(chattering) (laughing) - [Lili] The time in Auschwitz was not realistic time.

I see some scenes like a mirage.

(chattering) - We saw the rest of the world.

If you gave up and lost your hope, or your sense of humor in spite of fear, you lost your mind.

(chattering) - [Rena] I went to Auschwitz for three and a half years.

(chattering) - [Renee] We were outdoors in snow, rain and heat, vegetating, not doing anything.

- I had a (mumbles) with me for 50 years at the dorm.

Questions were not asked.

If they told you to swallow a snake, you would do it.

- You learn about resilience.

(laughing) So, life is funny.

What do you do in Auschwitz when it's hot in the summer?

You dive into the Nazi's swimming pool, right?

That's a normal thing to do.

(train chugging) (somber music) - You know, about two weeks before we were liberated, we heard that a doctor is coming to examine us, and we were wondering, "Why would they come now "examine us before they kill us?

(laughs) "What do they need to examine us?"

Well, the doctor arrived and who was the doctor?

It was Dr. Mengele.

And he patted my shoulder and he said to me in German, (speaks german phrase) "There is enough fat yet".

And as he looks in my throat, he says to me, "If you live through this, "you better have your tonsils removed."

(laughs) For him to say that, it was ludicrous.

It just didn't match where we were and what we were about.

(plaintive music) - [TV Host] Let's pull the camera back and show you the signature of Renee Firestone.

For fall '61, it's burlap.

Bright Halloween orange burlap.

- [Renee] My name is Renee Firestone.

I was born in a town called Uhzhorod in Czechoslovakia in 1924.

- [TV Host] Now Renee has been designing very quietly here in Los Angeles for a number of years.

You came from Europe, didn't you, originally?

- [Renee] I came from Czechoslovakia, from Prague.

- [TV Host] Oh, dear, did you study art over there?

- [Renee] Yes, I am a third generation in the fashion field in my family-- - [TV Host] When you were a little girl, you were cutting out patterns.

- [Renee] That's right.

- [TV Host] Doll clothes, as well as your own.

- [Renee] That's right.

Imitating my father and grandfather.

[Renee]My parents were upper middle class Jews.

I had a brother four and half years older than myself, and a little sister four and a half years younger.

Since I was a little girl, I was dancing and performing.

We played tennis and swam.

At winter time, we were skating and skiing.

Unfortunately, all that stopped at my age of 14 and a half when Czechoslovakia was actually given to Hitler.

(pen scratching on paper) - [Lili] My name is Lili Majzner.

I was born in Lodz, Poland.

My mother and father were Bundists, the Jewish socialist labor organization.

I have a brother three years younger.

We attended Jewish secular schools.

I remember in a very young age, my father and mother took me to a Bach concert, which was in a church, which was far out.

We had a lot of talks in the house.

We talked about a better world.

It was an extremely warm surrounding.

We have our fun and we have our love affairs.

We have all the childhood happenings, really.

We did have a childhood.

In '39, my papers were in the nursing school in Warsaw when the war broke out.

(blasting) [Lili] Very suddenly, one part of our lives is gone and we start a different one.

- [Rena] My name is Rena Drexler and I had a nickname, they called me Uftah.

And when somebody calls me, they call me Uftah, I know they're old friends.

I was born on May 8, 1926 in Sosnowiec, Poland.

My father was a businessman, pretty well off.

My mother was a poor girl and she went into a wealthy house, and she had six children.

People had lots of Jewish business.

We had lots of Jewish schools.

We went to movies.

We had a good youth.

It changed when we had to go to the ghetto.

- My name is Eva Beckmann.

I come from Prague.

I'm 80 years old, an only child, come from a not religious but Jewish family, well-to-do, happily living in the Czech Republic.

My father was CEO in a big flour mill.

He traveled to the USA many times on business.

Very cosmopolitan, very bright young man.

We had subscriptions to three theaters and to the Philharmonic.

We had three opera houses playing 11 months a year.

We read books, had interesting conversations.

We took vacations to various countries, England and France, but all that ended in '38 when the principal said, "The Jewish element will not be tolerated in this school."

So, everything changed.

(train chugging) [Linda] I am Linda Sherman, and I was born in Amsterdam, Holland, July 7, 1926.

We were seven children.

My dad passed away when I was four years old.

