Thursday, February 16, 2017

RelatioNet SH SH 31 SA RO


RelatioNet  SH SH 31 SA RO
Shyndi Shweemer
Holocaust Project Katzanelson High School 2017
Kfar Saba, Israel
e-mail:
mayaazoulay52@gmail.com
kaufmanshahar@gmail.com

First name: Shyndi
Last name: Shweemer
City of birth: Satu-Mare
Country of birth: Romania





Satu-Mare
After Satu Mare was reannexed to Hungary in 1940, the civil rights and economic activities of the Jews were restricted, and in summer 1941, "foreign" Jews were deported to Kamenets-Podolski, where they were murdered by Hungarian and German troops.
In 1944, the Jewish population was forced into the Satu Mare ghetto.The majority of men were sent to forced labor battalions, and the others were deported to the extermination camps in Poland, where the majority of them was murdered by the Nazis. Six trains left Satu Mare for Auschwitz-Birkenau starting May 19, 1944, each carrying approximately 3300 people. In total, 18,863 Jews were deported from Satu Mare, Carei and the surrounding localities. Of these, 14,440 were killed.
Only a small number of the survivors returned to Satu Mare after the war, but a number of Jews belonging to culturally different groups from all parts of Romania settled in the city. 

The majority of them later emigrated to Israel. 

By 1970 the town’s Jewish population numbered 500, and in 2011, only 34 Jews remained.

In 2004, a Holocaust memorial was dedicated in the Decebal Street Synagogue's courtyard. Aside from the synagogues, two Jewish cemeteries also remained.








Interview with Shyndi Shweemer

"I was 13 when the Germans invaded our town, the sanctions started and we had to wear the yellow patch.

We were a poor, but happy family. I had 2 older siblings, a sister 5 years older than me and a brother 10 years older. My father was the sole breadwinner of the family and mother was a housewife. As a child, I had only one Jewish friend and the rest of my friends were gentiles. I never felt different among my friends for being a Jew.
My father had a Fascist friend whose granddaughter was my best friend. When we had to evacuate our house, my father left all our jewelry with his friend. When I returned after the war, he gave them all back to me.When the Germans entered our village, my father was wearing the medals he had got during World War I. Thanks to these medals; we got special benefits no other Jewish family could get. For instance, my father who was a shoemaker got the all the 
.materials he needed in order to continue working
When they took all the Jewish families, we were allowed to stay in our house because we were privileged.
Unlike many others ghettos, ours was in an open field. We were allowed to take only one set of extra clothes and supplies for 2-3 days. When we arrived, we looked for sticks and improvised some sort of a tent which became our "new home" for a month before we were deported .
The reason we were deported with the rest of the Jewish families and had to leave our home was that our new Nazi mayor was assigned and he cancelled all our privileges.
The day of the transport arrived. We all thought we were relocated to the east to work and contribute our share to the war effort. We were told that the elderly would take care of the children while the rest of us would work. It was the forth year of the war. There were 3 transports from our village. I was part of the second one. From the first transport no one survived.
We were on the train for 3 days. They crammed so many of us that there was room only to stand or sit. Some of the people died on the way. My family was lucky to survive because my father's friend managed to smuggle us a bundle of food before we got on the train.
We arrived at Birkenau on June 8th.
They were in a frenzy of killing as many Jews as they could, that the Zonderkomando  couldn't keep up with the masses of corpses piling up in the crematoriums. Therefore, they  
 .burned people in ditches they dug
I still remember to this day the horrifying smell the moment they opened the wagons
and then the people with the striped outfits arrived
They told us to line up in two separate groups, women on one side and men on the other.
We were ordered to leave our belongings and that later we 
 .would get them back
We started walking. My sister and I were before my mother who was helping an old woman who couldn’t walk. The moment my mother saw my father being taking away, she  
 .started crying
I can still hear her words:"what's happening? Where are they taking them? When can we see them..?"
And then we saw him standing there erect in his uniform. He said nothing, just moved his finger (him – Josef Mengale), left, right, left, right. My sister and I were directed to the left, my mother and the old lady – to the right.
The last words I remember my mother saying to my sister "watch the girl". As a child, I simply could not understand what was going on and why no one was doing anything or resisting.
We were walking in two silent lines. Each was waiting for his verdict – who to life and who to the gas chambers. We were standing there without realizing what was going on and where so many of us were headed. We could not even figure what that stench was. No one imagined it was the smell of burned bodies. There was one Polish inmate who did not stop screaming the number 16. At first we did not understand what it meant, later we realized he meant we should pretend we were 16 years old. Luckily, I was not asked about my age. Had I been asked, I would have said 13, I was raised by parents never to lie. Mengale was standing, smiling at us whistling some opera tunes while motioning with his finger – left, right, left, right.
We got to the showers and we were ordered to strip naked.
They told us to pay attention where we were leaving our things, because we would later come back to take them. After the shower, they gave us those striped clothes and shaved our heads. So many of us were shy, since we had never stripped naked in public. There was a soldier standing and whipping whoever was hesitant for even a second.
We were all crammed into a big empty hall. We were there for three days, with no food. Then there was a line-up and then they gave us some liquid they called "soup". During one of the line-ups, there was a selection. I was holding my sister's hand so firmly, it felt like my hand was melting in hers. Both of us were put on a train. The journey to Riga was a long and excruciating one. Upon arriving to Riga, I was separated from my sister. When asked who had a profession my sister pretended she was a dental technician, so she could get us more food. That was the last time I had ever seen my sister. I was left alone in the world after losing both my parents just two weeks before that. I cried day and night, nothing to live for anymore.
 .A line up again
A shave again.
An empty space just like in Birkenau.
They chose 500 girls and we were taken up to the mountains, where we had to cut trees and make our own huts and beds, we got food once a day. After four weeks, we were sent back to Dudengham and then – another selection.  Here we had to do other things; we had to  empty ammunition from warehouses before the red army arrived to the front. The Polish capo told us that if we had worked efficiently,  they would have sent us back to our town. Once, I managed to sneak another group which was supposed to be sent back to our town , but I was caught by the capo. I was beaten almost to death by him, however, what hurt the most were not the beatings, but the unthinkable fact that a Jew would be able to do such a thing to another Jew.
The girls picked me up from the floor and put me on the bed. Every day someone else brought me a ration of food until I could stand on my feet again. After a while I was sent to Shtuthof in Germany and from there to Gluven, where I was for 8 months. The conditions there were better. We would get bread and tea every morning and soup when we came back from work. Just across from our camp, there was a camp of the Hitleryugend. Looking back I realize that during the whole time in the camp I was never afraid, because I always felt I had nothing to lose, and no one to fight for.
I was 15 when I was liberated. On the day of the liberation, a soldier gave me the most precious gift ever- a loaf of bread.
After the liberation, I came back to my home town. I married someone who was much older than me, and gave birth to 2  
 .girls. After divorcing him, I immigrated to Israel
No one here was interested in knowing anything about what we had gone through. Many even asked in contempt:"How come you didn’t resist? Why did you allow them to take you like sheep to the slaughter?" How could they even begin to understand something I myself couldn’t comprehend. That’s why I had to go back. It took me almost 40 years to find the courage within me to go back there and maybe find the answer to those questions asked decades ago. Stepping on the platform in Birkenau, triggered back the sights, the smell, the screams and the finger indicating left, right. But no answer to the question tormenting me to this day.
After several years in Israel I met my current husband- Aba, whom I had known since we were both kids… and the rest is history."