Charlotte County Florida Weekly

NEVER FORGET

Holocaust survivors share experiences, stories



 

 

“THE THINGS I SAW BEGGAR description… The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of starvation, cruelty and bestiality were… overpowering…

I made the visit deliberately in order to be in a position to give firsthand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”

— General Dwight D. Eisenhower, April 15, 1945, letter to General George C. Marshall following the liberation of Ohrdruf, a subcamp of Buchenwald Concentration Camp

They can’t forget the screaming, the shouting and roughing up by angry men in dark uniforms, the feel of being squashed in freight cars without water, air or toilets, the gnawing hunger in their bellies from lack of food, the stench of rotting and burning corpses or the sunless skies filled with thick, dark gray coils of smoke from the incinerators used to burn bodies at the concentration death camps. But most of all, they can’t forget the faces of loved ones who perished and went up in smoke.

Steen Metz considers a photo of his father.

Steen Metz considers a photo of his father.

They can’t forget. But they live on. They have worked hard to rebuild whole lives, families and communities. Over the past 70 years, survivors of the Nazi Holocaust that snuffed out the lives of 12 million people — six million Jews — struggle to live fruitful and happy lives while tethered to a past they can never forget.

Steen Metz as a boy

Steen Metz as a boy

In order to keep the Holocaust victims and survivors alive in the nation’s hearts and minds, the United States Congress established Days of Remembrance every spring. This week commemorates the Holocaust.

The internationally recognized date for Holocaust Remembrance Day corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah. This year it’s on Thursday, April 16. For the most part, Yom Hashoah has been observed with candle lighting, speakers, poems, prayers and singing. Often, six candles are lit to represent the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust. During this time, Holocaust survivors speak about their experiences or share in the readings. Some ceremonies have people read from the Book of Names for certain lengths of time in an effort to remember those who died and to give an understanding of the enormous number of victims. Sometimes these ceremonies are held in a cemetery or near a Holocaust memorial. In Israel, the Knesset made Yom Hashoah a national public holiday in 1959 and in 1961 a law was passed that closed all public entertainment on Yom Hashoah. At 10 a.m., a siren is sounded where people stop what they are doing, pull over in their cars, and stand in remembrance. Throughout Florida, synagogues and Jewish service organizations will hold Holocaust remembrance events for the public to attend.

 

 

To remember is all that the world and the human race has left of the millions dead and gone. Florida Weekly scoured South Florida to speak with many Holocaust survivors willing to share their stories and lives with us. The words to these stories did not come easily or without pain. For most of these survivors, sharing their stories and speaking is an act of will and courage and a testament to their belief that only through education and awareness will another Holocaust be prevented.

 

 

Steen Metz

• Age: 79

• Place of birth: Odense, Denmark

• Holocaust experience: Family arrested and deported to Theresienstadt

Cesare Frustaci in 1948, his high school graduation photo, and his mother Margit Wolf in 1944.

Cesare Frustaci in 1948, his high school graduation photo, and his mother Margit Wolf in 1944.

Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia in 1943. Father Axel Metz died within six months of starvation and hard labor.

• Family: Married to Eileen, father of two daughters and a grandfather

• Today: Mr. Metz is a seasonal resident on Sanibel and speaks to civic and school groups throughout the year about his experiences during the Holocaust. He encourages students to be ambassadors of his story and the message to never forget.

Cesare Frustaci as a bboy.

Cesare Frustaci as a bboy.

• To learn more: Read Mr. Metz’s self-published book “A Danish Boy in Theresienstadt” or visit steenmetzneverforget.com.

“They pounded on the door,” said Steen Metz. “My father answered. I really had no idea what was happening.”

The Nazis had come in the fall of 1943 to round up Mr. Metz and his parents and deport them and other Danish Jews to a concentration camp.

Inside his cozy condo on Sanibel Island one can hear the lulling rush of the bay against the shore. It’s calming, serene.

Another look inside Mr. Metz’s home and an entertainment center filled with family pictures grabs the eye. Images of smiling children and happy couples arm in arm line the shelves. But one picture, a black and white photo of a smiling man with wire-rimmed glasses, begs a closer look.

 

 

“That’s my father,” Mr. Metz said.

A stormy, and faraway gaze stirs in his eyes.

“I was only 8 years old when my parents and I were arrested,” he said. “It was very early in the morning on Oct. 2, 1943.”

The Metz family and about 60 other Jews were taken by open wagon to a school yard where they were assembled to be deported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia.

“I really had no idea what was happening,” he said.

Mr. Metz said he knew that Denmark had been occupied since 1940. But he didn’t understand that his being Jewish had anything to do with their arrest and deportation.

Isaac Klein as a young man in the Israel Army.

Isaac Klein as a young man in the Israel Army.

“I didn’t realize I was Jewish,” he said. “I was not brought up in the Jewish faith. It was a complete shock. Was it a crime to be Jewish?”

Once they were arrested, Mr. Metz said he and his family had a half hour to get ready to leave.

They were to take money and jewelry. At the time the young Mr. Metz said he convinced his father that it would be a good idea to take their valuables. But later they would be forced to give all of their valuables and belongings to the Nazis.

The process of leaving Denmark and being transported to Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia was difficult.

