In the waning months ofWorld War II , Magda Herzberger ’s life stop , and a new one began . That 2d life was born out of one of the most horrendous atrocities that human beings ever have committed against each other .
Yet now , more than 75 years later , that second biography inspires , offering a still - unwavering voice of hope — and of warning — to anyone willing to take heed . Herzberger , 93 , is among the dwindling figure of souls known as Holocaust survivor .
What she has to say is important . Maybe now more than ever .
" I have seen everything , " Herzberger articulate from her home in Fountain Hills , Arizona . " I am an eyewitness , and being an eyewitness , I can never be silent . "
A Lifetime of Reliving the Holocaust
Herzberger was stick out in Cluj , Romania , in 1926 , the only tiddler of Herman Mozes and his married woman , Serena . Herzberger was brought up in Greek Orthodox Judaism , on a regular basis pay heed temple . Every week , her family welcome pathetic neighbour into their home to share the Sabbath .
In the forties , as was reliable in much of Europe , Romania was trap in a rapidly expanding warfare . When the Germans took over Hungary in 1944 ( Cluj had been part of the territory that in the first place had been awarded to Hungary ) , the Nazis force thousands of Jews from their home . Herzberger think it well .
" When we were taken out from our home , we were taken out by special Magyar police . They were 100 per centum collaborating with the Nazis . They were very brutal . Very barbarous , " she says . " I had a footling book of mine . I had been writing brusque stories . I did n’t have anything to take of my own except for that . My spiritual ego was meaningful ; part of my spiritual self was that book I had been write in for eight old age . That was all I wanted from the house .
" And this execrable wolf Hungariangendarmelooked at me and said , ' What are you hold there ? ' And I said , ' This is my piffling ledger . ' And he smiled — I had n’t experienced evil in my life — and say , ' Can I have a look at this ? ' and he took the book and he tore it into pieces in front of me . I was terrify . I felt like something was prune out from myself . "
Her affright was just beginning . The Nazis herded her family onto trains toAuschwitz , the Nazi extinction camp in Poland where almost 1 million Jews were murdered . There , Herzberger discover her father for the last sentence . She was 18 years old .
Over the next class or so , Herzberger made her direction through three camps , including a nine - month forced - Labor Department rest atBremen - Farge , where German sub were built , and a shorter kibosh atBergen - Belsen , used to family , among others , prisoner of war . It was at Bergen - Belsen that Herzberger and 60,000 other mad and bony prisoners , just live among thousands of dead and unburied , finally were liberated by British troops April 15 , 1945 .
The stories from these spot — stories that Herzberger has separate now C of time , in talks to lowly groups and in front of filled auditorium , in record subsister tales , in book of account of poetry and in her autobiography " Survival " — are harrowing .
One of her duties was carry dead body to mass burying spots and to the oven for cremation . She was demonstrate from one coterie to the next and watched as others died and were killed on the journey . She saw the hopelessness of prisoner chuck out themselves to their end onto fencing around the bivouac . She considered self-destruction . She witnessed disease and famishment and inconceivable cruelty .
She remember it all .
" At [ the time before the warfare ] , we Jewish people had a good life . My grandfather was a man of affairs . A successful businessman . I had many aunt and uncles , cousins , " she enounce . " My family was wiped out , almost all of us . All our fiddling kids , and all our pregnant women , and all our old people , were gassed and cremate in the oven .
" I have check the flame bursting from the high-pitched lamp chimney of the crematories , and I have pass off the aura , the odor of sweet burning shape . I have see the self-aggrandizing flames belching from those chimney .
" The Holocaust is burned into the depths of my soul , " she adds . " All these outrageous memories , they bite . "
On her day of release , gazump from among the dead at Bergen - Belsen by a tears soldier , she consecrate never to forget . She was n’t able to abide for three months after her rescue , and was n’t able to utter profoundly of her ordeal for years . She did n’t issue her autobiography until 2005 , when she was 81 . " I had to be very , very far away from the Holocaust to be able to do what I did in my Holy Writ , " she says .
But she talk now freely and with a sense of urgency . From Memorial , in her book of rhyme , " The Waltz of the Shadows " :
How to Pass on the Lessons of the Holocaust
Back in 1980 , Herzberger drop nearly 10 hours with an archivist from theWisconsin Historical Society , retelling her lifetime story . In 2014 , she met with the University of Southern California ’s Shoah Foundation , establish in 1994 by filmmaker Steven Spielberg , for videotape and preserve interviews with survivors and other attestator of the Holocaust .
In January 2017 , Herzberger and her daughter traveled to Atlanta as a guest ofAm Yisrael Chai , a nonprofit Holocaust Department of Education and consciousness program . Herzberger was the keynote speaker for a program titled " Fortitude and Endurance . "
In her address in Atlanta , she strode confidently across the phase , hand clasp in front of her , gesticulate forcefully at times and only on occasion hold in a rail for support . She asterisk deep into the audience — she never utilise notes — and her articulation rose as she verbalize of the fire of the crematoriums and carrying corpses to mass inhumation . She recited her poem " Requiem " — They were the victims of their religion / condemn to last without a hell / For worshipping the only God they believed in — and played a recording of a composition she had written .
" After this , I warn you , " she said with a smile , look into the face in front of her , " I am not through . "
Almost 91 years old at the prison term , she spoke for more than an time of day .
Herzberger caters her presentations to dissimilar audience . She has a minor ’s book , " Tales of the Magic Forest , " which contains a taradiddle she relates to 5th and sixth grader . Mother Sea ’s kid , body of water drops , are pulled up by drear cloud and taken to a place far , far away . " I do n’t want to dash the child so they have nightmares , " Herzberger read , " but they sympathise very well . "
In 2018 , she address to a large group atGrand Canyon University in Phoenix , sport the same polka - Zen outfit she wore in Atlanta .
" You may necessitate , why do n’t you pick something new ? " she sound out to the bunch . " Because this map something . It ’s black-market and ashen , just like the two parts of my living . "
Herzberger uphold to be asked to speak all over the nation and is project yet another book . She realise that , as one of the comparatively few remaining survivors of the Holocaust , hers is a vocalisation that needs to be heard .
And given the current state of the world , she realizes her study is far from done . Still , with all of that , after all the horror she ’s understand , all the pain she ’s endured , all the people she ’s lost , her content stay one of hope .
" It ’s not well-situated to forgive , you see , especially in something in which you were really hurt badly . But you have to be able-bodied to forgive in monastic order that you will have pacification , yourself , " she say . " I do n’t believe in hatred . Hatred does n’t lead to help . If we are hat each other , we are not go to be in public security with each other , ever .
" If we do n’t acquire from each other , if we are in constant ill will , we become weak . Together , we are unassailable . "
