The Boy From Block 66: A WW2 Jewish Holocaust Survival True Story (Heroic Children of World War II Book 1)

by Limor Regev

Gradually, hostility grew in their hearts in light of the economic boom and the Jewish strength in industry and commerce. We Jews were not at all aware of the feelings that bubbled beneath the surface among our non-Jewish friends and neighbors that would erupt and release fiery volcanic lava when the groundwork was ready for it.

Many of the people I knew as a child and many members of my family did not survive the inferno. Almost none of the Jewish-owned stores reopened when the war was over. The synagogues had been abandoned or ruined, and the vibrant city I had known was buried in the ruins of the war.

When my thoughts wander to my early childhood – I regret that we did not know then to treasure every moment together – I breathe in the smells, concentrate on the sights, and the tastes that will never come back. If only we had heeded the few voices that tried to make us see the impending danger and warned us, crying out to us to flee...

In retrospect, it is clear to me that Grandfather Kessler was spared enormous suffering and certain destruction by dying when he did.

Gradually, our daily reality underwent a change. The Hungarian authorities began to issue laws that restricted Jewish entry into public institutions and spaces. In addition, various guidelines narrowed our possibilities and prevented us from enjoying equal rights and opportunities. At first, these restrictions came slowly, in order to obscure what was happening, but over time the new attitude towards the Jews became obvious and apparent.

Hungarian authorities required the Jews of the area to show documented proof that their forebears had been residents of Hungary in 1855. Those who did not possess such proof were subject to deportation to the east - to Poland.

The Hungarian government ordered all Jewish men aged 20-45 to enlist in the Hungarian army in Jewish forced labor battalions.

Hungary was an ally of Germany in the war, and fought the Red Army, on its eastern border.

In the past, Jews would enlist with their Christian comrades in the Czech army, but now only the Christians entered the regular Hungarian army. The government sent male Jews to ‘special’ labor battalions to aid the Hungarian army, some in Hungary and others in conquered lands. The objective was to co...

Most of the Jewish men were sent from Bergsas to the Ukraine to build fortifications and perform ha...

Red Army. The Hungarian soldiers treated the Jewish forced laborers as slaves

The war was going to end soon and the Germans did not want to give up the opportunity to annihilate the Hungarian Jews.

The Germans acted quickly and the story of the extermination of more than 500,000 Hungarian Jews towards the end of the war is one of the tragic events of the Holocaust.

Looking back, the question arises: why did we go along with it? Why didn’t we rebel against the orders to leave our home? This is a complex question in retrospect, but the answer is simple if we examine it through the perspective of those days. The German methods prevented insurrection or refusal very simply. The authorities took local Jewish leaders - community officials and rabbis - and held them hostage. They were placed under heavy guard and word spread throughout the city that if the Jews refused to evacuate their homes, the hostages - whom we all knew - would be killed immediately. The threat worked. In one or two cases, they executed hostages in our area anytime there was a delay in carrying out the instructions. In that way, total obedience was extorted from the people of the city.

In the next few days, the Hungarian police raided our houses. Under the new law, Jews were forbidden to keep gold, jewelry, and other valuables in the house. Mom and I hurried to dig holes in the lumberyard to bury our silver and other valuables, as well as our best bedding. I remember being very active in the excavation and concealment process. Mother sewed all the gold we had in our clothes. I remember actively helping Mom hide our possessions and quickly get ready to leave our home.

Although we were occupied by Nazi Germany, there were no Germans around at all during this stage. The entire evacuation process, the guarding and shepherding, was efficiently carried out by the Hungarian police.

Although by this time news spread across other countries in Europe, we were completely cut off. We knew nothing about the train activity and the transport of millions of Jews from different countries to the concentration and extermination camps.

The almost total collaboration of the Hungarian people and its contribution to the fate of the Jews of Hungary is one of the ugliest stains on the human race in the history of World War II.

On the first night of our trip, when it got dark outside, some of the younger men in the car thought about trying to break the window and jump off. Most of the others objected because they were afraid that an escape attempt would make things worse for us. In any case, the chances of surviving that high a fall from the window of a moving train were extremely small. By a majority vote the idea was rejected. We preferred to believe the rumor that better conditions awaited us and that they were not going to separate the families.

Auschwitz was also the place where Dr. Yosef Mengele performed his medical experiments, in the infamous Block number 10.

1,300,000 people were murdered in the Auschwitz camps - most of them Jews.

Most Jews were sent for extermination right away and in order to save unnecessary paperwork were not even registered.

Suddenly one of the strange looking bald men scurrying around the platform trying to get us quickly into two columns came up to me and whispered in Yiddish: “Tell them you are sixteen and go to the right. Get away from your mom right away.” I stared blankly at him. “Go, fast!” He said, looking around to make sure no one heard him. “You have to say goodbye to them, now. Fast! Before you reach the head of the line.” He added: “Trust me!”

As soon as I moved over to the men’s column, I no longer could see where Mother and Arnold had gone. I was alone. In all the commotion around me, I had no family or friends with me.

