Transcript
Naftali Fürst “These days and nights overshadowed everything we had experienced until then. [...]
At the camp, we were given orders [...], were always governed by rules. During the march, each one of us had to decide for himself, in all this suffering, whether he wanted to walk on or give up all hope and collapse.”
Narrator Naftali Fürst remembers when Auschwitz was cleared in January 1945. He was 13 years old and his brother Shmuel, only one year his senior, was with him. For days, the two were on the road in sub-zero temperatures, first on foot, then in an open wagon. They arrived in Buchenwald one day before Auschwitz was liberated. Thousands of people did not survive the clearance.
The brothers, along with their parents and 900 other Slovakian Jews, had been deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau only in November of 1944. They came from a liberal Jewish family, their father a known entrepreneur from Bratislava. The family had been interned in the Slovakian work camp at Sered since 1942. Starting in the autumn of 1944, the Germans deported thousands of Jews to Auschwitz from this camp.
The Fürst family was on the first transport that was not led directly to the gas chambers. At this point, the Red Army was approaching and the SS had already ordered the chambers to be demolished.
But in Auschwitz the SS separated the brothers from their parents: They were taken to different camps in the Reich when the camp was cleared.
Naftali and Shmuel were taken to Buchenwald, where they were separated for the first time. But Shmuel swapped his identity with another boy who had also been separated from his brother, and so they managed to stay together after all.
Later, Naftali was taken to Block 66 for children in the Little Camp. Hundreds of minors were housed here, protecteded by political inmates. Thanks to the block senior, Shmuel, whose new identity made him older, was able to switch to the children’s block, too.
In March, Naftali fell seriously ill. His life was in danger. He was taken to the infirmary and the brothers were separated once again. Naftali was not fit for transport and, to protect him, he was taken to the camp brothel a few days later.
Naftali Fürst “The camp brothel saved me. The women liked me and gave me food and sweets. When the Americans came to free Buchenwald in April, that is where they found me.”
Narrator Shmuel, however, was forced to leave Buchenwald on a clearance transport only one day before the liberation of the camp.
Shmuel Fürst “Our trip seemed as if it would never end, day after day, night after night. The hunger and cold made people go mad. [...] My health was declining quickly and I was soon unable to stand. [...] During the last phase of this odyssey as well as on the day of our liberation, I was surrounded by countless dead bodies, and I, too, felt that my body was breaking down.”
Narrator The odyssey would only end four weeks later in Theresienstadt, shortly before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Deathly ill, Shmuel continued to fight for his life in the subsequent months.
Over the course of the summer, the brothers and their parents were reunited in Bratislava. Their mother had survived the Lippstadt subcamp; their father the Dachau concentration camp and a death march.
In 1949, the family emigrated to Israel, where they made their home in a Kibbutz. Naftali Fürst has been living in Haifa for many years.
