Itzak Rotem's Story

I was born on December 17, 1927 in a small town called Spincha (now Sapanta) in Romania. My parents were Berna and Sander Ruth.

My father made his living as a taxi driver. With a pair of horses and carriage he took people from Spincha on the 20 kilometer trip to Sighet, a small city of 25,000 residents.

My mother gave birth to 9 children. Only 7 survived because births were done at home without a professional midwife and proper sanitation.

My mother also worked as a seamstress from our home. Her sewing machine had a foot treadle. She sewed shirts and pants and then bartered with local farmers for potatoes, corn or sometimes even chickens. For a large family like ours bartering was very important.

Our standard of living was relatively good. We lived without electricity or running water. Our drinking water came from the well in our yard. Most families in our village drew their water from the distant river. There was enough food to make do. We raised a cow in our yard for milk. Owning a cow was seen as very prestigious at that time due to having additional milk products like cheese. We always ate corn bread. It was quite hard but on the other hand very healthy.

Jewish families in our town were all very religious. Most families had many children. There was no such thing as having sex with contraception.

Our family lived a tight religious lifestyle. Mezuzah were everywhere. We never drank or ate anything without a blessing. Not even a slice of bread. My mother always wore a head covering so you could not see her hair. My father was religious with a beard and wigs.

We celebrated every Jewish holiday at home.

Children in my family got up early each morning and first studied the Torah and prayer in "The Room" in our house. Then we walked to Spincha's public school to study regular subjects. The public classrooms were all crowded with children. Those teachers did not know what most children know today. When public school classes finished for the day, we walked home for lunch and then studied the Torah in The Room until the evening. We did not have the freedom to leave and play games.

Spincha was a large rural village Most residents were not Jews. Most Jewish families lived in the prominent and central part of the settlement. Many Gentile families lived in the surrounding periphery. Gentiles often worked for Jews because most local businesses were Jewish.

There was a famous Rabbi who lived in Spincha. Jews from all over Europe came to receive his blessing. Because this Rabbi lived in our neighborhood and had a son my age, I spent much of my youth growing up with his family.

After WWII started the Romanian government issued a decree that Jews were not allowed to move from locality to locality. The local government in our region then issued additional decrees designed to end the livelihood of the Jews. Many Jews made a living from trade between the rural localities and Sighet. When the government banned this trade it caused a huge problem for Jews who could no longer make a living. The result was hunger, especially with families who had many children.

Some Gentiles in our region wanted to take over all the Jewish property under the auspices of the Nazi Germans. The process was accelerated when Jews were forbidden to own shops and businesses. Gentiles would brutally break into Jewish shops and take them over. From that moment they became the new owners of that business or shop.

The Jews did not revolt because we were not armed and had no understanding of how to fight.

The next stage was the great famine. Dealing with it required selling our property, gold, dowries or anything of value that could be sold or exchanged for food.

In fairness, some Gentiles cooperated with Jewish families and secretly provided us with food. Because that was strictly forbidden by the government, these Gentiles risked their lives by betraying the Nazi-controlled administration.

Later a government decree prohibited all Jewish children from attending public schools. The government ordered that no student who was Jewish could have any contact with a public school starting the next day.

The children in my family continued to go to The Room for our studies. We studied only in our locality due to the government ban on moving.

One day in April of 1944, Jewish families in Spincha received a new decree from the government and Nazis. The decree required all Jewish families in our town to gather at the Spincha synagogue later that day. Each family would be allowed to take just one suitcase. What could a large family with 9 people do with one suitcase? What should we take? My mother sewed money inside our clothes, including any gold we had. Everything of value that could be sewn inside a garment was hidden this way. We tried to pack the best things in our house in the suitcase.

My mother baked tortillas, cut them into slices and dried them so that they would not spoil. The tortillas consisted of eggs, flour and sugar. They could nourish our family on the unknown journey ahead. We left our whole life behind. But we took part of it in our one suitcase.

When we arrived at Spincha's synagogue our family had difficulty gathering. We were put in a long line near the entrance. We were ordered to leave our carefully packed suitcase aside. That made the suitcases easy to loot. Some Gentiles from the village had been recruited for the job of transporting us to Sighet. Using carts pulled by horses the locals loaded and transported us to the city of Sighet. There we were taken to a ghetto neighborhood assigned for Jews only. Each family was assigned one room.

Among Sighet's population of 25,000, about 10,000 residents were Jewish.

The overcrowding in the ghetto was terrible. There were many children in a small place. The children slept on the floor with nothing to cover them. The worst challenge after they forced us into the ghetto was how to feed the children. It was forbidden to work for a living and children had to eat. With barbed wire fences that kept us in the ghetto some Gentiles who lived nearby took advantage of it. They would bring food in exchange for jewelry and the money hidden in our clothes. Nazi soldiers and Romanian police kept us inside the ghetto for about a month. On May 17, 1944 the Nazis ordered that all 14,000 Jews imprisoned in the Sighet ghettos be evacuated in trains.

