Testimony of Matilda (Shenvirt) Grinberger, born in Cicarovce, Czechoslovakia, 1924, regarding her experiences in Cicarovce, Auschwitz, Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen

Testimony of Matilda (Shenvirt) Grinberger, born in Cicarovce, Czechoslovakia, 1924, regarding her experiences in Cicarovce, Auschwitz, Hamburg and Bergen-Belsen Her childhood in an Orthodox religious family; receives a Jewish education privately. Outbreak of the war; hiding of their property in the home of neighbors; deportation to the Ungvar Ghetto; detention of her father; interrogation of her father; detention in a brick factory, for approximately five weeks; draft of young people to labor battalions in Ukraine; deportation on the first transport to Auschwitz; separation from her mother and her younger brother; selection; transfer to Hamburg on freight trains; life in Hamburg including disease, labor clearing rubble and unloading ships, and fasting on Yom Kippur and preparation of candles from margarine on Hanukkah; receives food from French and Belgian POWs; transfer on trains to Bergen-Belsen; camp life including mortality and the burial of people alive in a mass grave; hospitalization in the hospital; escape due to fear of transfer to Auschwitz; liberation by the British Army. Search for relatives; move back to Czechoslovakia; restitution of property; aliya to Israel, 1949.