FACES OF AUSCHWITZ SURVIVORS
Remembering the notorious death camp and how they prevailed over unspeakable horror
Ahead of events to mark the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, some of the death camp’s last survivors have shared their stories.
Originally from Europe, they spent part of their childhood in the notorious extermination camp before moving after World War 2 to Israel.
The survivors lost the majority of their families in the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany.
Here are profiles of some of these survivors.
Szmul Icek
Born September 20 1927 in Poland Auschwitz number 117,568
Icek struggles to speak following a car accident, but he found it hard to talk about Auschwitz even before his health problems.
At the mention of his parents and sisters, killed by the Nazis, he cannot hold back his tears.
Despite the support of his wife, daughter and grandchildren, Icek’s wounds have never healed.
After living in Belgium for many years, Icek moved to Jerusalem and for the first time began uncovering the prisoner number tattooed on his arm at Auschwitz.
Despite his difficulties communicating, Icek was keen to help his wife Sonia as she told the painful story of his arrest and separation from his family.
Icek never returned to Auschwitz after the war.
Avraham Gershon Binet
Born on January 15 1938 in Czechoslovakia Auschwitz number 14,005
Avraham Gershon Binet was just six years old when he arrived at Auschwitz, but has clear memories of “hell” at the camp.
“Every day children were killed for nothing, but I never cried, I was strong,” Binet said in his apartment in Bnei Brak, Tel Aviv.
He was deported along with his brother and sister, who survived.
Binet dedicates his mornings to studying sacred Jewish texts, spending his retirement doing things his parents wanted him to as a child which were banned by the Nazis.
Dov Landau
Born on August 10 1928 in Hungary Auschwitz number 161,400
Used to speaking publicly about his experience, Landau has returned to Auschwitz more than 100 times with school groups and others.
Landau was forced onto the “Death March” when the Nazis made prisoners from extermination camps walk in deep winter towards their other camps.
Half of his companions died during the journey and Landau ended up at Buchenwald camp before being freed.
He kept his prison trousers and smiled as he showed them, proud that he could never fit into them now.
“My father told me: ‘We are separating, we won’t see each other again’.
“He put his hand on his head and added: ‘You will survive this hell and I ask you only one thing — stay Jewish’.”
Helena Hirsch
Born on May 23, 1928, in Romania Auschwitz number A 20,982
Hirsch moves around slowly with the aid of a walking frame but she maintains her lively spirit, describing herself as a “heroine”.
“If I’m alive today, it’s because I am a heroine,” Hirsch, the sole survivor from her family, said.
She recalled in great detail her ordeals in ghettos and labour camps before being sent to Auschwitz in 1944.
The moment her fellow prisoners were sent to the gas chamber she hid in the latrines.
She lives in a small apartment in the Tel Aviv suburb of Bnei Brak, on the fourth floor of a building without a lift.
Malka Zaken
Born in 1928 in Greece
Auschwitz number 79,679
Zaken may be a nonagenarian but when she speaks about her childhood, she has a frightened expression and the voice of the girl ripped from her mother’s arms and sent to Auschwitz.
In her modest Tel Aviv apartment, she lives surrounded by her dolls, which she said help her remember the happy childhood years before the “Germans took us”.
One of seven children, she was able to find two of her sisters after the Holocaust, but they have since died.
Zaken was 12 when she was sent to the death camp and had to confront a reality where survival depended on the will of Nazi guards.
When the memories become too much, she turns to her dolls.
“Don’t worry Sean, he’s not German, he won’t take me,” Zaken told one of them.
Shmuel Blumenfeld Born in 1925 in Poland
Auschwitz number 108,006
Blumenfeld remembers each ghetto, camp and fellow prisoner decades later, and wants to continue recalling the details.
The terrace of his apartment in the suburb of Bat Yam has a Mediterranean view, but inside there are dozens of photos, diaries and documents detailing his life during the war.
A survivor of Auschwitz and the “Death March”, after emigrating to Israel he served as a prison guard for one of the architects of the Holocaust.
It was during the detention of Adolf Eichmann, who was executed in 1962 after his trial in Jerusalem, that Blumenfeld found vengeance.
“Your men didn’t finish their mission, I spent two years there and I’m still alive,” he told Eichmann, showing his Auschwitz tattoo.
During visits to Poland in recent years, he has collected earth from places where all his family members were killed.
It lies in a small, yellowing bag, which he has asked his children to bury with him.
Danny Chanoch
Born in 1933 in Lithuania Auschwitz number B 2,628
Chanoch was the subject of a Pizza in Auschwitz documentary, during which he is shown eating pizza with his children on a trip to show them where he was interned.
After Auschwitz “there is nothing in the world which can make me cry,” Chanoch said with a smile, as he rolled off a series of jokes and word play around the Holocaust.
He described killings and other atrocities he witnesses as a child, before singing an opera aria in Italian and offering an alcoholic drink to loosen the atmosphere.
Chanoch was reunited with his brother in Italy and together they emigrated in 1946 to Palestine, then under British mandate.
Saul Oren
Born in 1929 in Poland
Auschwitz number 125,421
Oren spent his early years in an Orthodox community in a village near the site where Auschwitz was built.
Chosen by a Nazi doctor to undergo medical experiments, he was transferred from Auschwitz to a concentration camp in Germany and freed in 1945.
Oren, who has written his memoirs, testifies tirelessly about the Holocaust, seeing it as his mission to convey what happened.
After the war he found his brother Moche, who had been imprisoned with him at Auschwitz, and emigrated to Israel.
Menahem Haberman
Born in 1927 in Czechoslovakia Auschwitz number 10,011
Of the residents at the Jerusalem retirement home where Haberman lives, following the death of his wife, he is the only former Auschwitz prisoner.
The sole survivor of eight children, he recounted his determination to survive on realising the day after arriving at Auschwitz that most of his family had been killed.
Haberman made it through the ghetto and labour camps attached to Auschwitz, the “Death March” andcontracting tuberculosis at Buchenwald concentration camp.
“It’s deeply ingrained in me. Seventy-five years later, we still live with that, we don’t forget ... we cannot forget,” he said.
After being freed, he found his father. Haberman is most proud of his children and grandchildren, particularly those who served in the Israeli army which he sees as a “victory” for himself and the Jewish people.
“I really knew people who were better men than me, why did they die and why am I still alive?”
Batcheva Dagan
Born in 1925 in Poland Auschwitz number 45,554
Dagan is one of the few Auschwitz survivors invited to the official ceremony at the camp on January 27 to mark its liberation.
An educator and psychologist, she has written six books about the Holocaust, of which five are for children.
“I don’t only recount the horror of the Holocaust, but also wonderful things like helping each other, the capacity to share a piece of bread, the friendship ... We remained human beings,” Dagan said.
Shmuel Bogler
Born in 1929 in Hungary
The youngest of 10 children, Bogler was deported to Auschwitz with a large part of his family.
He escaped death by being sent to a labour camp with one of his brothers, and both survived the Nazi “Death March”.
Bogler tried to travel to Palestine in 1947, but was arrested by the British, who governed the territory at the time, only to be freed months later.
“I asked myself whether I would spend all my life as a prisoner,” Bogler, who has published his memoirs, said.
He became a police officer in Israel and in his retirement has testified tirelessly about his experience of the Holocaust.