I have a keen interest about the history of the Holocaust (I believe that these days we have several Holocausts going on, the Palestinian just to name one...)... so with some paid help I have
written down the interview of one of "my favorite" survivors, and written a draft article for the Wikipedia... for reasons that totallz escape me that article was not approved, so here it goes for all those who care....dedicated to all the migrants fleeing their countries who have been destabilized by NATO terrorists undercover of pseudo-islamic organizations.
Ernst Lobethal (
Wrocław 6 February 1923 – New York 1 October 2012), aka Ernest Lobet, was a German Jew,. He was a survivor of the
Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The book
The Man who Broke into Auschwitz talks extensively about his internment in Auschwitz.
Biography
His father, Rudolf Lobethal, an affluent manager, fled to South
Africa with most of the family patrimony. His mother, Freda Silberstine,
died shortly after in 1932. He was interned into an orphanage, then
entrusted to a foster family and later he lived with his disabled
grandmother, that he supported working in a Exhaust Tyre Recycling
Factory in 1941-42.
In January 1943 he was deported to Auschwitz in one of the last deportation trains from Breslau.
In Buna-Monowitz he was assigned to a construction commando, but he
bought the benevolence of a kapo with the 100 Marks note that he kept
hidden in his belt, and managed to get a better job computing statistics
in a civilian office.
He casually met a British POW, "Ginger" (
Denis Avey)
who wrote a letter to Ernst's sister in Birmingham. Two months later he
received 10 packs of cigarettes from his sister, and this small
patrimony allowed him to improve his standard of life in the camp.
The Death Marches
On 18 January 1945, while the Russians were approaching, he was evacuated in a "death march" to
Gleiwitz,
some 65 Km away, with 10 thousand people from Buna and 30 thousand from
Auschwitz III. Most of the prisoners died of cold and exhaustion along
the march. The march lasted 24 hours without any stop. It is estimated
that out of the 40-45 thousand who left Auschwitz, only 25 thousand
survived the march.
Ernst put himself at the head of the column, knowing that the first
to arrive would be the better accommodated. He was then put in a cattle
car, without roof, 80 people in a wagon, and moved to
Mauthausen, with no food and drinking melted snow along the trip. The Mauthausen camp was full so they where shipped to another camp in
Czechoslovakia.
During this trip he lost his eyesight - probably for malnutrition.
While crossing Czechoslovakia, the local population was tracking the
passage of the train and were throwing food to the inmates from the
bridges.
In his own words:
"as we were passing these overpasses in Czechoslovakia the passing of
the train somehow was being telegraphed from place to place within
Czechoslovakia and obviously if you were standing on an overpass the
sight that you must have seen must have been something to behold for I
don't know how many cattle cars there were but they were all open and
inside you had these zebra clad skeletons huddled together listless like
cows being slaughtered, being led to the slaughter house and obviously
some of these Czechs had come with bread and they threw that from the
overpass into the cars. Through our entire trip through Austria
where of course you also had lots of overpasses and lots of civilians
see what was passing underneath and through our entire trip through
Germany after we left Czechoslovakia we would never again receive as
much as a slice of bread from any of these Austrians or Germans "
Mittelbau Dora and Mauthausen
At the end of the evacuation he was assigned to work as a bricklayer aid in the tunnels of
Mittelbau Dora,
the V2 rocket factory built into a mountain. In Mittelbau Dora the work
and living conditions were appalling, so he pretended to be a locksmith
and was transferred to Mauthausen in February 1945. Out of 6000 inmates
only 1500 were alive 6 weeks later, because of the extreme
malnutrition.
Liberation and emigration to USA
On 11 April 1945 he survived an Allied bombing of the barracks with
incendiary bombs, and manages to escape from the destroyed camp, and
joins the USA troops who accommodate him in a hotel in
Sondershausen.
He was given a pass to reach Paris, where he earned his life for some
months with informal street commerce of G.I. cigarettes. Then he got a
job as an taxi stand boy for the American Red Cross.
Eventually he found a sponsor to immigrate to USA where he landed in
NY on Labor Day 1 Sept 1947, on the ship Marine Flasher. He immediately
had his tattooed lager number removed and he changed his name into
Ernest Lobet. He was soon after drafted and sent to fight in Korean War.
After meeting his former schoolmate
Henry Kamm he decided to go back to college and graduated in Engineering, then in Law. He married and had 3 children.
References
See also
External links
Category:Auschwitz concentration camp survivors