It was too hard for my mom to take care of all the kids, so we went to an all-Jewish girls' home.

We had a very good upbringing, but it was very, very strict and very Orthodox.

More like a regimen, the army actually.

- [Erika] My name is Erika Jacoby.

I was Erika Engel in Hungary where I was born in 1928.

Miskolc was industrial, 10,000 Jews, 60,000 people.

My father and my mother were in the restaurant business.

My family was religious, Orthodox.

I went to a Jewish day school through junior high.

After that, they closed all the Jewish schools.

There was no love between the Hungarians and the Jews.

It was our illusion that we would be protected.

(children singing Hatikvah) (people yelling slogans) - [Lili] We lived all the time with anti-Semitism.

- [Erika] Any time you did something that they didn't like, they can arrest you or beat you.

- [Lili] Polish, Christian children would throw rocks at us and said, "You dirty Jew."

- [Erika] We felt fear all the time because of the Gentiles' behavior toward us.

- [Renee] I was blond, I had blue eyes.

I had most non-Jewish friends.

Never did I experience anti-Semitism directed toward me.

But we made a very big mistake.

We never spoke up.

(crowd chanting and cheering) "Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

"Zieg...Heil!"

[Lili] We were arrested in October.

They put us on a big truck and took us to a factory in Lodz.

- [Rena] They took all the schools and they made sewing factories.

Clothing for the German Wehrmacht.

24 hours working, and all the Jewish people had to donate them sewing machine.

- [Lili] We were around six or seven weeks sitting in the factory surrounded by Germans.

They constantly screamed at us.

And this boredom, and sitting with so many people drove us crazy, absolutely.

- [Rena] We had across the street from us a Polish young man and he said that Auschwitz was built already by Polish prisoners, but it's not finished yet.

We didn't believe it.

We figured the Polish people make it up.

(low chattering) - [Eva] Czechoslovakia had a very enlightened government.

We had a true democracy, which was based on the American system.

The opinion was, nothing much can happen to us, we're Czech.

(German marching song) [Eva] Right after Hitler came in '39, my father lost his position.

I was planning on finishing my studies and my whole future changed.

Couldn't go to the symphony, we couldn't go to the opera.

We got curfew.

Jews couldn't be out after eight o'clock.

And of course, there were long lines at consulates for people who wanted to escape, and it was too late.

And then the transports started.

(low chattering) - [Linda] February of '43, I was taken from the home to Westerbork.

I was 16.

There was no freedom, but like I said, I wasn't used to freedom.

I was so used to that regimen in the home it didn't bother me as much as the others.

In my barrack, we had bunk beds and the mattresses weren't the greatest, then they would say, "Doesn't that feel good?

(laughs) "Doesn't that mattress feel good, just like home, "just like Mom would make?"

I was fortunate to be in Westerbork for over a year.

(train chugging) After Westerbork, I went to Theresienstadt in the cattle car.

(train chugging) - [Eva] We boarded regular trains to go to Theresienstadt, which was not far.

We were put into empty homes on the floor or the barracks.

- [Linda] I got into the barrack and since it was in the woods, we had bedbugs.

So I went outside and I stood there and I cried.

That's first time I cried, I think, since I went to camp.

And some man said, "Why are you crying?"

And I said, "I'm by myself and there's nothing but bedbugs all over the beds."

- [Eva] We were hungry, we were scared.

There was a lot missing, but we were able to maintain some semblance of life.

Theresienstadt was really a paradise in comparison to what was coming.

(somber music) - [Erika] There was an undercurrent of danger, of talking, of listening to radio.

(Hitler gives speech in German) (crowd cheering) [Erika] We constantly talked about how to kill Hitler, you know, we kids.

So, we knew that he was something terrible.

(Hitler speaking in German) (crowd cheering) - [Renee] We could hear Hitler screaming about how he's going to get rid of the Jews, and those were very frightening messages.

And my father explained to me that the German people are the most educated, most cultured people in the world.

People like that don't massacre others.

(singing in German) - [Erika] We knew there was something happening somewhere in Poland and somewhere in Holland.

But Hungary was an ally of Germany, We were in the Axis.

So we Hungarian Jews felt very secure.

We thought that nothing can happen to the Hungarian Jews.

(singing in foreign language) - We knew that Hitler was losing the war, the Americans were in the war already, and we were sure that we are safe.

