The Shoah is the Jewish term for the systematic killing of six million Jewish men, women and children by Nazi Germany. Auschwitz survivor Martha Sternbach, now aged 97, reflects on her memories of one of the most gruesome chapters of the 20th century and explains why the Holocaust must never be forgotten.
Martha Sternbach does not want to remember.
The 97-year-old can’t bear to think about the atrocities she experienced in her childhood.
Her peaceful village, before the raid. The shouts of Nazis, enjoying the hunt. The hiding children dripping with fear; their fathers searching for a piece of bread. The blue ink brandishing the skin. Mothers searching for children in vain. The wailing of the night.
No, Martha does not want to remember. But how can she forget?
She was born Martha Fendrich to Jewish parents in a small village in Hungary called Megyaszó – the same village her father was born, Hugo Fendrich. Her mother, Anna Bilitzer, came from Budapest where Anna’s sister still lived.
“I had two siblings: a sister two years older, Lily, and a brother two years younger, Erdö,” she says.
It was a peaceful time, the calm before the storm. Martha had a happy and safe home. She had friends and teachers and neighbours.
In the garden, they had fragrant lilacs and rose bushes. In the house, there was always beautifully braided challah and fresh bagels. At times, these precious memories feel like a dream to Martha. But when she looks back at old pictures, she knows it was real. They must be real, she says.
Her family were blissfully unaware of the increasing antisemitism plaguing Europe.
“But around 1942 we heard information about Jews fleeing Poland and Czechoslovakia after the Germans had invaded. A lot of them came to Hungary. People felt safe in Hungary,” Martha says.
“They told us terrible things were happening. One Friday night, after my father returned from the Synagogue, he told us two Jewish men claimed they had escaped from Poland after seeing Jews dig their own graves by Nazi orders.
“Some people chose to believe them. Most didn’t.”
One day, soon after, as if it were a bouquet of flowers, Martha’s family was sent a box of yellow stars.
“We were told we had to always wear the star. No exceptions,” says Martha.
“I remember the first time I wore my yellow star. I went to visit my friend who had broken her leg and she was wearing a cast. While I was visiting, her mother made a comment about how we would not be able to run away from the army with a broken leg. I didn’t understand. Why would a sweet little Jewish girl need to run away from anyone?”
In April 1944, Martha’s parents refused to take the annual trip to her grandmother and cousins for Passover. Martha’s favourite cousin, Adriana, had four young daughters and was left to care for them alone after her husband, a local rabbi, was submitted to slave labour. Hungary’s brutality intensified.
“I was so determined to go. So, I decided to take my bicycle and go without my family. I was about to reach my grandmother’s before I was stopped at a dirt road.”
Martha heard the rumble of the engines first. Then the screams.
This menacing growl announced the arrival of the Nazi convoy. The jeeps, with their squared-off frames and drab green paint, rolled through the countryside. Their thick tyres spitting up dirt and mud. Their cylinders churning out a raw, unbridled power. The motorcycles flew down the roads like dark phantoms, leaving a trail of dust and smoke in their wake. These were the machines of war, built to destroy and conquer, the vanguard of a merciless force, a force that would stop at nothing to achieve its goals.
The Nazis had arrived.
“Everyone cried and screamed. I saw an old lady coming out of her house and grabbing her children and throwing them inside. So much fear,” she says.
Martha’s coat, so casually turned inside out, bored the compulsory yellow cloth Star of David sewn onto her outer clothing, branding her a Jew.
“If they noticed I was hiding my star, I was dead. But thankfully, the convoy passed, and I made it to celebrate Passover,” she says.
“That was the last time I ever saw my grandma, Adriana, or her four little girls.
“I went back home and finished the holiday. The day after Passover, we had a message from the mayor’s office. All the Jewish people of Megyaszó had to meet in the Synagogue by dusk.”
Nightfall came, and the 16 Jewish families were crammed into the Synagogue like sardines. The families slept the night on the cold, porcelain-tiled floor, and as night eased into morning, they were awoken by Nazi officers.
“We were told we had carriages waiting for us. We did not know where to,” she says.
“The carriage went to the train station. And the train travelled to the ghetto.
“The first thing I remember about the ghetto is how bleak and colourless it all looked.”
In the Nazi ghettos, colour was scarce, but not absent. The hues that remained were muted, drained of their vibrancy by the bleakness of daily life.
The buildings loomed like grey monoliths, casting a sombre pall over the scene. People shuffled through the streets like ghosts. Their movements slow and hesitant. Many were emaciated, their faces gaunt and hollow, their eyes sunken and haunted by the horrors they had witnessed. It was hell. Dystopia.
