He returned to find his family home empty but for his dachshund Lulu. They had gone into hiding, but young Jaku didn't know. He used his key to open the door, then fell asleep in his childhood bed only to be woken at 5am when 10 Nazis broke in and almost beat him to death. One took his bayonet and started to engrave a swastika on Jaku's arm, then killed Lulu with the bayonet when she jumped up to protect him.
He was deported to Buchenwald in late November and jailed in camps in Belgium and France between and He escaped several times, once joining his family in Belgium, where they had fled and lived in an attic, hidden from the world much like Anne Frank's family.
He now describes that time in close confines with his parents, sister, aunts and another Jewish family as one of the happiest times of his life. In , the family was arrested by Belgian police, denounced as refugees and deported to Auschwitz.
After nine days on a train of fellow Jews, surviving on only two cups of water a day, they arrived in the middle of a bitter Polish winter.
I never saw my father again. He sent him and my mother to the gas chamber. Jaku survived thanks to the fine mechanical skills his father had insisted he learn. The Nazis recruited him to make surgical instruments when they saw how he could reshape anything, from a piece of wire to a spoon, into a useful tool. He'd swap his engineering expertise for extra food. At Auschwitz he was reunited with his Buchenwald friend Hirschfeld, but he had no idea if his sister Henni had survived Mengele's selection.
But I survived because of my friend Kurt … Having even just one good friend can be your entire world. On January 18, , he and Hirschfeld were awoken at 3am and sent with thousands on the Nazi death march from Auschwitz in the dead of winter as Soviet forces approached to liberate this German-held area of Poland. They both escaped but were separated, and Jaku was recaptured by Nazis and put to work on an assembly line, repairing gearboxes for war machinery back in Buchenwald.
He again escaped, hiding in a cave in the Black Forest, where he was discovered delirious with hunger and close to death by US soldiers in June , having spent the last few months of the war eating little more than slugs and snails. Once recovered, he returned to Belgium, where he was reunited with his friend Hirschfeld and eventually his sister Henni, who had survived unbeknownst to him, in another part of Auschwitz.
One day he took his food stamps to a municipal town hall in Brussels and fell in love at first sight with the woman handing out the rations, a Belgian Jew called Flore. Thanks to the Belgian resistance she had fled to Paris, where she lived under a false name, with no one knowing her heritage. On return to Brussels she made sure to meet and talk to all the concentration camp survivors who came to authorities for help. She was first overcome with pity then love for Jaku.
They married in , defiantly on April 20, Hitler's birthday. Flore and Eddie Jaku on their wedding day in Belgium, April 20, Credit: Suplied. In the first few years after the war, Jaku was miserable. He vowed never to step foot on German soil again and migrated to Australia in , along with Flore, her mother Fortunee and his sister Henni. They settled at Brighton-Le-Sands and another son, Andre, was born.
Flore worked as a dressmaker for a host of glamorous Sydney identities, and Eddie worked at a garage as well as making fine precision instruments. In the early s, they sold the garage then worked together as eastern suburbs real estate agents — both only recently retiring, in their 90s, having worked side-by-side for 40 years. The prisoners were told to stop building a huge factory they'd been working on and start marching to a huge camp -- Dachau. When the Americans arrived to the camp, the Germans either surrendered or killed themselves.
He said that he and the others didn't have the strength to rejoice in their freedom. Irene Weiss was 13 years old and living in Hungary with her family when they were sent to Auschwitz in the spring of First order is to leave thing behind and get out. And they kept repeating that, and with great urgency. Leave everything behind and get out,'" she told ABC News. At the U. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D. Irene, though only a year older, had been selected for forced labor, she said, likely because she was wearing a kerchief on her head that made her looked much older.
Separated from her younger siblings and her parents, she caught up with another sister, Serena, who was three years older. Eventually, she would also find two of her aunts, and the group was sent to work sorting through the belongings confiscated from the newly arrived prisoners. And we had the unfortunate experience to see groups of women, children, and elderly getting off the train, and entering the gate into that gas chamber," she said. No one had to tell us anymore what-- what they were up to.
Within a half-hour or so after … chimneys were belching fire and smoke,". Her entire family was killed except her sister Serena and two aunts. Weiss was tattooed with the number A When Weiss was sent on the death march in January , the Nazis sought to put their Jewish prisoners into concentration camps deeper in Germany. Weiss spent five months in these camps with no food.
Typhus broke out. She was waiting to be sent to the gas chambers when the Russian troops arrived and the Germans evacuated the camps. She said that even after the Russians liberated the camp, the soldiers did not help the prisoners, fearing being contaminated with typhus.
She said she had to hitchhike with her sister and a very sick aunt from village to village in hopes of finding a hospital. Thankfully, her aunt did survive. Lois Flamholz and her family were living in a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, which became a part of Hungary in When the Germans arrived, her family was told to pack up their belongings and move to a Jewish ghetto.
In the ghetto, she said, they were all put in cattle cars on a train and taken to Auschwitz. She was And that's when we had to stand naked. They shaved us from head to toe," she said. She and several cousins were separated from her mother, father, grandmother, aunt and siblings immediately when they arrived.
She said she never saw her family again. She and other girls were put in barracks, where they cried and asked the women when they would see their mothers again. You see the smoke over there? That's where your mothers are. She stayed in a work camp till February , when they were told to march. They marched for about six weeks. It got to a point that, when we had to stand on line… that two other people from the other two lines had to hold me up, in order to stand up," she said.
Her group was liberated by the English in Bergen-Belsen. While she was in the hospital with other girls, a cousin fell very sick. Flamholz said she tried to give her cousin a sip of water and pleaded with her to stay alive. Flamholz told ABC News that it took her many years to be ready to talk about what had happened to her during the Holocaust.
He tried to kill me also. Claire Heymann was 18 when she was brought to Auschwitz. Her father had been sent to a camp before, as had been two of her sisters and a bother. All of them were killed. Heymann was sent to work in a factory with other young women but eventually was sent to Auschwitz with a third sister.
How many times you see people get caught on the fence and get electrocuted. On the day that the camp was about to be liberated, everyone tried to get food before the death march. No more clothes. So we took the clothes off from dead people who are killed. We used to eat snow, having no more water. The snow gave us water," she said. She and seven girls finally reached a town the Russians were occupying in Germany. I had a lot of willpower. We have to do that. Otherwise, nobody would believe us.
Peter Somogyi and his twin brother were 11 years old when they arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau in July The two were living in Pecs, Hungary, with his father, mother and sister when the Germans took control in March He said immediately the Jewish people were forced to wear yellow stars and his father was taken away. He and his family lived in a ghetto for about two months before being sent to Auschwitz.
For three days and nights, he and his family traveled with others in the cattle car. Kiko Itasaka is a producer based in London. IE 11 is not supported. For an optimal experience visit our site on another browser. Politics Covid U. News World Opinion Business. Share this —. Follow NBC News. Auschwitz survivors return to Nazi death camp to mourn and to warn Jan.
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