 

 

“They were shouting and they were screaming,” Mr. Metz said, “I was frightened. I didn’t know what was going on. Then eventually we were herded in a cattle car. We were there for three days and three nights. They didn’t feed us. We didn’t get any liquid. It was awful and tense. There were no windows. It was dark. We were cramped.” Mr. Metz and the three other children in the cattle car got down on the floor while the adults stood crowding together. They were given a brief chance to step out of the cattle car for a stop and some water. The prisoners shared food that they had brought from their homes.

Once they arrived at the concentration camp, Mr. Metz saw his world disappear behind metal gates and bleak grounds.

 

 

“We had to walk for a little over a mile to the camp. We had to empty pockets, suitcases and ladies’ purses. We felt intimidated.”

At the camp the separating of families and individuals began. Mr. Metz stayed with his mother because of his young age and his father was directed to the men’s barracks.

The experience still makes him shudder.

“I was 8 years old and very frightened,” he said. They were screaming and shouting at us. They never missed a chance to dehumanize us, intimidate us and physically abuse us,” Mr. Metz said.

His mother was attacked emotionally and his father beaten. His father was an attorney of small physical stature.

“He was used to litigating in the courthouse not harsh manual labor,” Mr. Metz said. “He was whipped because he wasn’t producing what he should be. They tore off his coat. He lost about half his body weight. It was more than he could handle.”

 

 

His father was transferred to the infirmary where he died after less than six months in the camp. The 40-year-old died of starvation — but camp officials wrote pneumonia on his death certificate as to not raise suspicion that prisoners were not being treated well, said Mr. Metz.

His mother Amgna was tormented by the Nazis for refusing to acknowledge that her husband died of anything other than starvation.

After Mr. Metz’s father’s death, fear engulfed the remaining family of two.

“The worst thing was the uncertainty, especially after my father died,” Mr. Metz said. “Were we going to survive? Would we eat? I was hungry all the time.”

 

 

But after several months, Mr. Metz, his mother and the other inmates began to receive parcels of food, vitamins and clothing. In Denmark, the Danes supported their Jewish population so sending packages and support was permitted.

“It was a very unique situation,” Mr. Metz said.

But still the Nazis often pilfered the prisoner’s packages. One time his mother opened a package only to find three bricks inside.

Inside the camp, Mr. Metz busied himself with work even though he did not have to work because of his age. He became a messenger, carrying documents to and from one Nazi office to another, he said. He used the job as a chance to pocket potatoes from the nearby kitchen during his messenger travels. He would bring the potatoes back to his starving mother.

 

 

“You’re desperate and you use any means you can,” he said.

Mr. Metz tried to enjoy some play with the other children in the camp.

“I learned to speak the Czech language,” he said. “You can always communicate.”

The children played soccer from time to time with a ball made of old rags tied together.

At mealtime Mr. Metz and the other prisoners would gather in line and wait about a half hour for some watery soup with a potato peel.

Usually it was the same routine every day. But on Nov. 11, 1943 — Armistice Day — the date in 1918 when the armistice between the Allies of World War I and Germany was signed — the Nazis were angry and decided to punish the prisoners.

A young Goldie Schwartz

A young Goldie Schwartz

“They woke us up in the middle of the night,” Mr. Metz said. “We were up for hours. They counted. People fainted and died from standing.”

After spending 18 months in Theresienstadt, Mr. Metz, his mother and the other prisoners there were liberated. On April 15, 1945, white buses arrived to take them away from the camp. It took a moment for the news to settle in with Mr. Metz.

“After being there for 18 months you don’t believe anything.”

But a warm welcome, food and chocolate treats awaited from the Red Cross.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Mr. Metz said. “Arrested, in camp, then being freed? It was the happiest day of my life.”

 

 

After going through a week of quarantine they stayed in Sweden until Denmark’s occupation ended. On May 5, 1945, Mr. Metz and his mother went back to Denmark. They found that their apartment was gone — rented out to another tenant.

But life was good. His mother found work and he resumed his studies.

Though they lost much, they hung on to what they had and what they craved most.

“We were free,” Mr. Metz said.

Freedom and time are now precious to Mr. Metz.

Mr. Metz married his wife Eileen and had two daughters. He nurtured a successful career in the food business and lived a good life.

For most of his life he never spoke of his experiences in the Holocaust or Theresienstadt Concentration Camp. But about 10 years ago, he started reflecting and speaking.

Margaret Langweiler holds a photograph of her parents.

Margaret Langweiler holds a photograph of her parents.

“You start to reflect when you get older,” he said. Mr. Metz wrote and selfpublished “A Danish Boy in Theresienstadt.”

He speaks regularly to groups and schools around the country.

“Its very important for me that we never forget that the Holocaust took place,” he said. There are a lot of deniers in the world.

“I want to make sure that in honor of my father the other people that perished that we never forget,” he said.

Cesare Frustaci

 

 

• Age: 79

• Place of birth: Naples, Italy

• Holocaust experience: Forced to live on the streets of Budapest as a child after his mother was sent to the Jewish ghetto.

• Family: Son of Italian composer and songwriter Pasquale Frustaci and Hungarian ballerina Margit Wolf.

Lives in Port Charlotte with his wife Judy Machado. He is a father of two daughters and several grandchildren.