And then, the German army marched in.

(singing in German) - [Erika] It was very sudden and very fast, what happened in Hungary.

The German army moved in March 19th, 1944.

That was the end.

- [Renee] My father's business was taken away from him.

- [Erika] My father couldn't hold up to the business and we really had no ways of making a living.

- [Renee] They plastered the city with posters telling us we're gonna be taken to Germany.

They need people harvesting, working in factories, and the Hungarians Jews are the only ones intact in Europe and we are gonna be doing that work.

And we believed it.

- [Erika] We had to wear the yellow star.

And then they established a ghetto.

And then they took my father away.

And then my younger brother was sent away.

My mother was always the tough one.

She always said, "We can handle this".

She was more like a man, never broke down.

My father was much weaker.

His demeanor was that of a very gentle man.

He was a Talmud scholar, he never did any physical work.

And when they came for my father, I felt very emotional when they took him away.

I knew then that I will never see him again.

(somber music) [Erika] If there was some help from America or some place, the Hungarian Jews could have been saved because they were the last Jews that were exterminated.

- [Renee] We were given 24 hours to pack one suitcase, and wait till we were gonna be removed by the Gendarmes.

- The Hungarian Gendarmes came and they frisked us, and they stuck their fingers in us to see that we didn't hide anything, and they told us we can take whatever we can take on our backs.

We walked with hundreds and thousand of people to another ghetto area, which was the brickyard.

- [Renee] And we were taken to the brick factory where it became sort of a ghetto for a very short period of time.

- [Erika] I didn't understand how come they didn't supply us with bathrooms.

How come did I have to go to the bathroom in front of other people.

Things like that that doesn't seem like a big suffering, but it was so dehumanizing.

My mother had jewelry that she gave to a Hungarian soldiers who told us, "Don't worry, the old people and the children will be taken care of.

And you will go to work, and everything will be okay."

And when they told us to march up the hill and get into the cattle cars, we were very glad to do that.

(ominous music) - [Rena] The Polish conductor told us that we're going to Auschwitz, and we should fight for our life.

(metal clanking) (ominous music) - [Eva] The transports started going, there was one after the other.

- [Linda] It was a three-day ride from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

(train chugging) - [Erika] That train ride for three days.

No food, no bathroom.

No water.

Little children suffocating.

There was no air in the car.

It was bad.

- [Renee] Every night, the Nazi soldiers would be banging on the walls.

Outside, we could hear shooting and screaming, and we were sure that somebody's being murdered.

(rails clanking) [Renee] The very last day when the train stopped, I didn't even think, I just yelled back, "We are in Krakow".

And of course, everybody realized we are in Poland.

And at that point, we were beginning to worry.

(train whistling, chugging) [Renee] When they left Krakow, the trains started to whistle and that whistle came all they way to Auschwitz.

(train whistling) That was the signal to prepare for transports.

- [Erika] When we arrived to Auschwitz, "Hah, finally, we are here".

(bright music) You wouldn't believe it, such relief.

The first sight was not anything bad.

We saw barracks that had flowers.

(bright orchestral music) There was music, always music.

(bright orchestral music) - [Eva] We were chased out of the cattle wagons.

The kapos went in and grabbed all the luggage.

- [Erika] In Yiddish, they told us, "Give the children to the old people, "give the children to the old people".

- [Eva] I naively said, "What happens to the luggage?"

(in German) And he says, "Gepack?

"Gepack is gevassen", which means, it used to be.

It's gone, don't expect it.

- [Erika] Confusion.

"Quickly," they said.

"Quickly," "Schnell, Schnell."

(in German) "You go this way, you go that way."

- [Renee] I took my sister off the cattle car and my parents disappeared in the crowd.

- [Erika] Immediately, I was separated from my mother who stayed with her mother.

- [Lili] I was separated from my brother, and this was devastating.

- [Erika] My mother caught up with me.

I asked her, "Why did you leave Grandma?"

She said, "Grandma said it's not nice "to leave your young girl alone "with so many soldiers around.

"You go after her".

So, she did what her mother told her to do.

(plaintive music) - [Linda] When I got out of the train, I saw these heap of clothes.

- [Erika] We saw these uniformed slave laborer, and we thought they were nuts.

