Eva Erben
Auschwitz Holocaust survivor
(in the picture you can see Eva and her mother Marta at Erzgebirge ski resort before the Holocaust)
“I was born in 1930 in Tetschen – a village which is not far from the German border in Czechoslovakia. Tetschen was located on the Sudetenland which was annexed to Germany as part of the Munich Agreement – the agreement that was trying to appease Hitler and bring ‘Peace for our time’ but only managed to postpone the outbreak of World War II by a year.
When I look back I can say I had a wonderful childhood. If I was a painter I would color it in pink and blue. We had a beautiful house that was always filled with flowers culture and music.
In 1935 I and my family moved to Prague and in those years I don’t remember that we ever suffered from anti-Semitism but I do remember this lunatic on the radio named Hitler who was always shouting in German and was really scared to listen to. My family didn’t take this lunatic seriously, Back then no one could have ever believed that this lunatic would conquer Europe and try to eliminate all of its Jews. I think it was a combination of Naivety and the presumption that a civilized society such as Germany which Goethe and Schiller emerged from won’t allow it to happen. It was just inconceivable. Even after Kristallnacht when Jewish shops and synagogues were attacked, my dad said that these attacks would pass. But, sadly, history proved differently.
One day I went to the shop to buy ice cream and at the entrance, there was a sign saying:
‘The entrance for dogs and Jews is forbidden”.
For me, that was the moment everything changed. later we were forbidden to go to the cinema and the radio we had in our living room was confiscated. That was the end of normality for me and my family.
In 1941, when I was only eleven years old, I and my family were deported from Prague to Terzinstat concentration camp where we spent most of the war. Even after we were deported and all of our belongings were taken from us my dad was still optimistic and said that: ‘Eventually, Hitler would vanish. We will go back to the wonderful life we had.’ My dad didn’t realize that Terzinstat was a ‘waiting room’ before our deportation to the death camps. We spent three long devasting years in that ‘waiting room’ until 1944 when a typhoid fever broke out at the camp and the Germans decided to close it down and send all the prisoners to Auschwitz.
Before the evacuation to Auschwitz, my dad was deported from Terzinstat to a different camp and later on, he died of typhoid. When me and my mom were deported to Auschwitz we were sure that we would meet him there but what we met was the SS soldiers, the selection process, and barking dogs. When we arrived at Auschwitz, they saved our heads and made us stand naked for hours, crammed, waiting for a shower. I remember someone saying: ‘You should be happy that water is going out of the Shower Heads and not Gas.’ I thought I was in a mental institution.
Three weeks after we arrived at Auschwitz we were forced to evacuate the death camp because the Red Army was approaching it. We were put on a death march heading to mainland Germany. Out of 1,000 prisoners who went on that death march only 70 survived and I am one of them. Every day I encounter death.
I knew one thing: The ones that sit down and can’t walk are the ones who are shot dead on the spot so I knew I had to keep moving no matter what. This willpower is something that goes along with me until this day.
On one of the nights during the death march, we were put in a bran. During that night my mother told me that she was no longer able to continue. It was her way of saying farewell. The shock of losing my mother and my poor health condition took a toll on me and I didn’t wake up in the morning.
When I woke up I was all alone and the death march continued without me. I got out of the barn and started walking in the hope of finding a safe place for shelter. Along the way, I met two boys who were my age and were surprised to see me. One of them said: ‘Look, she just came out of the grave. She’s a corpse.’ They were laughing at me but promised to help me.
As we were walking to their village, we met two German soldiers and one of them shouted: Halt! He asked what am I doing here. and I replied that I was lost. He was about to shoot me but the soldier next to him stopped him and told him: ‘Let her go, she will never make it. She isn’t worth the bullet.’ He kicked me, and I rolled over and passed away. When I woke up I found myself in a clean bed surrounded by people who spoke Check. Those people were Kryštof and Ludmila Jahn, righteous among the nations who saved me and took care of me until the end of the war.
After the Holocaust, I made one clear decision:
I’m leaving the past behind me and starting over.
In the Holocaust, I have encountered death so many times, that I promised myself that I was going to live my life to the fullest. I’m not helpless anymore. I have the power to shape my destiny to the best of my ability. I’m not looking back – only forward. If I knew that tomorrow would be my last day on Earth I would plant a tree. In this life, we have to be optimistic. We don’t have control over what life will through at us but we sure have the ability to choose how to live them.”