General Discussion

In response to your letter, here are a few thoughts that assisted me to look forward in my youth after those bleak, horrendous times in 1944. I am a camp survivor from Auschwitz and was liberated from Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945. I was totally dehumanised, fearful, distrustful, lost to contemplate the future, all alone, unable to comprehend the values for a life in a modern civilisation.

Fourteen years old – unable to walk, to express the latent, suppressed anguish – the realisation I only speak Hungarian, no skills, no education, no finance, no support system, no knowledge.

The first awareness, in Bergen-Belsen, was the discovery that kindness and goodwill had also survived. When the British soldier lifted me up from the mud hole – seeing a twitch in my body – he gently placed me in one of the small ambulances. From that experience, miraculous goodwill is one of the guiding lights to this day. I often think of that moment and ask, “What part of that goodness with your heart do you take from that soldier?”

Kindness, generosity comes in small everyday events. Small measures of goodness have an enormous impact – to this day I take nothing for granted. I remember the effect and appreciation this first helpfulness had on my life – it gradually removed the heavy iron cover on me, and sparks of “I can do” and “I want to do” gradually came into my existence.