Stories of Survival

Announcer: Funding for this program provided by The Abe & Ida Cooper Foundation in commemoration of Fred Cooper.

Additional funding by Randee and Rob Romanoff.

[music] George: I remember when I found the photo.

I could barely believe when I saw a man from my home town.

[soldier's footsteps] Magda: It happens gradually.

They take away your freedom, your property, and then your livelihood until you are reduced to lower than an animal.

Narrator: Auschwitz-Birkenau was the largest killing center created by the Nazis during the holocaust.

From 1941 to 1945 more than 1.1 million people were murdered there including nearly one million Jews.

In 1944 a rare set of photos was taken of the arrival, selection, and imprisonment of 3500 Hungarian Jews.

Most were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

This is the story of two who managed to survive.

George: I was in the bookstore and noticed a book, the Auschwitz Album.

I started flipping through them and then I see a man there standing with an overcoat and a hat, glasses.

It was my father.

I kept searching.

I looked and looked and way in the right corner there is a kid with dark hair.

It was me.

I was born Gyorg Balasa in Czechoslovakia in August 1929.

My life was really a charmed life.

I had loving parents, a little brother.

But in 1938, things started to change.

I was born Magda Peristein in Miskolc, Hungary on June 11th 1927.

My life until the early 1940's was as carefree as any youngster's in the west or anywhere in the world.

My parents worked very hard and I had all the comforts I needed.

Narrator: From September 1, 1939 to 1942, Germany swiftly conquered and occupied most of Western Europe.

Over the next two years, it would turn its sights eastward occupying Hungary on March 19, 1944 changing Magda's life forever.

In less than a week we were ordered to wear the Jewish Star of David to be sown tightly on our clothing.

Without that, we were not permitted to go anywhere.

Then all the Jewish businesses had to be closed.

And then came preparation to put all the Jewish people into ghettos.

In about another couple of days the order comes that all the Jewish people from the provinces, from the suburbs, will be moved into a designated ghetto in the big city.

We were 40 people in that home.

You cannot fathom what crowded conditions can be.

Narrator: George's hometown had been annexed by Hungary in 1938.

Six years later, in 1944, life as he knew it was about to change again just as it had for Magda.

So May 21st early in the morning there was a knock on the door.

[knocking] There were two gendarmes.

They told my father that you have about a couple of hours to gather some things and they told him what to need, some bedding and any food that you can carry and you'll have to enter the ghetto.

Well, my father was sitting there waiting for us to be taken, he had an idea that we should all die, that he wanted to poison us or we should take poison.

We started crying and protesting against death and my father gave up the idea.

People that I knew all my life and kids that I played with and I went to school with at first, they started coming over and I was wondering, well, how nice of them to come and say goodbye.

Well, this wasn't the idea at all.

They started plundering.

They just asked me, let me have your bicycle or your accordion, or do you mind if I take this or take that.

I'll take care of it until you come back.

Of course you couldn't say no.

They just took whatever they wanted.

Magda: With our little package, we had to march clear through town.

I can't imagine how my father must have felt walking through the main street of our city past his old meat market.

He built that business from nothing, worked six days a week, and was the most charitable individual on this earth and now people are cursing and throwing stones at us as we pass by.

We ended up in a brickyard and thought, why in heaven's name are they bringing us to a brickyard?

There's nothing else there except bricks.

No housing, no water, no toiletry, zero.

They brought us to the brickyard because it was adjacent to the railroad track.

On my 17th birthday on June 11th, we were shoved into a cattle car.

We were so crowded that in order to allow my parents to sit on the wooden floor, I stood three solid days shifting one inch this way, one inch that way.

In one of the corners sat a young woman with a baby on her bosom, except that baby was already dead by the time we proceeded this trip.

As the train is traveling and crossing the Carpathian Mountains, I look out and I see a beautiful meadow and in the distance I see a shepherd minding his flock, and I am wondering to myself, how come he is there and I am here?

I couldn't imagine anybody walking freely.

I thought the entire world was pushed into a cattle car.

By Saturday morning, which was the 26th of May, it came to a stop.

My father looked out the little window and saw the station sign said Auschwitz.

It must be a German occupied territory.

And he says, well, the Germans are pretty civilized people.

They're probably not going to do anything harmful to us.

The train started moving again for about a mile and a half and it came to a stop again.

This time the doors were slammed open and there was a lot of commotion.

[dogs barking] People getting off the trains.

We were told leave everything you brought with you on the train.

And each of them probably, at least a man carried either a cane or a truncheon of some sort, and started beating us to hurry up, hurry up.

"Raus, raus!

Schnell, schnell!"

they're yelling in German.

