Biographical essay by Perry Oehlbaum, 2014

Virtual Book ? Perry Oehlbaum Perry Oehlbaum and Rudy Horst Part 1: Early days My name at birth was Piroska Weinstein. I got teased for my name because it meant little red riding hood. I later changed my name to Pircha (in Hebrew) or Perry (in English). I was born on March 15, 1932 in Miskolc, Hungary. I was only 12 years old when I was taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau with my father, step-mother and sister, Aviva. My mother had died in 1941 from pneumonia. By June 1944 I was in Birkenau. Some of my family was on the transport with us but I did not see them there. Juliana and Sandor Weinstein: my father?s brother and my mother?s sister. They did not survive. There was a block leader there, a Czech woman, who kept telling me to go to work. I didn?t understand what she was trying to tell me because I was doing jobs there. She was trying to tell me to go to a work camp and leave Birkenau. I did not really understand what was going on there. I left Birkenau via cattle car and was sent to Bergen-Belsen. I became ill with pneumonia but did not get any medical help. My sister and I were selected to go to Rochlitz (subcamp of Flossenb?rg concentration camp) where there was an airplane factory. I was assigned the graveyard shift. The foreman there was a decent man who gave me food every night and let me sleep on the floor. He made sure I was awake before the SS guards came in the morning. There were bad air raids and the factory closed. We were sent on a Death March that last for about a month. Part 2: Liberation Day: May 5, 1945 There were only 10 of us left from the 200 women who worked in our airplane factory in Rochlitz, Germany. There had been too many air raids so we were taken on a Death March. We had to walk all day until the evening, only stopping around noon to have some lunch, which barely kept us alive. Towards the evening the guards gave us another ?meal?, similar to the lunch. Every night we slept in a different place. One evening it was a church yard, then a school building or in a meadow under the open sky. All of us were getting thinner and thinner. One evening we were in a nice little town and settled into a barn. I saw the SS women left us there so I got the idea to sneak out and beg for some food. I stopped at a neat little house and knocked in the door. A German woman came out and asked what I was doing there. I answered I would like something to eat. I was very hungry. She went inside and brought me some food: bread with jam and apples. I was in seventh heaven and ate some on the way back. Half of the food I saved for my sister. I did this every evening. Boy was I in luck. My sister was afraid that I would not come back but I always did. Every day there were fewer and fewer of us. Some women just could not walk anymore and were shot. My beautiful friend from Budapest died during the middle of the night in her sleep. I cried that day. I knew something was wrong because she was so weak and had given away her dinner the day before. She could not eat. That was terrible for me. She had such beautiful skin and dark eyes. I just wished she could still be alive. I will never forget her. Towards the end of our Death March there were only 10 of us left: my sister and I and 8 other women. That night we slept in fields of wheat. All night we heard the sounds of war: tanks, guns and once the whole sky was lit up but in the middle of the night everything stopped. Early in the morning the SS guards appeared with their bicycles and were smiling. Where the hell did they come from? We thought they were never coming back. They said goodbye and left. They already had their plans. They rode off on their bikes and we never saw them again. We had no idea what would happen to us but one girl from Munkacs suggested we start walking. We were all hungry. We walked about 2 ? 3 hours until we arrived in a small town, Dobricsan in the Sudetenland. Everyone was in the street all talking happily. We found out that the war was over and the Russians liberated the area. We received food and new clothing right away and got a house for all 10 of us. When we arrived in the house one of the first things we did was take our clothes off because they were full of lice and we were itching. We burned our clothes and washed ourselves and then tried to get some rest. They brought us additional cots to sleep on. My big problem was food. As soon as I ate I threw up everything. I was craving sugar which I swallowed by the handful. It took a while until I could eat normally. We received our food from the Russian kitchen. One of the girls in our group was taken to a hospital nearby. She didn?t come back so we did not know what happened to her. She had typhus. Later someone told us she died. Slowly we recovered and were ready to leave to try to go to our home country. We were told that we could take any train in Germany for free. We just had to saw we were coming from a concentration camp. All 9 of us left. