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"And we knew the only way we can survive if we will stay in the front." | |||
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Lily Mazur Margules Born 1924 Vilna 
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And we knew the only way we can survive if we will stay in the front. Because if you were standing in the back and you couldn't walk with the column, you were just shot. And then I saw young girls walk and walk and all of a sudden they became like frozen, straightened their legs instead and they were just frozen mummies falling right with their face on the snow. The German didn't have to shoot them. This is how they fell. One of my friends started to feel bad, and we took her and I was from one side, and another of my friend, and we were dragging her, practically dragging her, she couldn't, her legs were frozen. So the guard noticed it. He, he, he told the column to stop, he took her to a turnip field, and we heard a shot. He shot her right there. | ||
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Thomas Buergenthal Born 1934 Lubochna, Czechoslovakia 
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In 1933, just after Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power, Thomas's Jewish parents moved from Germany to Czechoslovakia. Thomas's father had worked as a banker in Germany, and then bought a small hotel in the Slovakian town of Lubochna. Many of his father's friends in Germany came to Czechoslovakia to escape the Nazi government's unfair policies and stayed at the hotel.
1933-39: Slovak soldiers who had sided with Hitler took over our hotel in late 1938. We fled to Zilina, a nearby city, and lived there until after I turned 5. Then, my father took us across the border into Poland. On September 1, 1939, we boarded a train heading for a boat that would take us to England. But the German army invaded Poland that day, and our train was bombed. We joined other refugees, and walked north to Kielce. 1940-45: In Kielce we were put into a ghetto and then a labor camp. In 1944 I was deported to Auschwitz with my parents. It was now January 1945, and the advancing Soviet army forced the Germans to evacuate. We were marched out--children at the front. Day one was a 10-hour march and tiring; we began to lag. Stragglers were shot, so two boys and I devised a way to rest as we walked: We'd run to the front of the column, then walk slowly or stop until the rear of the column reached us. Then, we'd run ahead again. Thomas was one of only three children to survive the three-day death march. He was deported to Sachsenhausen, where he was liberated by Soviet troops in April 1945. |
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