People were waving to us in the distance with no hair.

We were sure they were the insanes.

- [Renee] I immediately realized that something is wrong.

- [Erika] Then we saw these beautiful specimen, German soldiers.

Tall and blond, and frightening, with boots and whips.

- [Linda] It looked like a war zone.

They were full Gestapo and they had German shepherds.

I guess they put the meanest ones that they could find in Auschwitz.

The faces, and the whole build was different.

(somber music) - [Renee] I saw the barbed wires.

I saw the towers with the machine guns pointing down.

- [Rena] And the wires were so high.

And they said in German, "Arbeit Macht Frei".

Work make the life free.

- [Linda] There was a porch.

And by the porch were two tables.

One was on the left, one was on the right.

There were Nazis sitting there and you had to march to them.

They would say, "Okay, you go to the left, "you go to the right".

- [Eva] To one side, the older people and the children.

To the other side, people who were able to still give them a few labor hours.

- [Lili] I knew that I will not go in the right line, to life.

I was extremely swollen from hunger.

- [Eva] And I lined up in front of Dr. Mengele with his dog and stick.

- [Erika] My mother knew German pretty well.

She didn't know who he was, she just told him she is strong and she wants to work.

- [Lili] When Dr. Mengele point with the finger to the right, my camp sister, Risha, pushed me just to the left and I just ran.

And this brought me to Auschwitz.

(somber music) - [Eva] My transport, of the thousand, there was probably 200 left.

The rest went that-a-way.

(plaintive music) - [Renee] We soon found out that we are not in Germany, that we are in Poland, in Auschwitz.

(plaintive music) - [Erika] From there on, everything that happened was very dehumanizing.

- [Linda] They said to get undressed.

- [Erika] They told us to get undressed, with these soldiers with their guns around us.

- [Linda] And then we stood in front of the Nazis, stark naked.

- [Erika] And I got undressed up to my underwear, and then I got a whip.

He said, "I told you to get undressed."

So, for a Jewish girl from a religious family, to get undressed in front of soldiers was something I couldn't imagine.

Until my mother told me, "Take your underpants off.

"Throw it over there."

- [Renee] They told us we're gonna take a shower, so we were marching into the dressing rooms.

- [Linda] They shaved my hair.

All body hair was shaved.

- [Rena] Engraved numbers on the arms.

Each transport had a different number.

- [Linda] When I got out of the shower, they threw you some clothes.

And I got a skirt, a blouse, and I got two left shoes.

- [Eva] Some old coats that they, that the Germans didn't want.

No underwear, no underneath, nothing.

- [Erika] My mother got an evening gown.

Looks like somebody had an evening gown that was very precious and brought it with her to Auschwitz.

And that's what she got.

It was transparent, no underwear.

- [Lili] I received a short, black dress with little ruffles around (scoffs).

- [Erika] We didn't recognize each other.

These shining heads and these bizarre dressing, it was so comical and I started to laugh, until of course, I got a beating for laughing.

- [Lili] And I gave one look at myself and I let out a laugh.

And this was the only laughter which I (chuckles) used in the camps.

- [Erika] It wasn't really a humorous thing.

It was a release of tension, because it became contagious, everybody laughed.

The whole group was, you know, hollering.

- [Lili] To this day, when I close my eyes (chuckles), and I see this wonderful picture.

It's grotesque.

It's really tragic.

(bright orchestral music) - [Erika] The beginning of Auschwitz was the most difficult.

It was incomprehensible why it's being done to us.

(plaintive music) - [Renee] We were left outdoors during the night, and suddenly, somebody yelled, "Look at the chimneys and the fire and the smoke."

And somebody said, "It's a bakery."

Another person said, "Those are the factories we're gonna be working at".

Suddenly my little sister started to cry, asking me to find out when are we going to be reunited with mother and dad.

And I, in my ignorance, walked over to one of these overseers and asked her.

- [Linda] I said, "What's that stink that we have?"

He said, "It's the gas chamber."

I said, "A gas chamber, what's a gas chamber?"

- [Erika] We didn't know about gas chambers.

We saw it and we smelled the stuff but we didn't know anything about it.

- [Renee] The kapo said, "Weren't you here all night?

"Didn't you see the smoke and the fire and the chimneys?"

"Well, there go your parents.

