Behind The News
Why Eugene broke his 50-year silence on the death camps
Eugene Black was just 16 when he realised he was no longer regarded as a human being.
Torn away from his loving family he had no chance to kiss his parents and sisters goodbye before their lives were ruthlessly wiped out.
He was to become simply a number, forced to work as a slave and struggling to survive in horrific conditions.
That he survived at all when so many of his fellow Jews were methodically slaughtered in Nazi death camps is nothing short of remarkable.
And not only did he survive the holocaust but he went on to build a successful life, enjoying a long and happy marriage and raising four children with the woman he describes as his saviour'.
Now living in Pool-in-Wharfedale Mr Black, 80, has revisited the camps where so many lives were destroyed and although he can never forgive the people who committed the atrocities he talks of his respects for the young generation of Germans who are trying to come to terms with their country's past.
For 50 years Mr Black would not talk about the horrors he had seen and been subjected to - but his silence was broken when he was invited to speak at Menwith Hill.
Now he regularly gives talks at schools and other organisations in a bid to ensure that the past cannot be forgotten.
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| Eugene (half hidden, centre right) among prisoners at the death camp. |
Born Schwarcz, in an area of Czechoslovakia which had previously been part of the Hungarian Empire and which reverted to Hungarian control in 1938, he had enjoyed a happy and unremarkable childhood as one of five children.
But all that was to change with the outbreak of war in 1939. His older brother Alexander, who was a young officer in the Czech army escaped to Russia with his unit where he continued to fight. One of his three sisters died in 1941, and it was only later that Eugene came to the conclusion that she had probably committed suicide as she learned of the horrors which were unfolding across Europe.
If she had been afraid of what was to come it was with justification. Within days of the German occupation in 1944 all Jews in the town were forced to live in the ghetto and to be clearly marked out from the rest of the population.
"I recollect my father coming home and telling us that we would need to wear a yellow armband and the Star of David, but everything was going to be all right," he said.
But one day the young Eugene returned home from school to find his family being herded into a German army lorry.
"I saw my mother being hit on the face and being pushed into the lorry," he said. The Schwarcz family, along with many others were ordered on to a cattle wagon, to begin a journey which would ultimately lead to death for most of them.
"We were crammed in and had to stand up or sit down. The train set off and the sound of the engine is living with me to this present day."
After three days the train slowed down at a platform and its occupants were ordered out.
"I didn't know where I was but I soon learned it was Auschwitz-Birkenau," he said.
"I immediately got separated - females to the left and males to the right. Within five minutes I saw my mother and two sisters marching away. I didn't have the opportunity to kiss them or to shake their hands - and that was the last time I saw them.
"A few minutes later I got separated from my father. He went to the left and I was pointed to the right. I couldn't shake his hand or kiss him, and he went like my mother and two sisters straight to the gas chamber."
Young and fit, Eugene had been warned by a friend of his father's to lie about his age, so he added an extra two years on.
"If you were too young you couldn't work in the labour camps and you would be killed in the gas chambers," he said.
Eugene and the others who had been chosen for slave labour were ordered to strip and were then disinfected and had their hair shaved off. They were then ordered to put on the underwear of people who had already been killed.
"It is very difficult to imagine what sort of state my mind was in. I was not aware of whether I was coming or going - there was no question of doing something about it or trying to resist."
"We were issued with striped uniforms and registered, and I became just a prisoner - 55546. We lost our identities, we just became a number."
"From there we were marched to a block which we got billeted in. It was dark, and as we marched I noticed terrible flames and smoke coming out from two chimneys, and the smell was terrible.
"The next day a friend of my father's said to me: "I am sorry to tell you, but the smoke and smell we experienced last night was our own families burning. We won't be seeing them again."
"That was my introduction to Auschwitz -Birkenau. Very quickly I realised I was not a human being any longer."
The next 11 months were a living hell for the young man who was shunted between camps until he was finally freed from Bergen Belsen by the British.
He was not in Auschwitz long before he was moved to Buchenwald, where he would live in block 62. From there he was taken to the camp Dora where he was to work as a slave labourer on Hitler's V2 rocket programme.
