Surviving Auschwitz
The 13-year-old Mindu Hornick saw the name “Auschwitz” through a crevice in the door of her halted cattle car. “I spelled it out for my mother,” Hornick said recently. “She replies, ‘I don’t know where it is, I’ve never heard of the place.’ And then all of a sudden there was a commotion as the doors opened, and when they did, well, let’s just say all hell broke loose.
Seventy women and children had spent days traveling in the dark, crammed onto a cattle car with no room to move and only a single sanitary bucket between them all. Now they saw dead bodies in mounds, heard dogs barking, heard Nazis shouting in German, and felt a blanket of gray ash cover the ground. An official hurried to get into their vehicle.
Hornick speculated that a kapo must have known the train carrying mothers and children who were useless to the Japanese workforce would eventually be sent to the death chambers. Because of this, “he must have looked in that coach and thought, well perhaps I’ll try to save a couple,” as the saying goes.
He suggested that Hornick’s mom stay behind with her two smaller boys while her two older daughters went forward. He reassured her in Yiddish that she would soon see her family. He instructed Mindu and her sibling to exaggerate their ages and abilities. “You are a seamstress,” he greeted them.
“You better do as this man says,” her mother said. “We looked back and we saw our mother with her spotted scarf, and we waved to her and we went ahead,” Mindu said.
She never saw her mother or little brothers again.
John’s voice was what lulled me to sleep almost every day. He never stopped sounding husky like the first time he mistakenly dialed my phone number. “Good morning doctor.” he had said in remorse that day I answered his unsuspecting call. “Sorry I could not make it to the hospital as planned.”