5 Holocaust Survivors: Their Heart-Wrenching Stories in Their Own Words

#2 Holocaust Survivor Rachel Gleitman

Survivor Testimony: Escaping the Auschwitz Gas Chambers - Rachel Gleitman

Rachel (Rae) Gleitman was born in Muncacs Czechoslovakia in 1923. In 1939, the Germans sent her brother to labor brigade at the battlefront. She and the rest of her family were forced onto cattle cars and deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In January 1945, as the Soviets approached Auschwitz, she and other prisoners were sent on a death march.

Born in 1923 in Muncacs, Czechoslavakia,  Gleitman was 19 when the Germans invaded her country. The stories of most of these survivors are almost identical with varying degrees of suffering_things like expelling them from public offices and schools, devoiding them of rights, dumping them into ghettos and transporting them to death camps as their final destination.

Gleitman recollects the painful moments when they, most of them women and children, were marched through the city and headed to the station to be transported.

“We could see the curtains of the homes move, faces peeking from the windows; no one came out to say ‘what are you doing to these people, what did they do to you?’ ” she recounts.

After going through all types of oppression inflicted upon by the Germans and local Slovaks, Gleitman, like thousands of others ended up in Auschwitz.

A malfunctioning showerhead saved life

rachel gleitman holocaust survivor

(Left to right) Eva Ebin, Rachel Gleitman, AND VERA Eden. Escaped death together at Auschwitz and met after 70 years.
VANESSA PARKER/HERALD
In May 1945, a showerhead that was supposed to shower fumes of poisonous gas malfunctioned hours before the camp was liberated by the allied forces. All these three women from Munkacs, Czechoslovakia just brushed with death and survived at Auschwitz.

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