Magda: Nazis were in front of us as we got out of the train at Auschwitz, but they were not talking to us anymore, just pointing, because you see, we are no longer human beings to them.

First they point all the men to separate from the women and that was last I ever saw of my dear father.

Then the Nazi officer steps forward and points a finger at me to go one way.

And finally he saw my beautiful mother holding on to me and directed her the other way.

From that moment on, I became an orphan.

My father and I were pointed to the right and we went to the camp.

I only caught a glimpse of my mother with my little brother as they got off the train.

Then they disappeared.

I never saw them again.

Later I remember seeing a huge group of people marching towards a building that had smoke and flames coming out of the big chimney.

They told us it was a bakery.

We didn't know about the crematories and gas chambers at the time, but it didn't take very long to find out what was really going on.

People who were already there for a while told us, that is your little brother going up in smoke.

Narrator: May of 1944 began the Hungarian transports to Auschwitz-Birkenau, including George, Magda, and their families.

It was the largest mass murder in modern history and the epicenter of the Final Solution.

Almost one half of all the Jews that were killed at Auschwitz were Hungarian Jews who were murdered within a period of 10 weeks.

As many as 6,000 a day.

George: My father, one night here, he came to the door, or the gate of this barracks, to say goodbye to me.

He put his arms around me, hugged me, and he said, "Don't forget me."

And then he disappeared.

I was fortunate in one way.

Someone, maybe it was God, looked out for me.

My uncle, Ijo, he proceeded me in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

He found me one day and of course I was so happy to see somebody I knew.

He got a job in the camp office and he told me, George, I would like you to listen to me now.

I don't want you to be in this barracks tonight.

He knew which barracks is going to be targeted for this kind of selection.

So he really helped me, probably survive.

At one point I was put near a Gypsy camp, the only place where families could stay together.

All the men who were able to work had been taken already, so it was mostly women, children, and older people.

In early August, they suddenly closed the barracks.

It was the day they liquidated the Gypsy camp.

So the children, and the women, and old people were loaded on the lorries and these people had been there long enough to know what's gonna happen because they were familiar with the selections.

And there was a lot of crying and resistance, but there was no help for them, obviously.

They just brought in the SS guards and they loaded them up on the trucks.

And away we went and then it was quiet.

They were all gassed the same night.

They say the gas chambers could hold up to 2,000 people at a time.

They were huge.

They just jammed you in there and they made it as tight as possible and the tighter, the better.

And to this day I am shivering when I think about it.

Narrator: After two months enduring terrible conditions imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau, Magda is one of about a thousand Hungarian women to be transported to the Allendorf concentration camp.

There, she is used as slave labor to make ammunition for the German Army.

Magda: The Germans were so fantastic at deceiving the world.

The factory of the roof was built flat and trees were growing out of the flat roof, which meant if reconnaissance planes were looking for a factory or enemy places, they saw a meadow, but we were in there helping build weapons.

And it was extremely dangerous work.

We looked at each other, our hair started growing out by this time, and if your hair was black, now it's orange.

Your face is lemon yellow and your lips are deep dark purple.

What has happened, the poisonous material, we were working with without any protective garments, so it started invading our bodies.

Narrator: In October of 1944 George finds out his uncle, Ijo, has been transferred to another concentration camp in Poland where prisoners are subjected to horrible conditions working in coal mines.

George volunteers to go there on the next transport.

That's when I got my tattoo, B10000511.

It was a badge of honor.

It meant I would be working and wouldn't have to worry about being killed right away because there was no extermination going on at this camp.

My uncle again, came through as my protector and managed to get me a job as an orderly in the SS barracks.

This spared me for 12 hours a day working on my knees and shoveling coal in the freezing cold, plus I able to keep weight on because there were always SS leftovers that I could eat.

This was going through January 1945 when rumors of the Soviets getting closer to Auschwitz started surfacing.

They marched us in the middle of the night through blowing wind and snow with only the thin clothing we had.

If somebody fell or couldn't make it, the guards on each side of us just shot and left them to die.

We marched more than 20 miles to a train station where they put us into these open coal cars and gave us no water or food.

Where we were going, we didn't know, but when this train came to a stop, we were in Austria.

Narrator: George and his uncle, Ijo, have been transferred to the Ebensee concentration camp.

George: I was put to work shoveling coal and loading it into carts.

I was losing weight constantly and was very, very thin by that time.

There was some gray earth between the pieces of coal that somebody told us had some nutritional value.

It was so heavy and so yucky, but I was so hungry, I didn't care.

I ate the coal.

Narrator: While George endured at Ebensee, Magda struggled to survive at Allendorf for more than six months.

In March 1945, Magda and the other women from the munitions factory are sent on a death march to Buchenwald Concentration Camp.