• Today: Mr. Frustaci speaks to schools, religious organizations and civic groups around the country. He recently was awarded the title of Meritorious Italian by the Italian government during a ceremony in at the Italian

Heinz and Hella Wartski

Heinz and Hella Wartski

Embassy in Washington, D.C., in

January.

• To learn more: Mr. Frustaci speaks at The

Holocaust Museum & Education Center of

Southwest Florida and his book “Not a Trace of Smoke: Choice, Chance or Miracle” is available on Amazon.

Margit Wolf placed her tiny hands on her 7-year-old son Cesare’s head. She blessed him and then sent him away to live on the streets of Budapest during World War II.

He and Hungarian Jewish mother were living in a Budapest ghetto. Several years earlier his mother had been forced to leave her husband and Cesare’s father, noted composer Pasquale Frustaci, in Naples, Italy. The anti-Semitic laws put in place by the country’s fascist party dictator, Benito Mussolini, required Jews to be deported.

Hella Wartski shows the number the Nazis tatooed on her arm when she entered the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

Hella Wartski shows the number the Nazis tatooed on her arm when she entered the Auschwitz Concentration Camp.

But none of that mattered anymore.

Cesare’s mother, an accomplished ballerina, now wore a yellow Star of David affixed to her dress and prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to save her son. The ghetto was not safe.

“It was well known that children and teenagers were rounded up by the Nazis and drowned every day,” said Mr. Frustaci. “My mother was a rather smart woman to separate from her son.” She thought I might be safer on the street.”

 

 

Before sending the young Mr. Frustaci onto the war-torn streets she beseeched him to be safe and told him how.

“You are not a Jew but a Roman Catholic,” she said. “You are never to return again (to the ghetto).”

With those words she tucked his Italian birth certificate and baptismal certificate in his pocket and handed him a little something to eat.

Now, Cesare was on his own. The metropolis of Budapest lay ahead.

“At the beginning, I didn’t know what to do,” he said waving his hands in front of his face.

Then he remembered his child play of hide and seek. He recalled a large statue that he used to use for hiding. He decided that the statue might make a good hiding and sleeping spot. After staying behind the statue for a couple of cold nights it occurred to him that he had the key to the cellar of his and his mother’s former apartment before being ousted to the ghetto.

 

 

So for the next couple of months, he hid in the cellar. During the day he strategized ways to survive.

He collected tennis balls for tips at the nearby tennis courts. The money he made from the tips fed him. He asked the management at one of the tennis courts if he could clean the bathroom and showers. By having access to the bathrooms he was able to take care of his hygiene and sanitary needs.

 

 

Though he was surviving, Cesare never lost sight of the constant peril and threat he lived. One day he was walking alongside the bridge that stretches over the Danube River when he heard shouting from across the way.

His voice shakes as he recalls a young SS officer shouting at a young woman carrying a baby.

Mr. Frustaci heard him call her a dirty, stinking Jewish whore. And then he ran up to the woman and grabbed her baby and flung the child over the bridge’s railing. He said the mother, hysterical at that point, lunged to the bridge to see where her baby had fallen. The SS guard took his pistol and shot the woman. He then grabbed the lifeless woman by her legs and heaved her into the river.

Mr. Frustaci became terrified at what he witnessed.

Fred Naftalie’s family in 1938.938.

Fred Naftalie’s family in 1938.938.

“That was the atmosphere in the summer of 1941,” he said. “What was surprising were the pedestrians. They didn’t do anything. They just walked away. It was like it was just a normal day.”

One day, guards stopped Cesare.

They wanted to know what a child was doing in the street. Though he produced his Italian papers and baptismal certificate but they were of no use because the guards were Hungarian and could not read Italian.

Cesare was captured and sent to a juvenile detention camp.

At the camp Cesare had the job of collecting fruit from the trees to be boxed for the soldiers. But the job had its perks.

 

 

“At the top of my tree I could eat as much (fruit) as I wanted,” he said.

But by the time winter came around, the trees were bare and food was scarce. The children at the camp were starving. Local priests gave up their rations so the children could eat and as a result some of the priests starved to death.

“I remember waking up to dead children,” Mr. Frustaci said.

But a series of coincidences made it possible for Cesare to survive. During the winter, the snowy water that he and the other children were drinking was making them sick. So he sneaked out of the detention camp to a nearby well to collect water. He would crawl back, trying to stay undetected. On these treks he discovered red berries on a bush. Though they were quite sour, he ate them. Later he learned he was eating rose berries, which are high in vitamin C. This apparently helped save Cesare from sickness.

One day a soldier came to the detention camp door. Within moments doctors and nurses were to attend to Cesare and the other children. Liberation had come.

But Cesare would have a longer way to go in his journey. At the Red Cross, children — many like Mr. Frustaci — would be placed in adoptive homes since their parents were often presumed dead.

And since the land and farms needed to be rebuilt and nurtured, children were often placed in agricultural settings where they could work and help their adoptive families. A kind pig farmer and his family adopted Cesare. He was renamed Geza Babaly andd moved to a small village called Apaggy,aggy, about 20 miles north of Budapest.pest. At the time he thought his mother had died in the war. But she was imprisoned in Spandau, a concentration camp in Germany. After liberation, Cesare’s mother set out to find her son. She walked back from Germany to Budapest. Mr. Frustaci compares his mother’s trek to that of walking from Florida to Canada.

