown in the care of one

surviving cousin. He told the girls that Iren, Alexandru's

youngest sister, had survived and was looking for them.

She had also been in Auschwitz and had lost her first

husband and son. Eva and Miriam went to live with Iren and

her new husband in Cluj and resume their education. They

became involved with the local Communist youth movement but

later got into trouble with the party. Iren decided that

she did not want to live under a new dictatorship and

pretended that her son had survived and was living in

Israel in order to obtain exit visas. In 1950 the family

immigrated to Israel, and Eva and Miriam settled in the

youth aliyah village, Mosad Magdiel near Kfar Saba.

 

 

[Source: Kor, Eva Mozes; Echoes from Auschwitz. Terra

Haute, Candles, 1995.]

 

The Soviet film about the liberation of Auschwitz was

shot over a period of several months beginning on January

27, 1945, the day of liberation. It consists of both

staged and unrehearsed footage of Auschwitz survivors

(adults and children) taken in the first hours and days of

their liberation, as well as scenes of their evacuation,

which took place weeks or months later. The film includes

the first inspection of the camp by Soviet war crimes

investigators, as well as the initial medical examination

of the survivors by Soviet physicians. It also records the

public burial ceremony that took place on February 28, 1945

for Auschwitz victims who died just before and after the

liberation. The order to make the film was issued by

Mikhael Oschurkow, head of the photography unit, and was

carried out by Alexander Voronzow and others in his group.

Eighteen minutes of the film was introduced as evidence at

the International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg. Another

segment of the film disappeared for forty years before

resurfacing in Moscow in 1986.

 

[Source: Alexander Voronzow interview, Chronos-Films, The

Liberation of Auschwitz, 1986]

 

Photo Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of

Belarusian State Archive of Documentary Film and Photography

 

 

 

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