Testimony of Bracha Edit (Levinger) Fertz, born in Tasnad Blaja, Romania, 1926, regarding her experiences in Tasnad Blaj, the Simleul Sivaniei Ghetto, Auschwitz and Goerlitz

Testimony of Bracha Edit (Levinger) Fertz, born in Tasnad Blaja, Romania, 1926, regarding her experiences in Tasnad Blaj, the Simleul Sivaniei Ghetto, Auschwitz and Goerlitz Life before the war; Orthodox family. Annexation to Hungary, 1940; order to close businesses; concentration of the Jewish men and shearing of their beards by force; payment of a bribe so the brother will not be drafted to the army; hunger and no livelihood; German occupation, 1944; removal of the Jews from their homes and their detention in a local school; transfer to a train station; the local population watches the deportation; life in the Simleul Sivaniei Ghetto under the open sky; suggestion by the German officer to adopt him as a brother; refusal of his mother; deportation in a transport to Auschwitz; camp life including separation from his family, June 1944; life with 12 girls in a barrack; confiscation of shoes by a Kapo; evacuation of a Czeckoslovakian family camp; slapped by Josef Mengele; order of Mengele for her extermination; escape by crawling from the camp hospital; transfer with inmates to Goerlitz, September 1944-May 1945; camp life including labor in German industry; receives floggings and her teeth are removed because she stole potatoes; receives food from her German foreman; liberation by the Red Army, May 1945. Attempted rape by Red Army soldiers; return to Romania via Czechoslovakia; marriage; aliya to Israel, 1950.