By this time you have lost your identity and you are numb.

You can't afford thinking about your past or your family, so you live from day to day totally for the thought of survival.

We had to evacuate the camp because the allies were closing in.

They gave us a little piece of bread and we started marching in the cold, wet winter with nothing but thin coats.

So on the third day as we are marching and we start looking around and there were less Nazi guards with us than when we started out.

How would it be if, during the night, we crawl on our stomach and reach the barn in what, two city blocks, in on the field?

About a dozen of us made a run for it.

We hid in the straw silent and afraid to move.

The next day we peeked out the little peak hole in this barn and two young men were approaching us in a strange uniform.

It turned out to be two young men from the sixth armor division of U.S. Army.

God bless them all for risking their lives to save ours and this is how we were liberated.

Narrator: Now separated from his uncle, George has managed to survive at Evans A for more than three months.

George: One morning I was in my barracks and it was already daylight and usually they get us up way early before the sun even came up.

Then all of a sudden there was a big, big screaming, "Everybody out, out on the parade ground."

The Commandant of the camp came out and said, we would like to spare you of any harm because the allies are close by and so I think you should go into the tunnels that you were building to protect you.

All of a sudden they worried about us being protected after all the misery and beating and death they caused.

Somebody who knew about what was going on stood up and stood in front of the Commandant and said "Look, you can kill us right on the spot, but we're not going anywhere," because he knew that they had the whole thing full of dynamite and whatever explosives to kill us all if possible.

The SS Commander didn't know what to say.

He just turned on his heels and walked out of the camp.

A little while later we saw all of the SS trucks pulling out of the camp.

We didn't know what was happening or what to do.

I decided to go look for my uncle.

But when I found his barracks, they told me he had died three days before.

He always told me, "You are young and strong, you'll make it."

Narrator: On May 6, 1945, less than two days later, American troops liberated George and the other prisoners of Ebensee.

Soon after, he goes to find his great aunt in Budapest, one of the only places in Europe where Jews remained.

And I discovered my aunt was still alive and while I was there, one of my aunts got a Red Cross telegram.

It was from my father.

He was alive, but in Bavaria in a TB hospital.

So my first duty was of course to see if I could join him in Germany.

I arrived at the hospital with a little rucksack that I had.

There was a Jewish guard who knew my father and took me to his room.

He whispered to my father, "What would you say if I brought you your son?"

So more than two years after we were separated in Birkenau, I finally saw my dad again.

October 1, 1949, I passed the Statue of Liberty and I wound up on the Port of New York.

My cousin who left Hungary, smart man, in 1938, I saw him there all dressed in his finery and almost a brand new Ford, I remember.

I said, "My, this is wonderful.

This is America."

My affidavit said that I have to go to Chicago.

And in June 1950 all of a sudden the Korea War broke out and here I was not even a year in the United States, I became a U.S. Air Force recruit.

In 1951, I got notice from my dad that he is finally well enough to come to the United States.

He looked at me in my Air Force blues.

He thought I was a policeman or something.

After 22 months, I was called off of active duty.

I came back to Chicago and he joined me here and we lived together eventually for over 20 years.

Thank God.

I graduated with a degree of DDS, Doctor of Dental Surgery, in 1961.

After I got my degree, I started working for a dentist for three days a week and the other three days the University asked me if I would like to become a teacher at the dental school.

I taught for 29 years at the University of Illinois and I had my own practice for 50 years.

And I ended up with four wonderful, wonderful girls.

So I accomplished something.

Narrator: After the war, Magda returned to Hungary to see if anyone survived.

Her house had been taken over by others.

Magda: Then the realization comes that I have no family...

...I have no home to go to and I'm all alone, and I'm not even 18 years old.

Narrator: In September of 1946, sponsored by aunts and uncles, she moves to Chicago.

Fortunately both my uncles had teenage daughters my age.

So my assimilation came very, very fast.

First, I learned to act the way the American girls act.

I went to dances with them.

I went to parties with them.

And I have become a certified medical assistant.

Then of course in the meantime I met a nice Jewish American boy and we married and have two lovely children.

Of course I have grandchildren and great grandchildren.

Genocide does not happen from one minute to the next.

It builds gradually.

Protect your freedom.

Next to your health, that is the most important commodity a person can have.

Once you've lost freedom, you've lost everything.

George: Looking back at my life, I didn't do it alone.

It was always somebody there at the crossroads that pointed the right direction.

For me it was my uncle, Ijo, who saved my life.

I hope his story inspires others to do the same.

Your action can make a difference even if for one life.

[music] Announcer: Funding for this program provided by The Abe & Ida Cooper Foundation in commemoration of Fred Cooper.

Additional funding by Randee and Rob Romanoff.