)
Friday, December 5, 1947
DETROIT JEWISH CHRONICLE
UJA Rebuilds Orphans' Lives
Youngest Auschwitz Survivor
Reenacts Story of Hell-Camp
THE HORRORS OF the Ausch-
witz extermination camp have
been described many times by
those fortunate enough to sur-
vive its nightmarish realities, but
it was not until now that the
youngest survivor told his story.
At the Polish headquarters of
the Hebrew Sheltering and Im-
migrant Aid Society (IIIAS), 17-
year-old Felix Piotrkowsky told
how the Gestapo and SS came to
his native Lodz, Poland, in 1940,
when he was just 10 years old.
He related that the Germans
erected walls around an area in
the center of the city, created a
ghetto, and drove in all the Jews.
For months Felix, his parents,
and hiS brothers and sisters lived
in one room with another family
—eleven people In one small
MOM.
• • •
HERDED LIKE CATTLE
FELIX WELL REMEMBERS
the day In June, 1941, when the
Nazis herded the Lodz Jews into
cattle-cars, a hundred people to
a car, and began the death-jour-
ney to Auschwitz.
Of the trip itself, Felix re-
members very little. But when
the train finally stopped at
Auschwitz and the cars were
emptied, Felix could not find his
family. He never saw them
again.
At Auschwitz other prisoners
took care of the child, and after
three days on a construction de-
tail he was transferred with their
help to the job of camp mes-
senger.
This helped save the boy from
the gas-chambers, but it did not
prevent him from seeing what no
child should ever see.
• • •
GHOULISH ROLLCALL
FELIX TOLD THE HIAS offi-
cials about the daily "Selektion"
—or rollcall—at which victims
were chosen for the gas-cham-
bers. Ile described the methods
used by the Germans to vary
the simple monotony of slaugh- from which IIIAS officials launch-
ter.,
ed a search for' any relatives the
"At four o'clock one morning," boy might have. An uncle was
he related, "an SS officers entered located in Montevideo, and now
the barracks, carrying a stick the youngest survivor of Ausch-
He lined all the men up against witz is ready to begin a new We
the wall and made them jump, in Uruguay.
one by one, over the stick.
Those who could not were
marched away immediately to
the death rooms."
At other times, Felix said, the
guards would measure the pris-
oners. Those who were below a
certain height were gassed.
15,000 ARE SIIIFTED
WHEN THE RUSSIANS ap-
proached the frontier in 1944,
Auschwitz was ordered evacu-
ated. Fifteen thousand of the
male inmates, among them young
Felix, were marched inland,
changing direction daily to avoid
the new thrusts of the Allied
troops.
Hundreds who could not keep
up the pac., were killed at the
roadside by SS guards. At Gross-
rosen they stayed for a month.
Upon the arrival of 25,000
Hungarian deportees, all the Jews
were compelled to move again,
this time to Gunskirchen Camp,
which consisted of about 20 tre-
mendous tents in the middle of
a forest.
• •
Dental Leaders
Off to Freshen Up
DP'S in Profession
NEW YORK—Three leaders
in American dentistry left for
Europe via Pan American Air-
ways recently to organize an
present a series or refreshes
courses in modern dental tech.
niques for dentists among tilt
Jewish displaced persons in
Germany, Austria and Italy un-
der a program sponsored by the
Joint Distribution Committee.
The instruction course for
DP dentists, which will last for
two months, is part of the com
mittee's public health activities.
Funds for JDC activities
abroad are provided through
contributions to the $170,000,000
campaign of the United Jewish
Appeal.
Some 100,000 of Europe's
Jews have already been aided
through 229 producers' cooper-
CRITICALLY ILL
atives, twelve loan funds and
CROWDED INTO these tents, 36 credit cooperatives supported
many, including Felix, contracted by the reconstruction program
of the Joint Distribution Com-
typhus. Finding no place to lie mittee.
in the tent, Felix climbed up in-
to the wooden framework of the
Chronicle Social and Club
tent and tied himself to a beam.
He was lying up there, critically News deadline is noon Monday
ill, when the first American jeep
entered the camp at the head of
a column of the liberating forces.
Careful attention by American
Army and UNRRA doctors
brought the boy back to health,
and he was sent to a DP camp,
•
Lewis F. Brown
1900 E. GRAND BLVD.
•
Orphaned Jewish girls play with a neighboring peasant's
goat in the yard of a child-care institution In Greece sup-
ported by the Jews of America through the $170,000,000
United Jewish Appeal for Refugees, Overseas Needs and
Palestine.
-
•
CHANUKAH GREETINGS
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Page Thirteen
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