"And when you go through the chimneys, you'll be reunited."

(plaintive music) - [Linda] He said, "When you don't see somebody, "that's where you go.

"You come out like the flame."

I said, "Hmm, come out like a flame."

It still didn't dawn on me they were burning people.

(plaintive music) - [Rena] They took us to this camp.

There were barracks, smelly with these bricks.

No windows.

There were about six, seven, eight to 10 people sleeping one dirty, filthy blanket.

Nothing under it, just wood,.Black wood.

- [Erika] 10 people were on one level.

- [Renee] 12 of us on a bunk.

- [Eva] Four on each bunk.

- [Linda] I said, "Let's pretend we're little spoons."

And we'll all turn the same way so lay into each other like spoon.

(somber music) - [Erika] That night, it was dark and everybody started to scream, and we fell on top of each other.

And this is when people started to realize that they were separated.

So the mothers started to scream for their children and the children for their mothers.

It was a terrible night.

- [Renee] That first night, after the lights went out, one of the Polish prisoners started to sing "Belz, My Shetele Belz".

(woman sings in Yiddish) And the way she sang these songs, all of a sudden, everybody started to cry.

And it was then, maybe the very first time, that I got in touch with my Jewishness.

I was embracing my little sister, and I was wondering whether she is old enough to understand that that's what we are.

We are Jews and that's why we are here.

(woman sings in Yiddish) - [Erika] That first day when you got acquainted with your new neighborhood, you were introduced to the food, which was inedible.

- [Eva] They gave us boiled potatoes with the skins, with the mud on it.

It was disgusting.

- [Linda] Everything was in there.

Buttons, safety pins, hair pins.

Maybe they figured they liked to see you choke to death.

I don't know.

- [Renee] My sister didn't want to eat the food.

She just couldn't put her lips to it.

- [Erika] When we passed around the pot that had the soup or whatever it was, we had to count how many gulps a person would take, so that you wouldn't take more than your share.

(somber music) - [Eva] Fear was with us all the time because you didn't know then what would happen the next minute.

(somber music) We were in the barracks and called out to roll call day and night.

Always with fear that they were gonna shoot us.

You no sooner got back and they blew the whistle again.

And that panic that you wouldn't get a pair of shoes, or one shoe only because everybody grabbed their shoes, even that created such a panic in us.

(somber music) - [Erika] My mother made a complete change in the camps.

Instead of being this strong confident woman, she became one that relied on me.

She has this fever every afternoon and starts shaking.

I used to sleep on top of her because there were no blankets.

And somehow she was able to always stand in "zell appell" in the morning.

In the afternoon, she was no longer able to.

But I ordered her, "You must stand!"

Just before she was in front of Dr. Mengele, I gave her a push in her back and she momentarily straightened out and she passed.

(plaintive music) - [Lili] We knew that we must be so-called well, even when we are not well.

You cannot go to the hospital because you will go through the chimney.

- [Rena] You had to have skin and meat.

You had to have red cheeks, so people used to stick a needle in and put a little color on your face.

- [Linda] My feet were killing me, but not much you would say about it.

Because if you had pain, they took you away.

Where you went, I don't know.

You never saw them again.

- [Rena] When you sleep 10 and get up nine, the next day, you get up eight, the next time, three and four.

Then you have fear that you'll be the next one.

- [Lili] In Auschwitz, a lot of people had dysentery.

You had a big barrel in the middle of the barracks where people disposed their daily needs.

- [Linda] You got turns to take that barrel out.

If it was my turn, I would say, "You can have a piece of my bread "if you take the barrel out."

- [Lili] You were dirty and you were full with lice.

- [Linda] If you turned my blouse inside out, it would walk away.

- [Erika] They sprayed us sometimes from airplane to disinfect us, like you do with the crops.

- [Linda] At night, we would count who could kill the most clothes lice.

That was my game.

- [Erika] One thing you knew about the Nazis is that they abhorred getting sick by lice, so in order not to spread typhus, they took us to the baths.

We were passing by their place where the Germans lived.

And they had a swimming pool.

And it was the end of August.

I had to swim.

And I jumped out of the line and I dove into the swimming pool.

And I swam across the pool.

I came out and somehow, nobody shot me.

(melancholic violin music) You know, you do foolish things when you're young.

I never thought about it that it would endanger my life.