There were many rumors about where we would be sent on the trains. To calm our brainwashed people the Germans spread rumors that we would be taken to a beautiful place with nice houses and good work.

At the time the German army controlled all Romanian railroads for transporting tanks, ammunition and soldiers to the battle front. Only when a train and track became available would Jews be sent for deportation. Between May 17-21 1944, the 14,000 Jews in the Sighet ghettos were packed into box cars designed for cattle. All four trains went to Auschwitz.

The inside of the box car was extremely crowded. There were no windows. The children, women and men were packed in so tight everyone had to be standing. There was no air to breathe because people were crammed into the train car until the air ran out. Because there was no toilet the stench was terrible. "What happens when a child collapses in her mother's arms?" Many children died during the extremely long trip.

I remember my whole family being around me in the train car. When I called "Dad" no one would answer because there were so many fathers. So I had to call my father by his first name.

A normal person cannot accept and understand the suffering we went through on the long trip jammed into these box cars. I cannot believe I am still alive to tell about it.

At the end of the train trip we arrived at Auschwitz and the box car doors were opened. As we finally got off the cattle car the first breath of fresh air caused many people to faint and collapse on each other.

As we stepped down from the cars German soldiers stood in front of us. They ordered us to line up in two long lines with men on one side and women and children on the other. Dr. Mengele and his emissaries were the ones who would carry out the selection. Dr. Mengele was present in my line. He stood with a stick in his hand. He gave orders to those standing in line by waving his stick - " to the right," and "to the left."

If you looked strong enough and were young then you would be selected to the left, to work - "for life."

If Dr. Mengele selected you to the right, you went straight to the gas chambers and crematorium, to "death".

The majority of the Jewish prisoners from Sighet, including most mothers, children and the elderly, were sent to the right. They thought they would be taken to the showers to wash and refresh. Before entering the shower room they were ordered to leave their clothes in a pile at the entrance. The shower room was a gas chamber where the lives of these family members ended.

My mother and five of my brothers were selected to the right.

As my Dad and I stood in Dr. Mangele's selection line, I had a sense some prisoners went to the right and others to the left. But I didn't understand that whoever is fit to work goes to one side and whoever is unfit goes to another side. If felt lucky to be with my father.

We were both chosen on the left side… to work. The person in line in front of me was chosen for the right side…. to death.

After undressing and leaving our clothes, we were given thin pajamas with white and blue stripes. The pajamas often did not match our body size so many prisoners exchanged with each other. We were also given canvas shoes. There was no consideration to speak of on the part of the Germans.

"Capos" were the Jewish prisoners at Auschwitz who worked for the Nazi Germans. They collected the prisoners clothes and searched inside for the jewelry and money.

Before entering the showers the Germans separated women and men to avoid any resistance because we were together.

After the selection process, prisoners who were selected for work were assigned to different jobs inside the camp. These jobs were always hard labor.

Our daily food was usually soup with vegetable leaves from beets. It was not tasty or nutritious. It tasted really disgusting. But when you are hungry you eat everything.

I lived in an Auschwitz prisoner barracks and worked with my father. I saw him suffer from laying railway tracks and building barracks for the Germans. We sometimes worked assembling kits to build barracks for the German army to keep their soldiers from the terrible cold. We often worked in the dark as working at night with electricity was forbidden. The winter of 1944-1945 was bitterly cold and snowy.

Beets were grown in an area within the camp and then used to make soup with a slice of bread on top of it. Sometimes the Nazis did not give us either. We had to work in hard labor and then eat lean and un-nutritious food. That did not contribute to the work at all.

The floor of our sleeping quarters was made of wood without any mattresses. Each bed was crowded and cramped. You could not move around in bed. Not a single night passed that someone would not die next to me. In the morning a farmer would come on a cart drawn by bulls. We would throw the dead bodies from our barracks into the cart to be taken to a landfill.

As prisoners we were skeletons of bones. Our hunger was great and we could not shower frequently.

All the time at Auschwitz I was with my Dad. Most of my brothers were selected to the right side in the selection process for the gas chambers. Even if one of them was still alive we could not meet him because the camp was divided by work professions. The Nazis didn't allow us to meet with other professions.

We always lived under heavy guard and inside barbed wire fences. We could not move, meet or organize with other professions. The camp organization was rigid. The Nazis deprived us of any cultural life.

Our daily schedule started with a morning count of prisoners. At the end of the work day there was another count to make sure no one had escaped.

Our forced labor had two purposes. First was to protect the Germans. They wanted Russian bomber crews to see there were Jewish workers in the labor camps. The second goal was hard labor to support the German army. All the factories were supervised by the German youth who volunteered for the German army and for the victory of Germany.

