Eva Umlauf
Auschwitz Holocaust survivor
One of the youngest prisoners to be freed from Auschwitz.
“I was only two years old when I and my mom were liberated from Auschwitz so I don’t have any conscious memories stretching so far back but unfortunately I will have to say that Auschwitz is deeply burned inside my body and soul because of the emptiness of growing up after Auschwitz, when so many of my family members were gone.
In November 1944 my father, pregnant mother, and I were sent on a cattle train from the labor camp Novaky in Slovakia to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. When Jewish families from all across Europe reached Auschwitz they went through a selection process where the Nazis decided in seconds who they will keep alive for forced labor and who will be gassed to death soon after arrival. Luckily enough, the gassing in Auschwitz stopped two or three days before our arrival so my transport was the first one that didn’t go straight to the gas.
I wasn’t gassed but I was still tattooed with the number A-26959 – A number that I still have on my arm which remains a fading memory of the atrocities Jews suffered during the Holocaust. Forcibly tattooed was part of the ‘process’ that every prisoner that arrived at Auschwitz and who has been selected for forced labor or medical experiments had to go through. I was only two years old so I couldn’t work and luckily I wasn’t chosen to take part in Mengele’s horrific medical experiments so why did they choose to tattoo a two-year-old baby? I find only one answer to that question: These ‘superhumans’ did not think we were human beings. We were rats, subhumans, totally dehumanized by this master race. And so it did not matter to them if you were two years old, or eighty years old.
On January 27, 1945, we were liberated from Auschwitz by the Red Army but I was very sick. I was hospitalized in the hospital ward in Auschwitz for weeks and one of the doctors told my mother that she should forget about me because I won’t survive my illness.
My mother, who had lost her entire family in the Holocaust, was unwilling to give up on me. She stayed by my side for weeks, nurtured me, and did everything in her power to keep me alive. But, not only she saved my life in Auschwitz she also managed to create a life by giving birth to my younger sister Leonore there – which comes to shows you that even in the darkest place on earth with all the atrocities you experienced, you can still create a new life and new beginnings.
Auschwitz is deeply burned inside my body and soul.
When I was pregnant with my third child, I had nightmares of babies being thrown into the fire alive and gas chambers full of dead babies. The trauma of Auschwitz is something that goes along with you for the rest of your life but despite that trauma, I decided to live my life to the fullest. Despite Auschwitz, I became a pediatrician and psychotherapist, treated thousands of children throughout my medical carer, and most importantly created a beautiful family of my own. I’m happy to say that there is a life after Auschwitz.
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