I just had to swim.

It was hot and I had to swim.

(plaintive violin music) - [Eva] You either crumble or you become stronger.

- [Linda] You kept your spirits up.

You said, "That's not so bad."

So, your back hurts, and your leg hurts.

Me, I was the worst, I had two left shoes.

I said, "Look at me, I'm Charlie Chaplin."

- [Lili] People were trying in the women's camp, find a piece of material and sew a bra.

What for do you need a bra?

But this was them to keep up something human.

- [Erika] Every night when I went to sleep, I had to fold my dress the way I was taught to put it away, so it doesn't get wrinkled.

In Auschwitz.

Now that's craziness.

- [Renee] There was certain kind of entertainment in the camp.

Anybody who had any talent, as long as they thought that maybe they can escape the machine guns, they would perform.

There was a Hungarian girl there who was a mime.

She was doing this scene about skating.

And I remember when I watched her, I started to cry.

It just reminded me of the wonderful times that we had.

- [Erika] Everyday, we took a little bite of our bread and put it away, so we would have extra food on Shabbat.

- [Linda] I was so Orthodox as a child.

I wouldn't take a dime on Shabbat.

And it all went out the window.

I didn't think of it as God's will anymore.

(singing in Hebrew) - [Erika] I really had a great faith in God, a personal God.

I had my special prayers that I said.

(Erika speaking in Hebrew) God help me, save me from anything bad.

- [Rena] There was a gate to go out to the forest.

Not far, and there was a pit.

- [Renee] And I saw this burning pit.

And I saw two German soldiers picking up an old woman who was kicking and screaming.

And they took her to this pit and dropped her.

- [Rena] The children were thrown alive to the pit.

And they put gasoline and they burned them.

- [Renee] I thought to myself, I couldn't see what I saw.

I'm losing my mind.

(somber violin music) - [Rena] If you didn't survive six months, you couldn't survive at all.

When you're an old prisoner, you learn how to survive.

- [Erika] People who were in camps for a longer time developed all kinds of ways of surviving humanly.

I think mine, or ours was more like instinctual.

We figured that at the end of the line was better because the soup was thicker.

But sometimes, then they ran out of food.

We weren't angels.

If I could get ahead of somebody in the line, I would get ahead of somebody.

I wouldn't be worrying that she won't have anything eat.

I wasn't that good, okay?

But I wouldn't steal somebody's food.

- [Lili] There were fights for the peel of a potato.

There were fights, did you cut the bread too small or too big?

There were fights for nothing.

And people which were not able to fight were miserable.

(somber music) - [Erika] Because the hunger was so great, it took away our other emotional problems.

- [Renee] Nobody befriended anybody.

Nobody really showed any care.

You were always surrounded with people.

You were never really alone.

Only within you were you alone.

When I was with my sister, we didn't befriend anybody.

Six months after I arrived, she was taken away to be experimented on.

(plaintive music) And killed right after that.

- [Lili] Even in these horrible trying times, people try to lift themselves up through all different kind of groupings.

It was a substitute for a family.

Thanks to my so-called camp sisters, a grouping of three nurses, I really physically survived.

- [Eva] I don't know how I would have been if I hadn't had the four of us.

We supported each other.

They're all dead, you can't ask them, but I'm sure they would feel the same way.

- [Erika] The fact that I had a purpose, to live for my mother, and she had a purpose to live for me, it helped a lot.

- [Lili] People were looking for a purpose to hang on.

For instance, when I will live, I must find my brother.

When I will live through, I will tell, I will tell.

This purpose, I will tell, helped us a lot.

- [Rena] I wanted to be free, see if anybody knew that we were tortured.

And dreaming to have a little soup, a potato, a shower, and some place to lay down your head.

(bright orchestral music) - [Lili] We raved about the past.

You remember that we have this roll with butter to eat and it tasted so wonderful.

Or every Saturday, my father or mother brought me a cup of cocoa and it tastes so good.

Food was playing quite a role in our reminiscence.

- [Renee] When we were at home, there was a young man who used to follow me around.

When the boys were going into forced labor camp, he disappeared and I was glad because he was very annoying.

One day, a group of men came into the camp to fix bunks and one of the men came over to me.

With my shaved head, of course, he said, "What did they do to you?

"Are you hungry?"

