Also with a sad tale is Erna Rubinstein.
Erna was taken to the Auschwitz Death Camp on a Death Train. The Death Train had no air.
Then Erna was taken to the Gas Chambers. But only water came out of the gas nozzles!
Then Erna was taken to the Death Flame pits. The death Flame Pits were an ocean of fire. Fire as far as the eye could see, in all directions. The evil Nazis marched the Jews toward the Death Flame Pits. The Jews were right at the barbed wire gates. But no! The evil Nazis sent them down a different road, and the Jews were spared.
Excerpted from "The
Survivor in Us All - A Memoir of the Holocaust" by Erna
F. Rubinstein
Source: http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.02
[the excerpt can still be read as source code: https://web.archive.org/web/20031223161610/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.02
Erna has written two books about the HolyHoax: After the Holocaust: The Long Road to Freedom and Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust
"Deprived of all strength and the desire to live, confused and exhausted, we were pushed into another room. Before we had a chance to notice exactly what was happening, men with shavers began to shave our hair. One shaved our heads, another our underarms, and a young boy in a pair of shorts shaved the hair of our genitals. The men were experienced; it seemed to take no time at all. Oblivious to everything, we moved like robots from one shaver to another, yielding without a word. Nothing mattered any more. The long room was full of hair, some blond, some brown, some black. None was gray as there were no older women left among us. Then we were rushed into another room with showers.
After all we had gone through during the last few days, it seemed that it was the gas that would now finish us. We looked at each other, realizing what our destiny was to be at last. No one uttered a word; we were resigned and ready.
Suddenly the showers were opened, and freezing water rinsed our naked bodies. We were alive.
...
It was now morning. Our discolored bodies were covered in the most ridiculous garments, and with the queer wodden shoes on our feet, we were quite a sight. We walked in fives.
`How funny you look.' Pola started laughing.
`And you, look at yourself!' Anna snapped.
`Stop it, girls. We all look funny, but we're alive, aren't we?' Mania
said.
`Who cares? We might as well be dead,' Pola answered.
`Stop it, will you?' I said sadly; for we had just turned off the muddy road and were marching in a different direction. All we could see, at a distance clearly visible against the morning sky that was in front of us, was fire. An ocean of fire. As far as the eye could see there was fire, and no other way to go. The hard morning light revealed a landscape dark with people and illuminated each vacant face.
`What a beautiful sight,' Pola said acidly.
Behind us, a woman was holding her daughter's hand, and I heard her say: `After all we have been through ... after this monstrous shaving ... we have to go into the fire now?'
Her sixteen-year-old daughter replied calmly: `At least we shall be warm, mother.'
That was, in fact, how we all felt by now -- a moving wall of broken-down forms driven by cold and despair.
Despite all this, to me the fire also meant something else -- a tender reconciliation with my mother. In each little flame, I saw her kisses, her love, gliding toward me then heavenward. I heard her last words: `My angels, my dolls, may God help you.' We knew, now, that she must have been taken into the gas chamber during the night, and it was her body along with thousands of others, young and old, beautiful and ugly, that was burning in this inferno.
And somewhere, too, through the searing flames, I could see the last worry on my dearest friend's face, when she said to me: `Take care of my son.' She, also, must have found her tragic end last night. I thought of how the two women had died together.
We were now just a few steps away from the barbed wire separating us from the fire. At any given moment, the gate would open and we would be led into the fire where violent red flames were sending blue flecks into the dark, smoke-filled sky. It appeared that the Germans were playing tricks on us. During the last few days we had died an innumerable number of deaths; at first, the suffocation on the train, then the segregations, afterward, the showers, and now a fire. Most of us had experienced something akin to dying each time, and it was as if part of us had died each time. Yet this wasn't going to be the last time either. As soon as we were almost so close that there seemed to be no turning from it, we were led onto a different road and away from the fire. Nevertheless, the Germans had accomplished their goal, for in that fire, a great part of our soul had been obliterated -- the part of us that knew how to love, respect, and hope. Here was where our parents, our brothers and sisters, and most of our friends had died. We knew now what the gas chambers of Auschwitz had meant. As we moved away from the fire, the smell of burning corpes stayed with us all through our march -- as it would stay all through our stay in Auschwitz. Whether the smell was of freshly burned bodies or carried over from previous burnings, it was always there, and we could never help but be aware of it."
Excerpted from:
"The Survivor in Us All - A Memoir of the Holocaust," Erna F. Rubinstein
(Hamden, Connecticut: Archon Books, 1983) ISBN 0-208-02025-X pp.120-122
Source: http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.02
[the excerpt can still be read as source code: https://web.archive.org/web/20031223161610/http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi/camps/auschwitz/ftp.py?camps/auschwitz//auschwitz.02
Erna has written two books about the HolyHoax: After the Holocaust: The Long Road to Freedom and Survivor in Us All: Four Young Sisters in the Holocaust
