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

by Limor Regev

Our Jewish community encouraged education along with hard work. To make a living, we worked diligently and did not go to the taverns.

Due to perseverance and hard work, many of our people’s businesses flourished, and thanks to our education we stood out in the liberal professions.

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.

So it was that the first step on the path to the most terrible war in human history was taken, ironically, in the name of peace.

I remember the teachers at school composing a sentence in Hungarian: “Greater Hungary is like paradise and Little Hungary is not a country.”

The Hungarian government required all Bergsas children who had attended Czech schools to learn Hungarian from now on. I was now given a Hungarian name at school: Leyush. After the war, I took this name off all my documentation and made no further use of it. I tried to erase with it everything that had happened to us.

The economic opportunities created by Czechoslovakia were available to the general population, but were not taken advantage of in the same way. While most Gentiles regularly visited the taverns after a working day, wasting money, the Jews worked hard and took every opportunity to acquire an education and a profession that could improve their future lives. As a result, an economic gap grew between Jews and Christians, which led to hostility accumulating beneath the surface. It is important to note that many young Jews made a meager living and toiled, just like their neighbors. But the spotlight was on those who had amassed economic assets, gotten an education, and gained in status. Feelings of hostility and jealousy in light of the economic success of some of the city’s Jews started coming out during the Hungarian rule, which completely legitimized these feelings. The Hungarian authorities were known to be anti-Semitic and there began more and more harassment of Jews in the areas where they lived. This harassment became more and more overt and institutionalized.

the Czech government and the Czech people were free of prejudice and there was no anti-Semitism during my childhood in Czechoslovakia.

By 1940, there was not a single Jewish teacher in the city.

The vibrant youth movements operating in the town were forced to continue their activities underground, as the Hungarians disapproved of the organization of young Jews.

There was an agreement between the city’s Jews and the local education system that Jewish children would come to school on Shabbat but would be exempt from writing, so as not to disobey religious laws. I remember one Hungarian teacher who tried to insist that we Jewish children write on Shabbat and he became furious when we wouldn’t. One day, this teacher took all the schoolbags of the Jewish children in the classroom, mine among them, and threw them out the window, saying we should all be sent to be cannon fodder for Hitler. It was a terrible insult.

We still did not understand where all this would lead…

For years, we had walked together to school, spent vacation time together, danced at the same parties, and belonged to the same sports clubs... After decades, and perhaps even centuries of warm and pleasant cooperation and neighborly relations, we had become an undesirable minority among the general population.

In 1941, the authorities conducted a census. In 1942, based on the census data, the 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.

cruelly. Among other things, they sent Jewish battalions into minefields either by vehicle or on foot, to detonate the mines with their bodies.

In the winter of 1942-1943, thousands of Jewish forced laborers froze to death, after marching approximately one thousand kilometers in the snow and freezing cold in a retreat from the front after a massive assault by the Red Army.

Only a few hundreds of the conscripted Jews managed to survive the war.

Only twenty-five years after the many Jewish soldiers of the First World War hung up their uniforms, their homeland turned its back on them and erased from its memory and consciousness the Jews who had fought for it. At best, some Hungarians disregarded the fate of their Jewish neighbors and friends. In most cases, however, they were full partners in the process leading up to the extermination of the Jews of Hungary.

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.

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.

In 1944, more than 90,000 prisoners were housed in about 300 primitive wooden huts.

At its largest, the Auschwitz camp empire included 45 camps covering 40 square kilometers.

The Nazis made sure to isolate the camps from the outside world to avoid any contact or transfer of information, thus preventing escape options almost completely.

Each camp was surrounded by high, electrified barbed wire fences, with high guard tow...

In addition, the Germans evacuated all the villagers from their homes within 40 kilometers, and created another security zone where SS so...

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

the rapid extermination of about half a million Jews before the arrival of the Red Army,

Immediately after being considered ‘unentitled’ to live, they made their final journey in this life to the Birkenau Crematorium…on foot.

Those who had difficulty walking were transported in vehicles camouflaged as ambulances.

Let me pause for a moment…These memories are very difficult for me…

The first thing I noticed was that there were no plants, no trees, no shrubs, or flowers. It was the middle of May and Spring was in full bloom. But here everything was gray.

We kept walking, arriving at a compound known as “Canada” so named by the prisoners because Canada represented a land of plenty and all the Jewish belongings left on the train platform were brought there in trucks.

When the crowds arrived at the entrance to the crematorium area, an orchestra played.

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.

The outside world could not possibly grasp what was actually happening in Auschwitz.

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.

We had to struggle every minute of every day to stay alive.

We awoke every morning not knowing if we would be alive at the end of the day.

The Germans did everything to demonstrate that they did not see Jews as part of the human race.

In Auschwitz, I was no more a 13 and a half-year old boy named Moshe Kessler. I became A-4913. Shani was right behind me in the line. He became A-4914.

Auschwitz was not just a name of a place. It was a planet completely cut off from this world, with its own laws.

Evil is not always hinted at by external signs, and often the cruelest Nazi murderers were deceptive in their meticulous and ordinary appearance.

The shortest time a roll call would take would be about an hour. In cases where the head count did not match or there were other reasons for delay, we sometimes stood there for four hours while individual columns of prisoners were harassed and abused by the camp commander and his officers. The fact that the camp was small was to our disadvantage, as the cruel camp commander was present at every roll call and involved in everything that was going on.

We did our best to stay fit for work even on days when we had a hard time getting up on our feet. If you were sick at roll call it often meant an immediate death sentence from the camp commander.

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.

The working day consisted of long hours during which we were forbidden to stand still. Anyone who stopped work for no reason was shot on the spot. There was no orderly break period and we did not receive any food the whole working day. From our meager ‘breakfast’ at dawn, we ate nothing until the evening.

I was not yet fourteen and had to haul 50 kilo bags of cement most of the day.