- [Erika] One tall man came by me, I mean, squeezed by me, and he took his pail of food and gave it to me.

Just gave it to me.

- [Renee] He put his hand into his uniform and took out three raw potatoes and dropped them in my lap.

- [Erika] It was a big, big container of food.

- [Renee] I couldn't believe it.

Now, how am I gonna eat these potatoes?

- [Erika] I gave the food to the daughter of the Rabbi who was also with us and I asked her to share it with all of us.

- Renee] After he was gone, his voice came back to me.

And I said to myself, "My gosh, that was the boy "that used to follow me around."

And I realized that I'm crying.

And it was then that something happened within me that... - [Lili] I don't want to build legend that we were superman or superwoman.

There were good moments and there were bad moments.

Probably, we all were animals one time.

But we tried.

We really tried.

(plaintive violin music) - [Renee] We saw the chimneys and we knew what was going on, and we somehow never thought that tomorrow they may take me.

(plaintive music) The Nazis were terrified of the Russians, so they started to evacuate.

(plaintive violin music) - [Rena] They demolished with dynamite half of the crematoriums.

(plaintive violin music) They had so many bodies laying around that is supposed to be burned, and suddenly, everything was left.

(somber orchestral music) - [Renee] I had strep throat.

I couldn't get out of my bunk.

But there was a Hungarian woman, Mrs. Farkus, she said to me, "If they find you here, you're finished."

She and her daughter dragged me out to "zell appell".

I was selected to go on this transport.

The mother and daughter went another direction.

I never found out what happened to them.

(plaintive violin music) - [Eva] Cattle wagons doors opened and we were shoved in one on top of the other.

- [Lili] The train ride from Auschwitz to Dora was absolutely unbelievable.

It was a snake pit.

(mellow violin music) - [Eva] We didn't know where we were going, but out of Auschwitz, that was good.

- [Lili] They took us to Dora Nordhausen where they built the V-1s and V-2s, the missiles.

- [Renee] In Libau, there were three factories for Krupp industries.

- [Rena] They took us to Neustadt, where they were making wings for aeroplanes.

- [Linda] I was sent to Cortsbah, a work camp in Upper Silesia.

- [Eva] We were marched to a factory in Germany to do some hard labor.

- [Erika] We got to Wisau the day before Yom Kippur, and the camp commander said, "Tomorrow is your holiday.

"You won't have to work."

Unbelievable?

It was probably the best day in camp, that Yom Kippur.

(plaintive music) - [Lili] When we came to Dora Nordhausen, we have a friend from the grouping of nurses which was pregnant.

And we are extremely afraid that they will shot her, so we delivered the baby.

And it was born a little boy.

And I cut with my teeth his cord.

And the perfidy of the Germans, it's unbelievable.

They brought a little basket, and they brought a pillow, and they brought some water to wash the baby.

And in this Dante's circle, the child was born.

The same baby survived and take part in the Yom Kippur war in Israel, and he was shot dead.

(melancholic music) - [Renee] In Auschwitz, I must tell you, I did not feel I am a human being.

But here, the factory gave us a blanket and shoes.

So, the conditions made you a different person again.

- [Eva] To be able to have a warm shower once a week?

Do you realize what that means?

You don't, but I (laughs), I still think of it.

In this last camp, I learned to cook from listening to the older women talk about how they fixed this, that, and the other food.

(laughing) You know, I laugh about it now.

I guess I shouldn't.

It gives the wrong impression.

But we discussed preparation of food night after night.

- [Erika] We were so grateful that we got to this camp after Auschwitz that we thought that this will be our salvation.

Of course, it didn't turn out that way, but it was in the beginning.

- [Eva] Of all the bad places, this was the best.

(plaintive music) - [Linda] One morning, they said we had to march all day long.

So we marched, we walked, and we walked, and we walked.

And we didn't get any food.

- [Lili] Our march was to Bergen Belsen.

This was the death march.

Twice during the march, I fall down.

I begged my friend to leave me.

- [Linda] I had these two left shoes and my big toes were frozen.

And I said, let them shoot me then you know, be out of it.

- [Lili] My sister picked me up and dragged me.

During the walk, a lot of friends were shot.

A lot of friends died.

- [Linda] We started off with 900 women.

200 had died in between.

