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Holocaust survivor asks people not to use the word hate
October 29, 2009
By Liz Monteiro, Record staff
KITCHENER – If there is one word Holocaust survivor Eva Olsson wishes no one would ever utter again it’s the word hate.
“I don’t use the word hate because hate murdered my family,’’ Olsson told a luncheon meeting of the Rotary Club of Kitchener-Westmount Wednesday.
“What I cannot deal with even after all these years is that these people died because of hate. I cannot deal with it because I cannot accept it,’’ she said.
“We have a responsibility to our children, to our grandchildren to get rid of hate. If we get rid of hate, we get rid of bullies,’’ Olsson said.
It was bullies — the Nazi bullies — who changed her life forever. On May 15, 1944, when Olsson was just 19, she and her family were taken away from their home in Hungary to the Aushwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
She and her sister were the sole survivors of their family.
The Bracebridge woman visited four area high schools this week, sharing her story of survival. Last night, a documentary film about her life — Stronger Than Fire, The Eva Olsson Story — which recalls her journey back to the concentration camps in 2007 had a special screening at the Gig Theatre in Kitchener.
Wednesday was Olsson’s 85th birthday. She received a standing ovation from the audience which also included a table of seven Second World War veterans.
Sixty-five years later, Olsson tells her story with passion and recalls images of dead bodies, the last look of her mother and holding her niece’s hand for the last time before she was burned alive in a gas chamber. She pauses and wipes tears as she recalls unforgettable moments.
Olsson was one of six children born to a poor Hasidic family in Hungary. When the war started, the family was among 19 people who shared two rooms.
“We slept on wooden floors, but it was OK because I had a mother, a father, two brothers and three sisters,’’ she said.
On May 15, 1944, they were told to pack their bags and that they were going to a brick factory. The family, along with thousands of other Jews, marched seven kilometres to an endless row of boxcars.
Olsson recalls the bystanders who “lined up like they were at a Santa Claus parade watching’’ as Olsson and others marched.
“We have a responsibility not to be bystanders. You are condoning a negative behaviour,’’ she said.
Olsson said she and others were “packed like sardines” into a standing-room only boxcar with one pail of drinking water and another pail to be used as a toilet.
Olsson’s mother squatted in the corner, holding three of her grandchildren.
“I asked her why she was crying. She said, ‘I’m not crying for me. I have lived. I’m crying for all the children,’ ’’ Olsson said. Her mother was 49.
When the train stopped, Olsson knew she wasn’t at a brick factory. Instead, there was black smoke in the sky, electrical fence and German shepherd dogs everywhere and the smell of human flesh burning.
Olsson said she’s alive today because a prisoner whispered to her to let go of her niece’s hand and have her go with an older woman. The prisoner said this to her three times.
She didn’t understand why but she let go of her niece’s Judy’s hand.
“She went to the left. My sister and I went to the right,’’ she said. “That’s how they decided who lived, who died.’’
Olsson recalls turning around but her mother was gone. She had turned to the left.
“Not until the gates of Auschwitz did I understand why my mother cried when I was 10 and we would sit in a circle on the floor and she read about the Israelites being enslaved,’’ she said. “At that moment, I wish I could put my hands around my mom. It was too late.’’
Olsson and her sister were taken to work at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. There, they were forced to wake up at 4:30 a.m. each day and given a daily ration of stale bread and a metal mug of potato soup made from potato peels. They worked every day until they could no more.
In 1944 when Allied bombing could be heard, they lost their barracks and were forced into a hole in the ground.
“The straw acted as a toilet and it started to rot,’’ Olsson said.
Six days before Canadian and British troops liberated the camp, Olsson got ill with a fever and red spots on her body.
Olsson said the Nazis knew the Allies were close, but they choose to watch the prisoners die slowly.
“They got joy watching us die by the minute,’’ said Olsson, who said 500 prisoners were dying a day.
For Olsson, she recalls lying feverish ill on the ground thinking she wasn’t going to die.
“I still had fight in me. I couldn’t let them defeat me. If I die, who wins? The Nazis, the bullies,’’ she said.
“They stripped me of everything, human rights, human dignity. They stripped us of our families,’’ she said.
Olsson said she was freed from being killed, but she was not free from the crime against humanity. Olsson said Canadian soldiers liberated the camp at 11 a.m. and saved her from death. At 3 p.m. that day, all remaining prisoners were to be shot.
After liberation, Olsson moved to Sweden where she later married. Olsson experienced more sadness when her husband was killed by a drunk driver before his 38th birthday.
“I cannot change the past. I’ve learned to live with it,’’ she said. ‘‘The future lies in your children’s hands.’’
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~Bee Yourself Bee Original~
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