“The conditions were inhumane,” says Martha. “Five of us families were crammed into a one-bed apartment.
“We had no bed to sleep in, just the floor and a single blanket to share. We tried to all stick together through the pain.
“The ghetto was next to the train station, so it was hard to sleep. The train was constantly whistling and never seemed to stop. Always bringing people in. Always taking people away.”
Martha spent three weeks in the ghetto before the Gestapo told her family they were leaving. The Gestapo were cruel and impatient as they filled every space of the train with the Hungarian Jews. Herded like cattle.
“They gave us one bucket to use as a bathroom. There were so many of us. The children were crying; the women were screaming. The train didn’t really stop – once in a while, maybe, to empty to the buckets,” says Martha.
Martha remembers the semiquaver chugging of the train on the track. She remembers the fear on the people's faces. Some cried out for help, while others simply stood silently, resigned to their fate.
She does not recall how long the journey took, just the unerring screech of the train coming to a halt. Through the slits of the cattle car walls, Martha tried to study her surroundings. A pale orange dust that hung in the windless morning light grew faint and then it was gone.
The train sat quiet and motionless. There was silence. Nothing. Then, there was chaos.
The train doors flew open.
“Men in uniform screamed ‘everybody out! everybody out!’. They began separating the men from the women, and they were rushing us, hitting us if we were too slow, beating us if we had questions,” says Martha.
Her breath ragged. Her heart pounded. Martha was met with the hellish, barren landscape of electrified barbed-wired fences, tall watchtowers and expansive empty fields that were bleached in the morning heat. She could taste the black, heavy smoke that was spewing out of the distant chimneys, as black cinders fell to the ground like snow. The air was thick with this fetid odour. Like a burnt, raw stench. A medicinal edge to it.
A tall, stoic SS soldier wearing shiny leather boots overlooked the chaos. Whenever he saw two people holding hands, he would split them up with a casual flick of his hand. One to live. One to die.
“If you were sent to the right, your life was spared. Those sent to the left went directly to the gas chambers,” she says.
Her mother’s arms were wrapped tightly around her and her sister. She held on with all her strength, refusing to let go, even as the Nazi officer marched towards her, his eyes cold and unfeeling.
“The officer asked how old my mother was. She was 42. To this day I have no idea why she told the officer she was 52,” says Martha.
The young children were forcefully wrenched from her arms, and the mother’s body writhed and contorted as she was dragged to the left, whilst their tiny hands reached out for their mother in desperation. Her mother’s screams were raw and unfiltered. Almost demonic.
“Before we could ask what was going on, the officer told us not to worry and that we would see her later on,” says Martha.
“They kept rushing us. My sister and I held hands tightly and we were all moved further and further into the camp.
“We arrived at a large building, and they told us to take all our clothes off and hang them on the hooks on the wall. We stood in line, stripped of our dignity.
“We all had our heads shaven – my beautiful long, thick braids, gone – and we were ushered into another room.”
Everyone prayed and begged for their life, hugging and kissing one another, believing these were their final moments.
“But I noticed the showerheads on the ceiling straight away. I was always brave. I never complained. But I still get emotional remembering the cold water running down my face with my tears. I couldn’t understand what was happening. It was like the worst nightmare. But I knew it was real,” says Martha, as she pulls out a handkerchief to wipe away a tear.
“They stopped the water and gave us nothing to dry ourselves with. I could not even recognise my own sister.
“We were then moved to another room with a table covered in dresses and wooden shoes. They made us dress quickly and then assigned us to our barracks. I was in barrack 18.”
As she marched further into the camp, the little girl, clad in tattered clothing, tried to hold onto her sense of self, but it was slipping away, replaced by the number that allowed her to survive. 918800.
“Twice a day we had roll calls outside the barracks. In the morning they gave us a piece of bread. For lunchtime, we had soup – one bowl between all the barrack,” she says.
“We were treated like animals. There was no spoon, so we drank straight from the bowl, passing it around. At first, none of us could eat it, but later on, when we were on the edge of starvation, we couldn’t worry about the smell or taste. We just had to take whatever they gave us.”
The camp was ruthless. Some prayed, Martha says, but many who had prayed before they arrived would say: ‘There can’t be a God if Auschwitz exists’.
“I was once outside with a group of girls when I saw this open truck passing by, full of naked, bruised bodies. Purple and blue,” she says.
“It was not a surprise that somebody died. I was told if I got ill not to complain. If I complain, they will never see me again.