(plaintive violin music) - [Lili] We worked for a short time in Bergen Belsen, by taking gravel and stones from one place to another and marching back-and-forth.

(melancholic music) People were really starving from hunger.

It was the last food, Bergen Belsen.

(melancholic music) - [Renee] One day I was not feeling well, so I asked the girls in the kitchen, "Let me peel potatoes."

And they said, "You know, "we don't need you to peel potatoes.

"Show us what we're gonna wear when we leave here."

So I was starting to draw these pictures and all of a sudden we hear, "Achtung!"

And little Nazi commando fuhrer in there, she walked in unexpected.

As I jumped up for achtung, I hit the papers and they flew all over the kitchen.

She bent down and picked up one of these papers, then said, "Who made it?"

I said I did it.

And she said, "Come with me."

There was a road into the forest.

The whole camp knew that I'm being taken away and I'm gonna be shot.

Well, she took me to her apartment, packed with fabrics.

And she took one of these pictures and she says, "Can you make this?"

Now I never made a garment before.

I said, "Of course."

(bright orchestral music) This was in the very last weeks of the incarceration, and I was very lucky because I never had to finish (laughs) a garment which I didn't know how to finish.

(bright orchestral music) - [Renee] We worked in this airplane factory, and my mother actually sabotaged the work.

She passed pieces that were not good.

- [Renee] We had to link this pattern together and then all these links had to be soldered.

If you didn't solder, you knew that it's gonna open.

- [Erika] I saw my mother getting better.

She became again a strong woman who was able to risk something in order to do some damage to the enemy.

(bright orchestral music) - [Lili] We befriended a very young French girl.

She was delirious, she was really very sick.

I held her head on my lap trying to help her.

She took out two rings and gave one ring to me and the other ring to my other sister.

This ring is her ring.

She put this on the finger.

And we could not wear any rings, so she told me to put this under my tongue.

And I put this under my tongue.

In a little while, she passed out, and she was not alive.

And I am wearing this ring and I am not taking it off.

It's part of me.

It was a friend without name, a friend which we encountered in the last day of being in Bergen Belsen.

And it's an unknown friend which will stay for me till the last days of my life.

(melancholic music) - [Erika] We worked inside an airplane factory until the day of liberation, which was May 8th.

I never became bitter, I think because I was young.

To me, it was still a challenge, it was still almost like a game.

Those that survived, we stayed together and our friendships became very strong.

(somber music) - [Rena] The gates opened up and the Russian came.

But the liberation wasn't a sweet day.

Not at all.

Sorry to say, the liberators were very bad.

They took the food from the kitchen.

There was rape.

It was a disaster.

- [Linda] People say, "How did you get out?"

And I always say I think it was just luck, that's all.

I can't think of anything else but that I had luck.

- [Renee] A Russian soldier rode in to the factory, and in Russian, he was yelling, (speaks in foreign language) "I'm also a Jew."

And then he explained to us that in the Soviet army, he never told anybody that he was a Jew, because in the Soviet army, it was not safe to be a Jew.

And now he's telling me, "You go home."

Where am I going?

Going in to that same world that put me in here?

How am I gonna exist there?

How am I gonna trust anybody?

At that point, you kept wondering, "What kind of human being am I gonna be?"

- [Eva] We were put on cattle wagons again and taken back to Theresienstadt.

That joy I cannot describe.

The end was almost beautiful.

You know, we were free.

That freedom in a camp was something unusual.

- [Lili] I wrote about my liberation and...

I used only one sentence, that I never heard such a quiet moment in my life.

(melancholic music) I did not hear anything.

I did not see anything.

I did not felt anything.

I saw soldiers which were coming, English army which liberated us.

I saw stacks of bodies.

(somber music) I saw people which were screaming, but I did not hear their screams.

I was standing together with my sister.

Numb.

Completely numb.

(train chugging) (somber orchestral music) (bright orchestral music) - Three years ago, I sent letters out to 1,200 people, and I got about 250 responses.

And of those 250, I met 18.

And out of those 18, you six are sitting here now.

- [All] We are the real survivors.

- [Man] Thank you for sharing your lives with me.

- [Woman] I agree because you are such a good-looking guy.

(all laughing) - [Man] There was no picture, you know that's a lie.

(laughing, chattering) (bright orchestral music) (upbeat music) (mid-tempo music)