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, we said goodbye to each other. My sister and I took the train to Budapest. This was in June / July, 1945. Me (left) with my sister Aviva Part 3: Returning Home Our trip to Hungary was smooth and we met other survivors in the station and on the train. We tried to find someone who would give us some guidance and might tell us what was waiting for us but nobody could help. We stopped in Prague and it had been bombed everywhere. We were not interested in sightseeing; we just wanted to go home and find our family. Finally we arrived in Budapest. Someone was there to greet s from the Jewish agency and took us to their office. They gave us a place to sleep and some food and money to take the train to our home town, Miskolc. In Budapest everything was so well organized and we thought our town would be the same. To our big surprise, there was no one. We got off the train and took the street car to our aunt?s house on the outskirts of town. She lived there with her husband. They escaped somewhere on a farm where they were saved. My cousin Emery also lived with them. My aunt and uncle had no children. Our aunt cooked well and we had good food with her. My aunt loved me but her husband did not like us and Emery did not care about us. One day I got a message from my girlfriend?s sister, Martha Kovacs. She asked me to come to their apartment. I was friends with Martha?s sister, Kato. Kato and her family left about two days before our family left from the brickyard where the Jews had been assembled for transport. Their family had a tenant who was a very nice Christian man. Before there was a ghetto he asked Martha?s parents if he could marry her and he promised to take good care of her. The parents made the right choice and agreed. Martha and her man left Miskolc to live somewhere else where they could pass as Gentiles. Unfortunately Martha?s family died and she never heard from them. I went to visit Martha and her husband and she was 8 months pregnant. She was nice when I arrived and then started asking me about her family. I kept telling her that I saw them last in the Miskolc brickyard. She went crazy and accused me of lying. She insisted I tell her what happened to them and started yelling at me. Her husband could not quiet her down. I started crying and her husband let me out. Right at this moment, I cannot remember Kato?s face. I feel so bad. Why am I alive? None of my classmates came back ? I am the only one. What would I do with my life? These memories will always haunt me and poor Martha, I could not help her. She thought I would bring her some good news. Because I returned she thought her family would return. At that time I decided to join the Zionist group and my aunt let me move in with them. I decided to go to Israel. There was nothing for me in Miskolc. My sister said I was crazy?what would I do there? I did not pay attention to her because I already made up my mind. I was the youngest there and everyone else was much older but they liked me. I felt good in this new environment. One day a man came from Budapest to reorganize the group. We called him Dagi but that wasn?t his real name. There was a meeting and afterwards he came over to me and said ?You are coming with me. You don?t belong here, you are too young.? He was an official from the organization and his job was taking care of the people who returned from the camps. Hearing this from Dagi made me happy. We were leaving in a few days and I wanted to say goodbye to some people, including one of my teachers who had been with me in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her name was Magdolna Deutch and she taught German and math. She liked me even though I was not her best student. After the war she taught in a Catholic girl?s school. She urged me to go back and finish school. I lasted there for about 2 weeks. The girls knew about me and they laughed when they looked at me. I had shabby clothes and who knows what they were thinking? They knew I was Jewish. I was the only Jew and just did not fit in. The day finally came when I was leaving. I packed the few little things I had and said goodbye to everyone and left. I went with Dagi. He was pleasant and said I was going to a place where I belonged. It was so true. He took me to an orphanage where the children had no parents. These children survived in the Swedish homes that were set up and supported by the Raoul Wallenberg family. Some of the Jewish families put their children there to save them. The children loved me and they were good. They cried sometimes in the middle of the night and woke me up. I felt good when I could help them go back to sleep. I also needed their love and closeness sometimes. I was called ?Anjuka? which means ?mom?. Three months passed and the announcement came we were leaving to go to Palestine. This was December, 1945, around Christmas time. I only got as far as Vienna. Instead I came to the US in 1951 after 6 years in Germany. I arrived in Los Angeles on January 27, 1951.