“Once she was there she started looking for me,” he said.

She combed through nearly 200 villages carrying a newspaper image of Mr. Frustaci as a young child. When Mr. Frustaci was in kindergarten, he was picked to give a bouquet of flowers to visiting Italian dignitary Count Galeazzo Ciano, the son-in-law of Benito Mussolini. A news photographer captured an image of Mr. Frustaci falling into the dignitary’s arms as he stumbled to give the flowers to him. After the war, Mr. Frustaci’s mother went back to her damaged apartment and found the photo clipping and set out to find her son.

After a year-and-a-half of searching village to village, she finally found her son.

“She never gave up to find me,” Mr. Frustaci said.

Mother and son went back to Budapest where they focused on Mr. Frustaci’s education.

After the war, Mr. Frustaci’s challenges were not over. When he finished high school he became an expert in electronics and wanted to go back to his place of birth in Italy to study at the university level. But the Hungarian communist regime, now in power, did not want to lose a skilled young man.

On several occasions, Mr. Frustaci was forced to go to a place know as “The Terror Building” to be interviewed.

“They tortured me,” he said.

But once again, fate seemed to step in and help Mr. Frustaci — this time helping part the Iron Curtain trapping him in Hungary. In 1955, Italy was playing a championship soccer match against Hungary. During that time, Mr. Frustaci’s mother happened to be walking down a street when she recognized an old friend from her ballet days. The two women met up and Mr. Frustaci’s mother shared the problems she was having getting help for her son to return to Italy. Her friend promised to contact Mr. Frustaci’s father when she returned to Italy.

Apparently, Mr. Frustaci’s mother’s friend told her husband about the problems he was having leaving Hungary. Her husband then contacted a good friend, Monsignor Angelo Roncalli, for help. And he did.

And on Aug. 12, 1956, Mr. Frustaci left Budapest and arrived in Venice. Monsignor Roncalli is better known as Pope John XXIII.

Years later Mr. Frustaci earned a doctorate in engineering, married and raised a family.

“I have had a beautiful and wonderful life,” he said.

Now the Port Charlotte retiree devotes his time to speaking out against Holocaust deniers and sharing his story in hopes of inspiring tolerance and peace.

“It is my mission, since 2004, to pass the torch to the younger generations — the history of Second World War and the Holocaust,” he said.

Isaac Klein

• Age: 84

• Place of birth: Sotomor, Czechoslovakia

• Holocaust experience: Forced in boxcars to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. As a twin child, he was used in Dr. Josef Mengele’s medical experiments at Birkenau.

• Family: Except for his twin brother, Tzvi, his childhood family of five sisters, three brothers and his parents perished in Auschwitz. Mr. Klein is married and has three sons. Today: Mr. Klein volunteers at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach to share his experiences.

• To learn more: Mr. Klein speaks every Sunday morning from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach. Contact the Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach for more information at holocaustmemorialmiamibeach.org.

Isaac Klein spent part of his youth being poked, prodded and poisoned by a doctor who used to smile a lot.

Mr. Klein, 84, is one of the twins used in medical experiments by Nazi physician Dr. Josef Mengele at Auschwitz- Birkenau Concentration Camp in 1944.

Dubbed the “Angel of Death,” Dr. Mengele selected Mr. Klein and his twin brother Tzvi, who were 13 at the time, for experiments that included injections, skin grafts and constant blood draws.

Mr. Klein who was born in the farm community of Sotomor, Czechoslovakia was forced along with his large family onto boxcars for two weeks with no water, food or sanitation in 1944.

Once they reached Auschwitz in Poland, Mr. Klein and his twin brother were selected to stay in the camp rather than go to the gas chambers.

Because he and his brother were selected for medical experimentation, their heads were not shaved like the rest of the prisoners, Mr. Klein said.

Every day he and his brother would be subjected to unorthodox experiments. But Dr. Mengele himself wouldn’t do the actual experiments on Mr. Klein and his brother.

“The dirty job was done by other doctors,” he said.

Meanwhile, inside the death camp, they wore striped uniforms, ate meager rations and were treated cruelly.

“Mach schnell,” Mr. Klein said he remembers hearing screamed.

Mach schnell is German for “hurry up!”

He said daily activities at Auschwitz consisted of roll call — which could last for hours — clearing away dead bodies, and punishment.

Shortly before liberation, Mr. Klein and the other prisoners were forced to march to a different camp as the Russian Army moved closer. On the death march, prisoners were not given food, water or shelter. Many were beaten and died along the way. Mr. Klein said some prisoners ate a dead horse they found on a farm during the march and he was forced to lay dead bodies across puddles and sleep on them to keep from drowning.

They reached Austria and Mr. Klein and the other remaining prisoners were set to be executed when they heard loud booms. Liberation.

“Suddenly the German guards took off,” he said.

