Also, Eva was so hot at Bergen-Belsen, she says she dampened a cloth with her own urine in order to cool off. "Others, she recalled, drank their urine." Think she got this from watching Bear Grylls on Man vs. Wild?
Eva survived Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald.
Auschwitz survivor recounts horror
TARA HAGAN
The Observer
Local high school students may think twice before they use the word "hate" from now on.
That's the hope of Holocaust survivor Dr. Eva Olsson, who spoke to St. Patrick's High School and St. Christopher Secondary School students recently about the dangers of hatred, intolerance and bullying, while sharing her own powerful story.
"It's not up to us to judge anybody," said Olsson. "Not on the colour of their skin, the shape of their eyes, their religion -- anything.
"I know that no one is affected by the fact that I am Jewish," she The only thing that affects us is attitude."
Olsson, who lives in Bracebridge, Ont., spoke of vandalism at a school where her son was vice principal.
The words, "You (expletive) Jew, you're going to burn in hell," were painted on a wall.
"My family did burn in hell," she explained. "All of them."
Olsson, 83, was a young girl living in Szatsmar, Hungary when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, setting off the Second World War.
Five years later, German troops occupied her country, unleashing a nightmare she has never fully recovered from.
A Nazi official came into her neighbourhood and began rounding up the Jews, including her parents, siblings and 88 other members of her extended family, saying they were being shipped to Germany to work in a brick factory, she recalled.
Olsson was loaded into a box car jammed with at least 100 other terrified individuals, with one pail of water and very little oxygen for four days.
"We had to sleep standing up, leaning against each other. Many died and many others were praying."
She recalls her mother crying in the corner, hugging three grandchildren. She was 47-years-old.
When the train arrived at the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp, it was like pulling up to the gates of hell.
"There was a nauseating smell," she said, recalling black smoke, machine guns, electric fences, guard dogs and fire pits.
People who didn't do what they were told were shot on the spot.
"If a mother was holding a baby, they shot the baby and the bullet would go through to the mother. You save a bullet that way."
As they entered the camp, a man stood at the gate -- the 'Angel of Death'-- Dr. Josef Mengele. He motioned to go left or right. That's how he decided who would live and who would die.
Ninety per cent of those spilling out of the box cars that day went to the left, where the gas chamber awaited. Many were led away screaming.
Olsson, who as a healthy teenager had potential to serve as a slave labourer, was sent to the right.
"I turned my head and I didn't see my mom," she said. "She was taken to the gas chamber. How I wish I could put my arms around her, just to tell her how much I loved her. But it was too late. I never saw her again."
The memory is 64 years old but it is still overwhelming. Olsson has to stop for a moment, wipe a tear from her eye and collect herself before continuing.
She was herded into an open area and ordered to strip naked, shaved from head-to-toe, given a gray blanket and assigned to a barracks, where it was so crowded they had to sleep sitting up. A bucket stuck in a hole in the ground served as the only toilet.
She recalled living on bread and black, watery soup that had tuffs of human hair in it, bones and mice.
Some ended up working in Dr. Mengele's "experimental hospital, where they injected people with tuberculosis and other viruses."
About 12,000 people were gassed every day, she said, with as many new victims arriving to take their places.
Eventually, she was shipped to work in a factory in Essen, Germany, then to the notorious Bergen Belsen concentration camp, where she saw more misery.
"I came across several hills of corpses," she said. "I wanted to see if there was anyone I recognized from before."
Olsson was starving, covered in lice and sores and had a fever. She dampened a cloth with her own urine in a bid to cool down. Others, she recalled, drank their urine.
"They didn't kill us because hate provided them with joy as they watched us die."
Finally, after several days without food or water, the camp was liberated by British soldiers "and some Canadians from Holland."
Olsson made it because she simply refused to give up.
Both she and her younger sister, Fradel, somehow survived, but 87 other family members did not.
One student asked if she expressed bitterness toward the Germans.
"No," she replied. "Being angry won't give me my family back.
"These were human beings who were possessed with hate. And that hatred had to be taught to them when they were children."
Today, she travels across the country, giving talks in schools, churches and community halls. Her message is simple -- we need to create a compassionate, caring environment for our children or hatred will raise its ugly head again.
She eventually found the courage to make a heart-wrenching visit to Auschwitz, where the camp has been preserved as a reminder to future generations of what can happen if hatred goes unchecked.
"As long as there is hatred, there will be genocide," she said. "We label people before we even get to know them so we can hate them. Labels belong on clothes."
She also went to Buchenwald, the camp where her father was murdered. He was 48.
"I hope that you never take your family for granted," she said. "And find a positive way to deal with the challenges in your life.
"We are responsible for the choices we make, and nothing can be resolved by hate or anger."
thagan@theobserver.ca
Article: "Auschwitz survivor recounts horror"
Note: use http://www.archive.org/ to find article if original link no longer works
Other Articles of Interest:
- Eva Olsson's ludicrous Holohoax tale - "Gas chambers" and "Five children at a time burned alive in crematoriums" at Bergen-Belsen
- More on the horrors of the Holohoax from Eva Olssen - If the gas chambers were too busy the Nazis just threw the Jews straight into the ovens alive
- Earlier version of Eva Olsson's tale - "served a special soup with human bones and hair in it" at Auschwitz