Each prisoner work crew was supervised by a "Capo", a Jew who ruled over us on behalf of the Germans. Capos were very cruel to us. But anyone chosen to be a Capo knew their life depended on following German orders. He had to obey so he could survive. Capos who did not obey German orders were given a quick trial and then immediately put to death. Some Capos chose the alternative of death.

To this day I remember my Capo. He was tall, handsome and very cruel to us. But he had no choice. His actions went against his honor. I personally find it difficult to blame him because he had no other option. He was not from Auschwitz.

The Germans did to our women what they wanted.

I remember some German soldiers sitting outside our barracks. They would turn to a Jew who was walking by and order him to run to another barracks. They calculated his speed as he ran down the road. Then they competed to see who would succeed in first sniping the Jew and killing him on the spot.

In early 1945 there was a rumor that the Russian front was approaching. First we heard gunshots in the distance. Then one morning we were ordered out of the barracks for a line up. The Germans selected young people who were strong on one side and put the weak on the other. Even some of the young men were so weak they could hardly lift their legs because of the famine. The weaker prisoners remained in the camp.

Anyone strong enough to walk was chosen to leave Auschwitz alongside the Germans to help dig their army trenches. We had a sense that whoever remained in the camp would eventually be killed so there would be no evidence left to tell the world.

I was chosen to go with the Germans. My father was chosen to stay in the camp. I suspected that prisoners who stayed might be killed during the night. The camp toilets were between the barracks. I snuck into the toilets and then moved back into the group of weak prisoners. I stayed with my father so we could be together and hopefully live tomorrow.

The next day, January 27, 1945, the Russian army began attacking Auschwitz at dawn. We first heard shots and shelling. Many remaining prisoners had climbed onto a hill inside the camp. In the back of the camp the Auschwitz train station was still being used by the Germans to retreat and escape. The Russians bombed the train station from the air while German soldiers and some Jews were still in it.

I remember seeing a Russian army officer who was a Jew. When he understood there were still Jews in the camp he ordered the Russian soldiers to stop firing. There were many Jews who survived the Holocaust but died on the day of liberation.

When the first Russian soldiers came into Auschwitz they were very cruel. They had not come to liberate us but to conquer Germany. We were in the middle.

The Russian's cruelty was manifested towards our women. Their soldiers had not seen a girl for a long time so they allowed themselves everything. Only the Jewish officers who served in the Russian army stopped that cruelty with our women.

Most of the Jews selected to go with the Germans were killed by Russian bombings. The prisoners who remained in the camp, mostly older men, were extremely weak. My father and I were among them. We started walking away from Auschwitz and toward the liberated front.

Auschwitz was near a Polish town whose residents had collaborated with the Nazis. We went into their houses and started looking for loaves of bread and clothes. We had big eyes when we collected three or four loaves of bread at once. We loaded what we collected onto a cart with a horse. Later on the road we were stopped by Russian soldiers who took the loot from us.

Traveling along the road we continued collecting things that German farmers had abandoned due to the war. Our journey to escape was dangerous. Many areas had been mined.

We eventually reached a city with a DP (Displaced Persons) camp the Jewish Agency informed us about. They took over a military camp and used it to help Auschwitz survivors gather and reorganize. At the DP camp they gave us clothes, food and other things. It was far from the battle front.

Our goal was to return to our house in our home town of Spincha. The DP camp eventually sent us to Spincha. We were among the first and few Jews who managed to return to our village.

When we arrived, we saw a family of Gentiles had taken over our house. I went to the family who now lived in our house. I introduced myself and my father. We explained this was our house. They told us that the Germans had sold them our house. But they left our house and many other Jewish survivors gathered with us inside it.

There was a rumor among the locals that a few Jews had survived and returned to the village. Some local residents began a series of attacks on us at night. They tried to kill us. We concentrated all the survivors together in one house and protected ourselves from attacks at night.

Every night we had to guard against attacks. Some locals constantly harassed us. We kept to ourselves until we came to the conclusion that it was better to leave our house in Spincha and move to the city of Sighet. There we could live among a larger population of surviving Jewish refugees.

The head of the Jewish committee in Sighet hosted us in a synagogue but we were then left to fend for ourselves. Other Jews would bring us food and clothes. Most importantly they gave us confidence. We started thinking and dealing with the question: "What do we do next? Where to go?".

My father had family members in the United States. We tried to contact them but there was no answer. The agency that coordinated Jewish refugees registered us for a trip to the United States but the trip did not ever happen.

Later we were moved to a refugee camp in Spain. There we were reunited for the first time with my older sister Sophie and my older brother Simcha. We learned for the first time that he had served in labor camps that worked with the army in mine clearance, a unit called "Monaco Taver".

In the selection at Auschwitz I lost my mother and five of my brothers. After surviving the Holocaust my older brother Simcha chose to move to the United States where he started a family. My father and older sister Sophie stayed and lived in the city of Sighet in Romania. I was the first in our family to choose to immigrate to Israel.