Holocaust survivor shares her story

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“Seventy-two years ago, I marched out of Auschwitz,” Claire Heymann said to a roomful of guests last week at the Congregation B’nai Sholom-Beth David in Rockville Centre.

Among the remaining Holocaust survivors from the concentration camp, Heymann, 93, of Queens, shared her experience during the April 11 talk held on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In 1938, 14-year-old Heymann said she and her four siblings were kicked out of school in Grossheubach, a small town in Germany near Frankfurt, because they were Jewish. Their aunt from the United States tried to bring the family to America, she said, but they were rejected because the quota of German immigrants was too high.

Heymann worked in Grossheubach as a nanny until 1940, when she and 119 other young women were taken by the Gestapo — secret police of Nazi Germany — to Berlin. There, they were forced to wear yellow, star-shaped badges with a “J” on them, indicating they were Jewish.

She worked days and nights for Siemens, an automation company, under a Nazi supervisor. She recalled hearing the sounds of chimneys whistling nearby and smelling the fumes, which she later learned was the scent of burning flesh. The Nazis killed between 5 and 6 million Jews during the Holocaust, many of which they burned in ovens in the crematoria.

“We heard rumors they would take us away if we misbehaved, but we were young, and naïve,” Heymann told the attendees.

Two years passed before she and over a hundred other girls were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. “We didn’t know what Auschwitz was like,” she said. “Nobody knew.” When they arrived, they were lined up and divided; Heymann was grouped with her sister.

The Nazis took their clothing and belongings, cut their hair and tattooed them with numbers and symbols, she recalled. A number was tattooed on Heymann’s arm, along with a triangle, to symbolize that she was a Jew. The girls were given oversized clothing that had belonged to prisoners of war, and were put to work.

Heymann held a number of jobs in and around Block 9 of the concentration camp. She pulled weeds and carried rocks to help build roads, and also worked in a munitions factory, where civilians received newspapers. “I used to steal the newspapers to see what was going on,” Heymann said, adding that she was caught and beaten for doing so.

“She’s overcome obstacles that are so incomprehensible, yet she can still smile and be happy,” said Rockville Centre resident Vera Wurst, a close friend of Heymann. “This is a first-hand lesson for future generations.”

In 1944, Heymann recalled, an uprising in one of the camp’s powder rooms ended in tragedy. She and other girls were forced to watch those accused getting hanged. One of them was her friend, Heymann said, as she recalled her last words: “Revenge will come.”

As Soviet troops approached Auschwitz in January 1945, Nazis began evacuating the concentration camp, forcing nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in what has become known as “death marches.”

On the journey, Heymann and the prisoners who were still alive stopped at another concentration camp in Ravensbruck. She and her group hid in a barn, where Soviet soldiers discovered them. One of them realized they were Jewish inmates and, in Yiddish, told them they were safe. She returned to Grossheubach, where she was reunited with her remaining sister.

Only eight of the 120 young women who worked for Siemens survived, she said, and only three, including she and her sister, are still alive. Heymann’s parents, two other sisters and brother did not make it back from Wurzburg, where they were taken.

“I still can’t believe it happened,” Heymann’s daughter Helen Siegel told the Herald, as she showed black-and-white photographs of a younger Heymann. Her mother did not talk about what happened, even to her, Siegel added, until she was an adult.

“The strength and courage to tell such a story so we shouldn’t forget is very compelling,” said Rabbi Marc Gruber, of Central Synagogue-Beth Emeth, noting that there aren’t many Holocaust survivors left.

In 1946, Heymann moved to the United States, where she married her husband and raised a family in New York. She has gone back to Grossheubach, but has never returned to Auschwitz.

“There’s so much hate out there,” Heymann said. “I hope people learn something from this, so it may never happen again.”