After liberation, he and his twin brother — the only remaining members of their family of 12 — left for Palestine. But once their boat arrived, the British would not let them in. About to run out of food and water, Mr. Klein, his brother and the other refugees surrendered to the British. They were imprisoned in the Gulf of Haifa for 10 months. After their detainment, they were released to the Jewish population in Palestine. Mr. Klein joined and served in the Israel Army for four years. He participated in events that led to Israel’s independence in 1948. In 1962, he and his wife moved to Brooklyn, N.Y., where they raised their family. And eight years later, Mr. Klein and his family moved to Miami where worked as a handyman. He is now retired. On Sundays from 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. he volunteers and speaks at the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach.

He hopes by sharing his story that the world will never forget the suffering and death that happened in the Holocaust.

“I can hardly believe what I went through,” he said. “We still don’t live in a peaceful world. People are still killing each other.”

Miriam Patipa

• Age: 87

• Place of birth: Dolha, Czechoslovakia

• Holocaust experience: Forced in boxcars to Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Worked in forced labor at oil refinery and hand grenades munitions factory.

• Family: Widow of Eugene Patipa, and mother of two sons and grandchildren.

• Today: Mrs. Patipa, a Palm Beach Gardens resident, is retired and speaks about her experiences in the Holocaust when requested.

• To learn more: Contact the Alpert

Jewish Family & Children’s Services for more information at jfcsonline.com.

The last words Miriam Patipa heard her mother say were to her older sister Eva: “Take care of the child.”

Then her mother disappeared in the column of bodies being dragged off to the gas chambers and crematorium at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in 1944.

Mrs. Patipa, a Palm Beach Gardens resident, shares her experiences of surviving the Holocaust in the hopes that no one will ever forget the lives lost.

In a recent interview she gently ran her hand across a picture of her and sister taken shortly before the Hungarian fascists came and forced them into box cars to Auschwitz- Birkenau death camp.

On May 15, 1944, Mrs. Patipa’s birthday,, they were dragged offf to the train station.

“There were like 100 people in the car,” she said. “We couldn’t even go to the bathroom.”

She recalls her mother saying, “Children, it’s not going to be so bad”.

Once they arrived, Mrs. Patipa tried to make herself look smaller and younger so she could stay with her mother.

But as she clung to her mother, she felt a hand hit her on the shoulder. It was Dr. Josef Mengele, the infamous physician of medical experimentation at Auschwitz- Birkenau. He asked her age and she said 13 and he said, “Strong enough.”

So there it ended.

Her mother and other siblings were forced to go to the right — the line that leads to the gas chamber.

“Take care of the child,” she heard her mother tell Eva as she disappeared from sight.

Alone with her sister Eva, Mrs. Patipa moved through the line. Handed a needle and thread she was forced to sew her initials on everything she would use. They were told to leave all of their possessions behind. Then they were shaved from “top to bottom” she said.

She didn’t get a piece of soap to shower. And that was a good thing.

Those given soap were brought into the showers where they were gassed.

“You heard the screams,” Mrs. Patipa said.

After getting settled in her tiny bunk she asked a Polish girl named Bella where she could find her mother. The girl pointed to the chimneys outside and said “You see that smoke? Your mother is burning now.”

Her routine at Auschwitz consisted of roll call, which could last for hours, selection and eating a soup with a dishwater consistency.

“You were getting so-called soup,” she said.

Selection for extermination was always frightening.

“They would line us up and choose who was strong and weak,” she said.

One time, another girl helped hide her in the barracks because she was feeling weak and couldn’t stand.

Mrs. Patipa is thankful for the day she and another girl decided to switch spots in in line. Her position allowed her to be selected to help reconstruct an oil refinery that the

U.S. had bombed.

“We were there for about three months,” she said.

Then one day bombing began again. Mrs. Patipa and the other girls tried to take cover but many were killed in the bombing.

After that, she and some of the other girls were brought to work in a munitions factory making hand grenades. It was there that she created a prayer book.

She learned to write the Jewish prayers from an older woman who had squired away hers in her bosom. Inside her prayer book — which she fastened with wire she found at the factory and wrote with the blue paint used for the grenades — she wrote a poem about the loss of her mother. To this day, the poem makes her cry and yearn for her mother.

I am so sad and I sit here all alone My mother, my sisters and brother are taken so far from me If I could only one more time be so lucky And with my mother and sisters and brother be together But destiny does not bring me that happiness Because the time still does not ever come My only dear mother, when will you yet come To take me in your arms, kiss me and bestow your great love on me. — Poem by Miriam Patipa (translated from German) from her “Poems & Memories” prayer book, March 26, 1945.

Aurelia (Goldie) Schwartz

• Age: 91

• Place of birth: Romania

• Holocaust experience: Dodged being taken by Nazis. Kept hidden by her boss. Had false documents and identity. Her mother and sister survived Auschwitz-Birkenau Death Camp.

• Family: Widow of Rudolf Szenasi, and Arthur Schwartz, nephews

• Today: Mrs. Schwartz, a West Palm Beach resident, speaks about her experiences in the Holocaust when requested.

• To learn more: Contact the Alpert

Jewish Family & Children’s Services for more information at jfcsonline.com.

At 19 years of age, Aurelia Schwartz made the decision to move away from her family to be closer to Arthur Schwartz, the love of her life, who was doing forced labor at a weapons factory in Budapest.

