Message:
My name is Nelly Kurianski. I was the youngest of five sisters. We lived in Lodz, Poland. Lodz was the second largest city in Poland with a population of about 750,000 of which 1/3 were Poles, 1/3 Germans, and 1/3 Jews.
My father was representing a large textile factory which belonged to local Germans. My father worked hard and in order to give us the best possible education he sent us to a private Jewish school. We worked hard in school. We went to school six days a week and Saturday was the only day we could relax.
We were very proud to attend our school. We also had piano lessons at home. Every Friday we used to bring some money to school for Kerem Kayemet and felt very embarrassed when we forgot to do so.
I am telling you this as I would like you to understand that our lives before the Holocaust were in many respects similar to your lives.
Our parents tried to do everything possible, like yours do, to educate us and give us the best life possible and to know as much as possible about our history and about Israel.
The Germans occupied Lodz very soon after the invasion started. It happened with the help of the local Germans, who put on their uniforms and called themselves Folkdeuche.
After the German Army occupied Lodz the shooting and killing started.
The killing continued and more restrictions were put on the Jews everyday and my parents started thinking about leaving the city, as Lodz in the meantime was annexed to Germany.
Warsaw, the Capital, after tremendous fighting became a part of socalled occupied territory and we all throught that it would be easier for us to live there.
One day the Germans came to our house and evicted us from our apartment where my parents lived since they were married and we were all born there. We got a two-room apartment which we shared with another family. Most of the people worked in factories making clothes for the soldiers.
My father kept us alive with his optimisim, repeating that the war could not last forever.
In 1942, the selections (dividing the people by making them get out of line and directing them to a truck or another side) began. They ordered every body (house by house) down the street and letting us know that if they caught anybody at home the person would be shot.
Around March of 1944, my father was viciously beaten by the Gestapo. He became very weak and frail and soon contract Tuberculosis. His funeral was April 24, 1944.
In August of 1944, the Germans started liquidating the Ghetto. We started hiding in cellars and attics. It was very exhausting as we did not have anything to eat, no place to wash, and always running.
In the meantime I got very sick and there were fewer and fewer places to hide.
I talked it over with my mother and decided that we would stop running. Other people thought the same and started leaving the cellars and attics and went straight to the trains waiting for us.
The Germans just let us go into the trains in which we sat down on the floor and they gave us bread. The bread was hard and not cut.
When getting off the train we were told to form a line and enter a barrack. I spotted a girl who went to school with me. She was crying and I joined her. A woman told me that my sister was in the same camp, and that she was looking for me and that a friend of my sister (whom she knew) asked her to take care of me. This was the day I lost my mother and found out that one of my sisters was dead and one alive.
My sister Pauline came to see me. We hugged and cried and kissed each other. She told me about my sister Fryderika who had been with her in Aushwitz but died in February of 1944 from a weak heart. She told me that she was glad that our father died a “human death” and never came to Aushwitz. I did not see my sister again for quite some time.
I could write plenty of stories about Aushwitz. About the sky being always red as well as the awful smell from the burned bodies and the endless lines of people selected to go to the gas chambers. Most of these stories you must have heard about already, so I will just go on with the next chapter of my life.
During the winter of 1945 we were forced on the Death march. They made us form lines of five people each. Although we did not know what the future would bring, we left triumphant that we survived Aushwitz.
We were lucky to be together with five of our friends and we promised each other to walk together so that none of us stayed behind.
We later stayed in a camp for a few months. The Ukranian girls who were tall and strong were taking care of the showers and bathrooms and we knew that if we did not wash we would get sick again. Everyday in the morning we accepted our series of beatings from them. There was hardly any food and we were getting a small bread for five people. We would sit together and tell each other stories from the life before. We also loved to listen to a lady who had a lovely voice sing beautiful songs. She was doing it for us to forget our hunger.
One day we heard planes above us, then shooting, etc. and then there was tremendous silence. The next day it was quiet again and the Germans did not come to count us.
In the afternoon everything was quiet. The windows of the barracks had heavy iron bars to prevent us from escaping. However, we managed to open the doors after tremen- dous struggle and then we were free.
After the door was opened we all went over to the SS quarters. The quarters were loaded with food from the Red Cross and other organizations. The packages were meant for us, but we never knew about them.
The Russians came and took the sick people to the hospital. I had pneumonia and plurosey by this time and they took me to the hospital, too.
There are many elements that helped us survive but I think that the most important one was that we always tried to be with friends and share everything with the people around nus.
In spite of all the cruelties that we experienced during the war, we never doubted that the goodness of human beings outweighs the cruelty that existed during the war and still exists today.
But, life can be beautiful and people can be good to other human beings. All in all, it is easier to be good than evil, if we think about it.