“How old are you?” He asked in German. “Wie alt bist du?” At the Czech school, we had learned German, so I understood... I straightened up, trying to look taller than my age. “Sixteen,” I replied. He raised his hand and his thumb tilted to the right. I was selected to live. I walked in the direction he indicated. I did not know then that the stranger, who risked his life by approaching me, had saved my life for the first time. At this point, we still did not know anything about the place we had come to.

Only in retrospect did we realize that the strange process we went through when we arrived at the camp was in fact a selection for life or death. Cut off from my family, I stood there, a thirteen and half year old boy, alone and completely responsible for my fate.

When the crowds arrived at the entrance to the crematorium area, an orchestra played. The Germans reassured everyone by telling them that they are going to take a shower after the long journey before reaching the camp compound where they would meet family members who had gone in the opposite direction. This encouraging information helped ensure complete cooperation. The doomed women, elderly men, and children entered the hall. There they were given soap and sometimes a towel and told to undress. In the large room, there were signs on the walls emphasizing the importance of body cleanliness and a warning not to forget the towels and the hook number on which their clothes were hanging. The Germans thought of every detail that would contribute to the satanic deception and the mass murder that was easier to carry out.

The Nazis exploited the Jews even after their deaths: gold fillings were removed, hair was cut off, and the ashes of the dead were used as fertilizer for the camp vegetable gardens and the surrounding fields.

Even the brainwashing that the Germans succumbed to, and the labeling of Jews as subhuman, cannot explain the capability of normal people to murder in cold blood without a shred of human compassion.

I realized that to survive in Auschwitz I would have to keep a low profile and not stand out. It was the first instinctive behavior I developed there.

We decided that from that moment on, we would stay together and help each other survive, no matter what.

This dehumanization process was consistent and always shocking. After being thrown into cattle trains, numbers were ‘branded’ on our skin, just as they branded cattle. This humiliation and degradation broke many of us, not only physically but also mentally. We all looked the same. We lost every individual distinction: all with shaved heads, wearing bizarre, striped ‘pajamas’ that hung on our bodies in a ridiculous way, wearing identical caps and a blank expression in our eyes.

We had no inkling of what had happened to our mothers and younger siblings, or where our fathers were. We knew that they are all most likely dead and tried not to think about it.

We were in constant terror that we, too, were doomed to die.

In a sense, we had become animals in a human jungle, fighting for our lives with all our mental capacity - the only weapon we had left.

Leaving Auschwitz 1 alive meant that for now the Nazis still saw us as useful to them. As long as you had value, your chances of survival were better. But even in the labor camps a death sentence still hung over our heads. The Germans held ‘selections’ arbitrarily, and those who were judged unfit for work were sent to the gas chambers at Birkenau.

The Nazis had planned to set up an electric power station there for the German company EVO and worked the prisoners mercilessly to build it.

If you were sick at roll call it often meant an immediate death sentence from the camp commander.

He asked that prisoners who did not feel well or had any complaint to approach him. We quickly learned not to fall into his trap.

I think one of the hardest things about this period was knowing that regardless of our tenacity to survive until the war’s end, our lives were in the hands of a cruel and bloodthirsty man, and we were subject to his mood any given moment.

After the long hours of hard work, roll call awaited us and only when it was over did they give us any ‘soup’. It was muddy water, food not even fit for cattle let alone for human consumption. Here and there, if you were lucky, bits of potato floated in the water. It was our only food. At an age when the body is growing and maturing, when the appetite becomes especially strong, hunger had its effect on our bodies, and we quickly became emaciated.

The Germans did everything to break any element of human individuality or uniqueness and made sure we remained a mass of nameless creatures.

Some prisoners tried to steal from the camp vegetable garden. We were so hungry all the time, so it was a great temptation. Some of us could not stand it, though it was clear that the person caught would be shot dead. The corpses of the ‘criminals’ who stole and paid for it with their lives were displayed at the entrance gate to the camp.

He marched us quickly to the camp headquarters, a compound we were prohibited to enter, and ushered us into one of the offices. On a table in the room were two bowls full of soup and next to them a piece of bread, for each of us. The Hungarian officer ordered us to sit down and eat, went out, and closed the door. Naftali and I stared at each other. We did not ask unnecessary questions; hunger overcame our fear and we quickly devoured the contents of the bowls and the bread. After some time, the officer returned and led us back to the barracks. Even today, I do not know why we were chosen. It may have been a completely random act. I understood the significance of the event only many years later. The camp commander realized that the war was winding down and decided to prepare a defense for himself for the day when it would be over. The Hungarian officer who called us for food had carried out the orders of Czerwinski, who believed that through this act he could claim to have taken good care of the prisoners and even saved the lives of two young Jewish boys. He thought this would help him when the day came and he might have to stand trial. He kept a record of our names for years, and indeed, when Czerwinski came to trial in Germany in 1977, I received a letter from his lawyer in the mail, calling on me to testify in his defense.