She moved into her uncle Amin Klein’s home and looked for a job. A friend referred her to the sewing workshop of Rudolf Szenasi. He hired her right away.

She did not know at the time that her move made her chances of survival though the Nazi occupation of Hungary possible.

As Nazi activity — including rounding up Jews for the concentration and extermination camps — increased, Mrs. Schwartz’ boss grew worried for her safety. When her uncle was taken away, Mrs. Schwartz’ boss decided to hide her in an apartment. He brought her food daily. She stayed there until he could obtain forged documents for her and move her to his mother’s home in a small village on the outskirts of a city called Hatvan. Mr. Szenasi further protected Mrs. Schwartz by posting a sign on the house that said the there was disease in the home. No one ever came by.

“My boss saved my life,” she said.

Later when she was able to return to Budapest she learned her mother and sister survived Auschwitz.

Afterwards, Mrs. Schwartz looked after her boss when the Russians came through. He feared arrest by the Russians, she said. She brought him food and supplies,

Their heartaches and challenges turned into a love story. They married in 1948 and settled in Vienna. Together they ran a tailor business for 27 years, Mrs. Schwartz said. He passed away in 1973.

Some time later, she married her first love, Arthur Schwartz. They moved to the United States and settled in Queens, N.Y., until moving to West Palm Beach to retire.

She never had any children.

In reflecting back on her life, she said she was watched over by God through the Holocaust.

“Everything worked out,” she said. “God loved me. For that reason, I am here.”

Margaret Langweiler

• Age: 86

• Place of birth: Czechoslovakia

• Holocaust experience: Sent to Birkenau Concentration Camp

• Family: Married with three children • Today: Mrs. Langweiler, a West Palm Beach resident, is retired and speaks about her experiences in the Holocaust when requested. 

• To learn more: Contact the Alpert Jewish Family & Children’s Services for more information at www.jfcsonline.com.

Margaret Langweiler was about 11 when the Hungarian Nazis took her and her family to a ghetto. Before the deportation, her father owned a bar and grill and the family lived an ordinary life.

The family spent a month in the ghetto before they were sent to the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Once there, she was tattooed with the number 82977. Her number became her new name and identity.

Sleeping quarters were harsh and cramped.

“Seven people slept in a little cubby,” Mrs. Langweiler said. “When one turned over we all had to turn.”

She got a chance to live when she was tasked to work in the laundryy at a concentration camp near Dachau in Germany.

“I washed SS uniforms,” she said.

The rest of her family perished in the gas chambers, she said.

Next to the concentration camp where she was imprisoned was a camp with men. She became friends with a prisoner who was a dentist there.

One day she, another girl, the dentist and a few other men banded together and talked an SS officer into letting them escape, she said.

“He knew the war was going to end soon,” she said. “He helped us out.” At the time, Mrs. Langweiler was 14 years old.

But the world as she knew it was gone.

“Nothing mattered,” she said.

She and the other prisoners who escaped walked around the area until they found a convent. They slept outside and munched on produce from a nearby vegetable garden.

After the Americans liberated them, Mrs. Langweiler and the other survivors were brought to a displaced persons center.

When asked where she wanted to go Mrs. Langweiler chose America where she had an aunt living in Washington, D.C.

But eventually she moved to New York to be with friends. There Mrs. Langweiler got started in the ladies garment union and became a dressmaker. She later married and had three children.

But throughout her life she could never avoid the scars of the Holocaust.

It’s painful to talk about losing her entire family. She grips a portrait of her parents looking young, beautiful and untouched by the ravages of hate and bigotry.

“Its very painful to be all alone in the world,” she said as her blue eyes well with tears.

Hella Wartski

• Age: 85

• Place of birth: Ungvar, Hungary

• Holocaust experience: Hungarian and German soldiers arrested Hella and her family in April 1944. They were transported to Auschwitz in overcrowded boxcars. Only she and her sisters survived.

• Family: Married to Heinz, also a Holocaust survivor. They have two children, Evelyn and David, and a number of grandchildren.

• Today: Mrs. Wartski speaks to students and groups at The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida.

• To learn more: Read about Mrs.Wartski’s experiences at The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida or online at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

For Hella Wartski, life as she knew it ended in April 1944. The young, freespirited girl from Ungvar, Hungary, was forced from her home. She and her family were sent along with other Hungarian Jews to a transit camp in Ungvar where they were forced to sleep in tents with no blankets and little food. No one ever told them why they had been arrested.

“I was only 14,” Mrs. Wartski said. “It was scary.”

In May 1944, Mrs. Wartski and her family were transported to Auschwitz in a closed boxcar used for freight. They were crowded into the car with no food, light or bathroom facilities. They endured the foul stench caused by people relieving themselves where they sat. The heavy, fetid air overwhelmed them.

“Because of the heat, the lack of water, the absence of fresh air and the stench, some people fainted,” she said. “Before the trip was over, some of the people went insane and some died.”

When they arrived at Auschwitz, Mrs. Wartski, her family and the other prisoners were herded into two columns. Her parents were sent to one line, she and her sisters to another. Mrs. Wartski wanted to go with her parents, but her older sister, Esther, held a tight grip on her. Somehow she knew the line they were in was safer than the one in which their parents stood.

