ebi gabor

Holocaust Survivor Warns Students, ‘Hate Kills the Spirit’

By Henrietta Gomes
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 5/31/07) ebi gabor

Her idyllic childhood days were violently stolen when the Nazis marched into her beloved homeland of Hungary in 1944.
Now the perpetual shadow of the harrowing experiences as prisoner in the Auschwitz and Birkenau concentration camps lend force to Ebi Gabor’s belief that “hate is the most destructive force in our lives.”
Gabor, who recently turned 80, recounted the ghastly and degrading chapter of her teenage life to a group of seventh- and eighth-grade students at St. Bernadette School in Springfield last week.
Inivited by Connie Boneo, art teacher at the school, the wide-eyed and hope-filled Gabor was delighted to discover that students had been learning about the Holocaust, what she called one of the “darkest moments in history.”
Several months ago Boneo’s students created diary-like books with pictures and letters in memory of children who were killed during the Holocaust. Boneo’s research found that one of her students had chosen the name of a child who had survived the Holocaust and was living in California. After many phone calls, Boneo was able to track down Gabor and bring her to St. Bernadette.
The students carefully listened to Gabor as she delivered her first-hand account of the torture and persecution she faced alongside millions of others who were killed by the Nazis during World War II.
She described her once happy life growing up with Catholics, Protestants and other Jews. “We never made each other feel inferior,” she said, remembering the bike rides and birthday parties celebrated with family and friends.
Her cherished life changed on March 19, 1944 at the start of the German invasion of Hungary.
“We had no idea why they came, but we found out fast enough,” she said of the soldiers. Within a week, Jews were ordered to wear a yellow Star of David prominently displayed on their outer garments.
The Nazi soldiers shattered the windows of Jewish temples, ransacked Jewish owned stores and beat Jewish children in the streets.
“There were bloody fights every single day,” she said noting the lack of aid from the police.
The peaceful country Gabor had once known had been savagely mutated into a horrifying nightmare. Out of fear, Gabor at the ripe age of 16, and many other children stopped going to school.
Her fate was sealed by the sound of hard knocking on the windows of her home that woke the entire family at 2 a.m. on April 15. In a matter of minutes Gabor’s father had been notified that the family was under arrest, the home was ransacked, valuables and documents were seized and the family was told to pack clothes and food for three days.
“There are no words in the dictionary that could describe the panic and fear that we went through,” she said.
Gabor’s father protested and pleaded with the soldiers to take all their possessions, but to leave the family alone. However, there was no chance for civil dialogue with the Nazi soldiers.
“They took us on a road of no return. I never saw my home again,” she said.
Herded off like animals in cattle cars, Gabor and her family were shoved into a barrack for three days before being taken to the Jewish Ghetto.
“It was indescribable horror … we were petrified,” she said remembering soldiers ripping off glasses from people’s faces and stomping on them, snipping off parts of men’s beards to ridicule them and beating older and vulnerable men. “We were a pitiful sight.”
Sharing whatever they could find with the 50,000 others who joined them, the Gabor family survived the month of little food and water and no showers or baths. The “cruel and inhuman,” treatment at the ghetto, Gabor said, was merely the beginning.
Although she did not know it at the time, after one month came the inevitable deportation to the Auschwitz death camp.
The soldiers, indifferent about separating family members, selected 80 people at a time to be crammed in one boxcar.
“I can still hear those shrieks from the mothers and children being separated,” said the soft-spoken, but vibrant woman. Each car was given one bucket to be used as a toilet. “They dehumanized us completely,” she said.
“I was fortunate that my father was with me,” said Gabor remembering the heroic way her father tried to calm the people.
They traveled like sardines for five days without food, conditions that led to the death of one older man in the car. “It was an indescribable hell,” she said recounting the unbearable stench from bodily waste and death.
Older people started praying, while some of the younger ones were angry with God for not intervening.
When they arrived to Auschwitz they were greeted by SS soldiers with rifles holding leashes attached to fierce German Shepherds. The prisoners were briefly scrutinized and were directed in one of two directions — the gas chamber or the work camp.
Unaware of her father’s destiny she watched him walk to his death sentence
“I couldn’t say goodbye to my father or my grandparents. Everyone was gone. … I never saw my father again,” she said.
The soldiers took thousands of girls and women in one of the barracks and ordered them to strip off their clothes. When they refused, German Shepherds were let loose on them. “Terror shed our dignity,” she said.
In a sadistic effort to further humiliate the women, their heads were shaved. As Gabor protested the cutting of her long black locks, she was slapped around and told to keep quiet. Silent tears rolled down her face and they shaved her head completely. “We were bald and naked … It was a horrible experience.”
The women were given large potato sack-type garments to wear, and six women were assigned to one bunk to sleep at night. The lice-ridden bed caused the women to itch profusely and in the morning, a small cup of coffee laced with drugs to stop their menstrual cycles was given to them for breakfast.
Every day her mother took a small piece of bread and kept it under her armpit to put in Gabor’s mouth at night.
The scarcity of food created animosity and even fights among the prisoners.
“This was purposely done by the Nazis,” Gabor recounted. “Desperation for survival was the most important thing for each of us. We had inner wars and it made us turn against God.”
It was exactly what the Nazis had wanted — not only to destroy them physically, but psychologically and spiritually. They quickly learned not to fight, but rather to comfort each other.
One day a little girl, realizing that Gabor was with her mother, started to cry for her mother. When Gabor took the child to one of the soldiers and asked to know the whereabouts of the little girl’s mother, the soldier casually pointed to the fire and smoke coming from another barrack and told her she was in flames. Bewildered and horrified by the soldier’s cruelty, and heartbroken by the little girl’s hysteric reaction, Gabor told her not to pay attention to the “idiot.” At once the soldier slammed her against the wall breaking her eardrum and warning her never to cross him again.
The horror stories could continue for years, said Gabor, the author of The Blood Tattoo, an autobiographical account of her experience in the concentration camps. Despite all the evil she endured and witnessed, Gabor told the students there is no room for hate in her heart. She reminded them that people are killing each other worldwide because of hate.
“It’s impossible to forget. I see it in front of my eyes as it was,” she said remembering picking up dead bodies and placing them in a ditch only to watch SS soldiers drench them with gasoline and light them on fire after the crematorium had reached its capacity. The memories, she said, “follow me no matter where I go.”
Once angry with God, Gabor reconciled with God after her release.
“He fulfilled every dream of mine,” she said telling the students that each time she was examined by SS soldiers, she prayed to God to send her to the work camp, allowing her one more day to live. “We are very good friends now,” she said about her relationship with God.
Gabor urged her young audience to learn about history and to live without hate. “Hate is the biggest corrupter of your spirit,” she said.
Pointing to her heart and said, “I didn’t let them destroy me here.” Although they tried to kill her physically, “they could not kill my spirit.”

Henrietta Gomes can be reached at hgomes@catholicherald.com.