Shaul Spielmann
Auschwitz, Holocaust survivor
“I can still remember the ramifications of the ‘Anschluss’ (Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria in March 1938). The day after the Anschluss I was kicked out of school because of the implementation of the Nuremberg Laws and I came back home in tears. I didn’t understand what I did wrong? and why I needed to be punished only because I was Jewish. On that day my dad returned home from work and told us he was fired from the Austrian Electric Company because of the Anschluss. Our lives as we knew them in Austria have changed dramatically.
Two days later two SA officers burst into our house. One of them pulled out a gun and aimed it at my head. He told my father he had three minutes to hand him over all of our money – otherwise, he would pull the trigger and my family would need to scarp my brain from the wall. I was paralyzed by fear. The Anschluss was only a promo for what came next.
On November 9th, 1938, nine months after the Anschluss a huge pogrom called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) burst in Germany and Austria. Jews were beaten on the street and Jewish synagogues and businesses were burned. It was terrifying.
We remained in Vienna until October 1942 and then we were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. A year later we were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp – The only place on earth I can describe as a living hell. In Auschwitz, people died like flies. My mother got typhoid and was severely ill from it. She was taken to the infirmary block and I was hoping she would be able to recuperate from it. Every day, I would go near the infirmary block and shout to my mother in the hope she would reply until one day, she didn’t. later on, I saw how they tossed her body into a cart that went straight to the crematorium.
I survived Auschwitz, survived the death march, and was liberated by the US Army in the Gunskirchen camp in Austria. By the time I was liberated, I was so ill. I suffered from typhus and didn’t know if I would make it alive.
I remember telling myself that I wasn’t afraid to die as long as I would die a free man. I’m happy to say that after all I survived, I’m alive and most importantly – I lived my life as a free man!.”