Soldiers with machine guns and attack dogs surrounded them during the process. Josef Mengele, the doctor known as the Auschwitz “Angel of Death,” looked upon the prisoners with disgust, Mrs. Wartski said.

That was the last time Mrs. Wartski and her sisters saw their parents. Inside Auschwitz, they were tattooed with a number: their new identities. She became the number etched on her arm in blue ink — 21760. Their names no longer mattered. The dehumanization process moved along.

“They shaved my head,” Mrs. Wartski said. “I had really pretty blond hair. They made us take off all of our clothes.”

They were told to shower and given black-and-white-striped prison garb and wooden shoes that caused blisters. Mrs. Wartski said she couldn’t understand why God had forgotten them.

Inmates who had been there longer told Mrs. Wartski and her sisters that to survive they needed to avoid direct eye contact with the guards and to obey all orders right away. When they asked the whereabouts of their parents and the others, they learned about the tall chimneys with smoke churning out of them.

Many of the prisoners were exterminated right away in gas chambers and then incinerated in crematoriums.

They slept in tiny bunks and had to make roll call every day, no matter how weak they were from lack of food or the cold and unsanitary conditions. Their survival depended on their ability to work and stay healthy. The guards punished them regularly for just about anything. Once when the Allies bombed the area, Mrs. Wartski and the other prisoners were made to kneel holding rocks above their heads, facing severe punishment if they dropped them.

Mrs. Wartski grimaced as she described the stench that wafted through the camp from the crematoriums. It was a death factory that did business every day.

One day, Mrs. Wartksi and several other prisoners were counted out and pushed into a covered truck. They had no idea where they were going. She wondered if it would be worse than Auschwitz. They were taken to Freudenthal, a slave labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Her job was to make fabric for the German army.

The fact that they didn’t spot any crematoriums reassured them a little.

Mrs. Wartski took this relocation as a sign.

“To this day I am thinking ‘how is it possible?’” she said. “I survived because I am going to be strong enough.”

She figured that if she were working she would survive.

“You had to believe you were going to survive,” she said. “It was my mission.”

In April 1945, the Russian Army arrived and liberated the prisoners at Freudenthal.

Mrs. Wartski came to the United States after she was liberated. There she met and married Heinz Wartski in 1950. She became a teacher like her father was before the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

She tucks her head down and several soft sobs shake her tiny frame.

Though she stills talks to people about her experience in the Holocaust, its painful and there is no closure.

“I don’t want to know it anymore,” she said.

She twists her arm to gaze at her faded blue ink tattoo number.

“If you keep remembering it — it’s hard,” Mrs. Wartski said.

Heinz Wartski

• Age: 86

• Place of birth: Danzig, Poland

• Holocaust experience: Family escaped from Nazi-run Danzig to Italy in 1939. Mr. Wartski became part of the partisan resistance in the Apennine Mountains. 

• Family: Married to Hella, also a Holocaust survivor. They have two children, Evelyn and David, and two grand children.

• Today: Mr. Wartski speaks to students and groups at The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida.

• To learn more: Read about Mr. Wartski’s experiences at The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida or online at the United

States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

In the 1930s, the Nazi German regime gained control of the free city of Danzig where Mr. Wartski grew up. He and his family lived in terror of beatings, abuse and arrest.

On a snowy day in the winter of 1938 in Danzig, Mr. Wartski and his sister Ruth were playing on their sled. The sled accidentally pulled into the path of a large car and forced Mr. Wartski, who was lying on top of the sled, into the snow. The men got out of the car. They were SS troops who came to see if the lad was hurt. Moments before, his dark-haired, older sister had run home. But Mr. Wartski, a fair-haired, blue-eyed boy, appeared Aryan to the Nazi SS troopers.

“By running away, Ruth saved my Aryan qualifications from being compromised,” said Mr. Wartski.

The SS troopers helped the young boy up, patted him on the head, gave him some money for a treat and sent him on his way. But should he have appeared Jewish, his treatment likely would have been different.

“There is no doubt in my mind that the SS must have recognized me as a fellow Aryan, otherwise it would have been their patriotic duty to back the car up and have another try,” he said.

This is one of many stories and incidents written up by Mr. Wartski in his book “Holocaust Survival of Hellaa and Heinz Wartski.”

Mr. Wartski put the book together for use among students, educators and The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwestst Florida. He’s a retired electrical engineer who resides in Naples with his wife Hella, also a Holocaust survivor.

One morning in 1938, Nazi troopers in search of weapons stormed his apartment building, he said.

“All of a sudden, there was a lot of screaming, yelling and panic in our building. Since I did not know whether the SS would also beat children, I decided not to chance it and ran away.”

The pajama clad boy waited outside until he saw the SS depart in their trucks.

“Our apartment was turned inside out and my father was bleeding from the SS beatings.”

Not long later, Mr. Wartski’s father, a leather works owner, was arrested for conducting business with Aryans. With the help of a non-Jewish friend who bribed the Nazis, Mr. Wartski’s mother, Berta, found out where his father was being held.

“This is how we found out that my father was in the Stutthof Concentration Camp,” he said. Stutthof is located in a suburb of Danzig.

Upon his father’s release from the concentration camp in 1939, the family planed to leave Danzig and Germany. At the time, Mr. Wartski was 10. He said his father was convinced the Nazis would kill “as many Jews as they can get their hands on,

“He said we had to leave.”

