I lived with my mother and sister in the village ghetto in Oradea. My brother lived with our aunt in the city ghetto in Oradea.
While living in Oradea my father got sick and my parents went back to Saliste, which was a village. The children stayed with family to go to school in Oradea, which was a city. I was 12 years old. My father died in 1943, the year before we were taken by the Germans.
One day I ran out of the ghetto with the thought of going to the Romania border which was approximately five miles from the ghetto. I ran out of the ghetto and found a previous Hungarian neighbor to ask for help, but they were scared. I then had second thoughts about leaving my mother and sister, I had a “heavy heart”, and so I returned to the ghetto.
In March, 1944 I was taken with my mother and sister to Auschwitz; my mother was killed right away. I was in a barrack with my sister and we remained in Auschwitz for six months. We did not work. Every day at 4:00am we stood outside in the cold to be counted. In October 1944, my sister and I were taken to Mitterstein in Germany to an airplane factory and we worked while the SS watched us. There were a few nice Germans who would leave us sandwiches in the trash. This gave me a renewed hope in humanity. The barracks were about five miles from the factory and we were brought there every day to work. I was with my sister and with my cousin. I was liberated in May 1945. A week before liberation we were transported to another factory in Weisswasser and we worked there one day. The next morning, in May 1945 we were liberated. Russians came and liberated us. Four weeks after the war I went back home and found an uncle but did not find any of my possessions, not even one photograph was left. My uncle from Romania took us; I stayed with him until I married my husband.
I come from an orthodox family and as an adult I was not religious and not kosher, but always celebrated the holidays in memory of my mother and family. I have been a member at Adat Shalom since 1982 when my brother died
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The Holocaust Memorial Center Oral History Collection