Holocaust survivor shares her story

Pupils got to hear the story of the Holocaust from someone who’d been through it.

By JEANNE STARMACK

VINDICATOR STAFF WRITER

AUSTINTOWN — The yellow cloth star is in good shape, for how old it is. Inge Auerbacher protects it in heavy plastic.

As a group of girls gathered around her in the cafetorium at Austintown Middle School, Auerbacher turned the star over to show the backing her mother had sewn on it because the material was so flimsy.

Then she turned it back over to show the front again, where the word “Jude,” or “Jew,” jumps strongly off the bright yellow background.

Auerbacher held the Star of David up to one girl’s chest to show where she herself had worn it as a child who lived through the Holocaust of World War II, when 11 million people perished at the hands of Nazi Germany.

Three million of those people were children, but through sheer luck, Auerbacher wasn’t one of them.

She brought her story, pictures and — still intact, she said — her faith in God to AMS on Monday.

Four hundred pupils there got a chance to hear about the Holocaust from a survivor, which is a privilege upcoming generations won’t have. Some said they know how fortunate they are.

“Just what she went through was so amazing,” said seventh-grader Megan Miller, part of the group that timidly approached Auerbacher after her presentation to ask if they could shake her hand.

She wouldn’t shake hands. She wanted hugs instead. The girls giggled a little, and obliged.

“It’s a real gift, to talk to a real survivor,” Megan said.

“Wow!” said Emily Wyant, Rachel Jones and Kara Klem, also seventh-graders — summing up together in one word how they felt after hearing her story of growing up from birth to age 10 under the Nazis.

Auerbacher, of New York City, was the last Jewish child born in Kippenheim, a village in southwest Germany near borders of France and Switzerland. Her mother gave birth to her at their home Dec. 31, 1934.

Hitler had just come to power, and the Christian doctor who delivered her had just joined the Nazi party.

“We were a happy family,” she said, in a village where 60 Jewish families had “a very good relationship with our Christian neighbors.” Her father was a textile merchant and was awarded the Iron Cross for service to his country in World War I.

His country was about to betray that service as 1938 became a turning point for Jews in Germany.

Auerbacher’s grandparents, who lived some 200 miles away, were visiting Nov. 9 and 10 when the massive riot Kristallnacht, or Night of Broken Glass, broke out against Jews in Germany and Austria. Many synagogues were burned, she said, and her family’s was desecrated.

When her grandfather went to say his morning prayers, he was arrested and sent to the concentration camp Dachau in southern Germany. All Jewish men over age 16, including her father, were sent there. But her father and grandfather were released after a few weeks.

Kristallnacht was not easily forgotten, even by a child one month shy of her fourth birthday. “All windows of Jewish homes were broken. We had to hide in a backyard shed.”

The family sold its house and moved to her grandparents’ village, Jebenhausen, in 1939. It was there, she said, that she had her only real childhood for the next two to three years.

Her grandfather died, she believes, of a broken heart because “he could not understand his country.”

She began school at age 6, but had to go to a Jewish school in Stuttgart, an hour’s train ride away.

Then, in 1941, the deportations started in her part of Germany. Her grandmother was taken away in one transport. She was sent to a forest and shot, Auerbacher said, then buried there in a mass grave.

In August 1942, she and her family were deported among 1,200 other people. They assembled in a school gymnasium and were sent to Terezin, a transit camp in Czechoslovakia where the Nazis kept people before sending them on to killing sites such as Auschwitz in southern Poland.

Auerbacher had never seen a corpse before, but at Terezin, there were sheets everywhere with bodies underneath. Sickness was rampant, she said, and showers were twice a year if at all. People were plagued by lice, fleas and rats.

Her best friend, Ruth, whom she’d known for two years, finally left the camp with her family, and the two made plans to meet after the war. Auerbacher said she was jealous of Ruth because she got to leave Terezin.

She did not understand at the time that Ruth went to Auschwitz; there would be no reunion.

Only 1 percent of about 15,000 children at Terezin survived.

Auerbacher and her parents made it out to find that many relatives had died. They stayed in Germany for only nine months after being liberated in 1945.

They came to New York, where Auerbacher grew up to become an accomplished chemist. She has written four books, including “I am a Star — Child of the Holocaust,” and “Beyond the Yellow Star to America.” She speaks about the Holocaust, she said, because it’s important to promote peace and tolerance.

“Hitler had a special hatred against Jews,” she said. “If he had succeeded, who would have been next? Many of you would not be sitting here.”