They decided to go to Italy because, at the time, it was not anti-Semitic. In 1939, Mr. Wartski and his father left first for Italy since Jewish males were at greater risk for being arrested then women and small children. Mr. Wartski’s mother, older sister and younger brother would later come. They arrived in Trieste, Italy, and the rest of his family later joined them in Milan. But soon anti- Jewish laws were put in place in Italy, which was under the fascist regime of Benito Mussolini who was aligned with Adolph Hitler and the Nazi regime.

Mr. Wartski and his family found themselves on the run again. They escaped to the Italian Apennine Mountains. Mr. Wartski became part of the partisan resistance there. At the age of 14, he became known as “Enzo” Wartski on papers and documents. He delivered verbal messages to people who were supplying food.

“I was a good gofer,” he said.

Mr. Wartski spent nine months doing resistance work before being liberated in 1945.

Once liberated, Mr. Wartski relaxed for the first time.

“To my recollection, this was the first time that I did not need to hide or run for my life,” he said. “It was a strangege and new emotion that no onee needed to arrest me, kill me or expedite me to a concentration camp, and there was no longer a reward offered for my capture.”

Today, Mr. Wartski and his wife Hella are volunteers at The Holocaust Museum & Education Center of Southwest Florida. Though he does not believe much has changed in terms of how fellow humans treat each other he feels this could change.

“Do away with all religion. Then we won’t have anyone to hate.”

Manfred (Fred) Naftalie

• Age: 91

• Place of birth: Berlin, Germany

• Holocaust experience: At 14 he escaped on the Kinder Transport from Berlin to London. At 21 he joined the Jewish Brigade a unit created in 1944 in Great Britain by Winston Churchill. He fought in Italy with the brigade’s Third Battalion, C Company.

• Family: His mother and siblings perished in the Holocaust. He married Rose, who has passed away, and has a daughter, three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

• Today: Mr. Naftalie is a member of the Hallandale Jewish Center in Hallandale.

• To learn more: Mr. Naftalie speaks on occasion about his experiences in the Jewish Brigade.

Fred Naftalie watched as people he knew were dragged away from their homes and lives. He was still a young boy living in Berlin with his family. His father was a furrier — a trade that he was learning. But soon his father died of natural causes. He watched life for Jewish citizens become increasingly dangerous. His uncle hid in an apartment and was taken away to one of the concentration camps.

“I watched Nazis take people away,” said Mr. Naftalie. “The only thing I thought was to get out.”

Mr. Naftalie told his mother he would take whatever exit out of Germany he could take first. The Kinder Transport program had just begun operation for Jewish children up to 17 years of age. It would help transport children from Nazi-occupied Germany for England and other countries.

Mr. Naftalie said his older sisters wanted to stay.

He was 14 when he boarded the train with several other children for the Kinder Transport. They were all unaccompanied. He had 10 marks in his pocket — or the equivalent of $5.50. Once on the train, Mr. Naftalie had to think fast. He said he gave away five of the marks to the conductor to keep him and the other children in his compartment safe.

Then the Gestapo came aboard to check papers and documents.

“We were very scared but we kept our composure,” he said. “And it worked out all right. They did not hurt us physically.”

But the officers dressed in black uniforms with big black boots ransacked their luggage and stole valuables packed by their families. Mr. Naftalie said he remembers the Gestapo officers talking to each other and laughing. They looked at their passports with the large J for Jewish printed on them.

Eventually the officers left and went to the next compartment that had a group of people leaving for Shanghai.

“They were crying and shouting,” Mr. Naftalie said.

He heard them being roughed up — despite their papers.

Once Mr. Naftalie made it to England an uncle, who lived in Liverpool, took him in.

He worked for a furrier in London until he joined the Jewish Brigade in 1943. The Jewish Brigade was formed by Winston Churchill and helped the British military. Mr. Naftalie fought in Italy and for two years acted as an interpreter with his German language skills and background. Later he became a scout sergeant with the British military.

“I fought these bastards,” he said.

After the war, Mr. Naftalie got a visa to come to the U.S. He was to work with his uncle in New York who was also in the furrier business. On the way to America Mr. Naftalie met his wife-to-be, Rose Ginsburg.

“It was love at first sight,” he said with a sigh.

His wife came to England on a domestic permit during the Nazi persecution in Germany. Her brother had escaped certain death by jumping off a train to Auschwitz.

Once in New York, Mr. Naftalie grew restless and wanted to see the country. His uncle encouraged him to take some time and look around. He took a train to Detroit — where Rose had settled. He said he stayed for a week with her and her mother. Rose wanted him to stay longer. So Mr. Naftalie found work with a furrier in Detroit. He soon married Rose and they started making a family. In time, he bought out his employer and named it Furrier Furs by Frederick. He worked the business for 40 years before retiring to Hallandale.

Today Mr. Naftalie — who speaks on occasion about his wartime experiences — still lights a candle in remembrance for his family and all who perished in the Holocaust.

“That this actually happened,” he said. “I will never consider them (Nazis) as humans. These were beasts. These were animals. To this day my feeling toward them is very deplorable and hateful.” ¦


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