Anna Lengel

"Not to let this happen ever, not to nobody, you don’t know what persecution is. This is why I’m mad at the whole world; no one came to help us. The whole world was deaf and blind! I cannot forget my little sisters, my mother and father. We were eleven children. How can a soldier murder an innocent child, innocent people? You can never forget; it lives in you."

Name at birth

Anna Freireich

Date of birth

11/18/1914

Where were you born?

Tarnow, Poland

Where did you grow up?

Tarnow, Poland

Name of father, occupation

David Freireich, Businessman, owner of a restaurant and a hotel

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Sabina Freireich, Ran the restaurant

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Parents and eleven daughters: Donia (Dorothy), Mindy, Lucia, Fella, Renia, me, Frieda, Esther, Rachel, Paula and Miriam

At Plaszow we were forced to dig up the Jewish cemetery, using tombstones to build roads. At Skarzysko and Czestochowa, I worked in the ammunition factories.

Once a Nazi was beating me, kicking me when I met my sister, Donia, and he beat me up. He asked me who is this and I said my sister. “Sister!” he said and he continued to beat me and kick me. He was a big, husky soldier and I was a little girl and he was beating me and beating me and kicking me with his big boots. When I fell down from his beatings he started kicking me all because I was talking to my sister.

He left me thinking that I was dead. I don’t know how long I was on the ground, but later I got up and went to the ammunition factory where I worked. It was a miracle that I survived.

Also, I was very hungry. I was so hungry I had stomach cramps. My mind was getting mixed up and I prayed to G-d not to be so hungry and that my mind should not be so mixed up. I felt I would not survive it.

God helped me and I didn’t feel that hunger anymore. I prayed with all my heart and I wasn’t so hungry anymore.

Then, at the end, they put us in a big factory and they boarded the windows from the outside. They intended to kill us all. But they didn’t have anytime anymore because the Allies bombarded them. They ran away and left us and we got out. That was a miracle.

When we got out, I saw horses dead, people dead, people without hands, without heads, legs, wherever a bomb hit them. I felt sorry for the horses not for the Nazis.

Every selection was a miracle, we didn’t know what happened to the people. When they didn’t select me, that was my miracle. Those that they selected, they probably sent them to the furnace. I survived a few selections.

The miracle was to survive every minute, day and night, that was the miracle.

Nobody came to help us, to help me. I will just speak for myself.

I was 3 days free and I didn’t believe it, that’s how conditioned I was. Then we had to go to the field to rip out a few potatoes (so we could eat).

Nobody came to help us.

Name of Ghetto(s)

Tarnow

Name of Concentration / Labor Camp(s)

Czestochowa / Krakow Plaszow / Skarzysko Kamienna

Where did you settle?

Detroit, Michigan

How is it that you came to Michigan?

My mother’s sister lived here, but it did not work out. We were very poor; we did not have a car for years.

Spouse

Hillel Lengel, he lost his first wife and two sons in the Holocaust. He had survived Auschwitz

Children

Sheryl, Freda, and David

What do you think helped you to survive?

A miracle, I say God helped. I saw a few miracles during the Holocaust. The world doesn’t go on by itself. There is a G-d that watches over us at times like this, that watched over me. A Nazi was once shooting at me directly and didn’t kill me. He ran out of ammunition

What message would you like to leave for future generations?

Not to let this happen ever, not to nobody, you don’t know what persecution is. This is why I’m mad at the whole world; no one came to help us. The whole world was deaf and blind! I cannot forget my little sisters, my mother and father. We were eleven children. How can a soldier murder an innocent child, innocent people? You can never forget; it lives in you.