14 | FEBRUARY 6 • 2020 

Jews in the D

continued from page 13

Dr. Josef Mengele as he 
sorted arrivals into lines 
leading to the left or right. 
Marks-Bolton was 
instructed to go right and 
headed into the bathrooms, 
where she was forced to 
strip naked to be sanitized 
and shaven. If the prisoners 
had any belongings, they 
were mandated to hand 
them over to the guards.
The only item in her 
possession was a small, 
wallet-sized picture of her 
mother that she refused 
to give up. The guards 
questioned her and beat 
her until she was forced to 
release the photo. 
“Losing that picture of 
my mother still bothers me 
to this day,” Marks-Bolton 
said. “They beat me all over 
my body, my back and my 
head. It fell to the floor 
with my mother’
s face up, 
and I saw my mother’
s eyes 
staring back at me, tell-
ing me, ‘
Paula, walk away, 
you’
re going to be OK.’
”
The other group arriving 
in Auschwitz, the ones told 
to go to the left, were not as 
lucky. They were taken to 
either the crematoriums or 
used for experimentation by 
the Nazis. 
“At Auschwitz, they 
experimented on our lives 
— no matter if they were 
old, disabled, a baby or a 
pregnant woman — they all 
suffered experimentation 
at the hands of the Nazis,” 
Marks-Bolton said. “The 
crematoriums there were 
burning our people day and 
night. You could even smell 
the flesh of our people 
burning.”
After four days at 
Auschwitz, Marks-Bolton 

was later was transferred 
to Ravensbruck, a wom-
en’
s-only German camp, by 
another cramped cattle car. 
After two weeks, she found 
herself at Muhlhausen — a 
newer and cleaner facility in 
Germany where she spent a 
total of eight months.
Marks-Bolton’
s last stop 
before her liberation was 
Bergen-Belsen in northern 
Germany. At 17, she was 
rescued by British soldiers 
and was taken to mini-clin-
ics to regain her strength.
Once she was back to 
health, she married Martin 
Marks, whom she had met 
on Yom Kippur the year 
of her liberation. She also 
reunited with her brother, 
Schmeral, and would later 
give birth to two daugh-
ters. Marks-Bolton and her 
family moved to Detroit in 
1949, where she met her 
aunt, Jane Meisner, and 
uncle, Alan Zeiger. 
Marks-Bolton used to 
speak on her time in the 
Holocaust three to four 
times a week but has late-
ly cut back her engage-
ments. The memories are 
often becoming too much 
to bear, she said. Yet the 
great-grandmother persists 
on sharing her story with 
younger generations. 
“A lot of our people go to 
their graves and never tell 
the whole story,” Marks-
Bolton said. “But the people 
who can have an obliga-
tion. We must teach others 
about our stories because 
although we can’
t change 
what happened to our lives 
or bring back our loved 
ones, we must prevent it 
from happening again to 
any other human being.” 

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