“Sometimes in the morning, we saw dead bodies lined up, wrapped in grey blankets. I saw bodies left in piles to decompose.”
There would be so much blood on the floor, she could taste the metal.
It was June when Martha first arrived at the gates of hell and now it was October. The coldness had become intense. The air crisp and still.
“On a late October night, they told us we were leaving. I was still with my sister, so I was happy. They made us undress and line up in the snow in front of the barracks,” says Martha.
“They were selecting the extremely skinny girls and assigned each of them a new number.”
The man choosing those considered healthy or not was Dr Josef Mengele. Dubbed by inmates and survivors as the “Angel of Death”, if anyone embodies the archetype of the evil that was Auschwitz, it was surely him.
Mengele had a cold and calculating demeanour that belied his sadistic nature. He walked down the line of starving Jewish girls and – with a slight flick of the finger - chose their fate.
Martha remembers how her breath hung in the air like a thick fog. The moon before her sat swollen and pale and ill-formed among the hills to light up all the land about.
“The girls not selected as healthy were crowded in a little booth. I remember seeing my little sister herded towards the booth. I begged one of the officers to let my sister stay,” she says.
“They looked at me and said, ‘You’re not being fair, she is starving and they are taking her to a place where there is more food so she doesn’t have to starve’.
“I wish I could explain to you how I was so naive. But I believed them.”
Today Martha remains haunted by the idea of her frail sister being sent straight into the gas chambers, confused and scared and shaken and alone, as she choked on the gas. She can’t get it out of her head.
Those deemed healthy were taken away to a munitions factory in Oberndorf, Germany, becoming slaves to the Nazi war machine.
“After I was separated from my sister, I became like a zombie. I just followed orders. It was so difficult, I had so much pain.”
The sound of war kept Martha up every night: the shattering of glass as buildings were bombed, the crackling of flames as the town burned, air raid sirens, gunfire, screaming —the sound of Germany falling.
“It was April 1945 when they said we were leaving the factory. Two German soldiers holding white flags and two women with white handkerchiefs wrapped around their hair led us on a death march,” she says.
“But, outside it was chaos. We had no idea why.
“Some girls and I managed to escape the group amidst the madness. We found a woman in town who let us in her house.”
Martha looked like a spectre, a hollowed-out shell of a girl. Her skin hung off her bones. Her eyes were sunken, her cheeks were hollow. She was covered in lice and dirt and the stench of human waste clung to her like a second skin.
“The woman said the chaos was because the war was over and Germany had lost. She offered us a shower, food, and even a room for the night. I will never forget her and her kindness,” says Martha.
“God bless her soul.”
The first passenger train to Hungary took months. When Martha finally arrived in Budapest the station platform was a sea of men – all holocaust survivors. She went straight to her auntie’s apartment in Pest.
“When I rang the bell and my aunt opened the door, she looked at me and said how I looked familiar, but she had no idea who I was. I was unrecognisable,” says Martha.
Her aunt explained the systematic mass genocide of the Jewish population and the grim truth about her mum, dad, brother, sister, grandma, and cousin with the four little girls. Everyone had perished.
“No matter how much I cried, it changed nothing,” she says.
“I told my aunt I did not want to stay in Hungary anymore. There were organisations to leave the country and my aunt supported me.
“I saw Europe as one big cemetery, so when I found out I could go to Canada, I saw that as my ticket out.”
Martha went to Toronto where she stayed for a short while before living with distant relatives in New York.
She found a job working in a shop, just like her father's, where she was able to work hard for a wage for the first time in her life.
“My family tried to get me to marry this young man. I said I have lost my whole family, but fortunately, I still have my own mind. I was a young girl, I wanted to fall in love,” says Martha.
“But it was in New York where I met my husband, Sydney. He was the youngest of five children. All his siblings were killed in Auschwitz. He had the blue ink brandished on his skin to prove it.”
“We married 3rd December, 1950.”
On 16th September 1950, Martha had a son, Harvey. Four years later she had a daughter named Karen and 11 months later another daughter, Linda.
They bought a house in California, with fragrant lilacs and rose bushes in the garden, where Martha still lives today. Each of her children has beautiful families of their own now, she says.
“My story should be a testament for the importance of kindness. We are all god’s children, wouldn’t it be nice if everyone got along,” she says.
“For the longest time I was reeling from the loss of my family, and struggling with my guilt for having survived. This is my life. My story. I have discovered a fear that no human being can imagine unless you were there.”
“I do not want to remember. But I can’t let you forget.”
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