Forced to work 12 to 14 hours a day with no food or sanitation in the tunnels he describes his life in Dora as hell'.
After working their shift the men would be forced to queue up and be counted before being allowed to go to their barracks and queue again for food which was sparse and rotten.
At night they were crammed onto beds of straw. The horrendous conditions quickly took their toll on prisoners.
"Three months in Dora was the survival rate," he said." Last year when I got my official records from the Red Cross I found I had actually spent five months there."
He remembers the debilitating effect it had on him all the same. Previously fit and healthy he lost three stones and all hope.
"I lost all my dignity. Mentally my mind was destroyed, and physically, slowly but surely, I was going downhill.
"Quite often I felt perhaps it was better if I was taken on the same journey in Birkenau as my mother, father and sisters."
Eventually his time at Dora came to an end because he was no longer healthy enough to perform the hard labour.
"Dora didn't have a gas chamber - so I was moved to another camp," he said.
There he was helping to build new barracks to accommodate an influx of prisoners from the East. He became seriously ill with double pneumonia, and woke up days later to find himself in a bed in a makeshift hospital.
He has no doubt that he is alive today thanks to a humane German officer who had been posted to the camp after being wounded on the Eastern front.
"That man saved my life, " he said. "He was a good German. All my life I always felt that I owed my life to that German doctor. Just as there were Germans who committed these terrible crimes there were still good people among them.
"Over the years I learned that there were thousands of them - not only Germans, but people of the countries that the Germans occupied, who did help the Jews and risked their own lives."
As the war was drawing to a close Eugene and others were shunted around Germany until they ended up in Bergen Belsen.
"In Belsen we became just zombies - people were dying like flies," he remembers. "I recollect going through dead bodies' pockets to see if I could find something to eat. If I could find a bit of grass I would eat it."
"That became a real living hell - there was no hope, no future."
He weighed just six stone when he was finally released.
"It was a miracle when we got liberated by the British army on April 15 - Sunday afternoon, three o'clock. The scenes I witnessed in the first two hours I will never forget. Mayhem was let loose.
"The Kapos were rounded up. they were taken to the second floor. Next thing you saw they were thrown out from the top window with rope and sheets round their necks, and they were torn to bits for the cruelty they had given us."
Eugene, who ended up working as an interpreter for the British army, managed to trace his older brother, Alexander, who had survived the war.
And it was while he was working for the British that Eugene met his future wife, Annie, who had just come over from England.
The couple were married back in England and enjoyed a long happy marriage until Annie's death several years ago.
"I was very fortunate that I met someone like Annie," he said. "I can honestly say to you that she was my saviour. Sadly I have not got my wife physically here, but mentally, she will be in my heart until we meet again."
It was through his wife that Eugene's faith in God was restored, and he converted to Christianity with a baptism at Menston Methodist church in 1965.
"Annie used to take the children to church or Sunday school. I used to go and take them but would never go in.
"For 20 years God didn't exist. Then one day after going there I thought to myself here I am, I have got four lovely children and a marvellous wife. She is bringing them up as Christians and I am not a part of that - wake up Eugene. It is very important to belong."
Now after half a century where he could not speak about the horrors of the camps he is determined to play his part in ensuring that the Holocaust cannot be forgotten or denied.
He has revisited the camps and has spoken with young Germans who were also visiting in an attempt to try to understand their country's past.
"In the early years I was very bitter and resentful towards the Germans," he said. "But I was very, very impressed with the young Germans I met."
"They behave very similarly to us, the survivors who went through this living hell. They have wondered how such a cultured, intelligent, prosperous race could commit such crimes against humanity.
"They themselves are searching for answers."
"What happened is unforgettable and unforgivable. I cannot forgive, because I cannot forgive for my family who perished, or for the millions of others - but I can honestly say I have been very impressed by the young people I have met in Germany.
He believes firmly in the importance of visiting schools to ensure that what happened cannot be forgotten.
"If we can only convince ten per cent of them to remember the past then perhaps things won't happen again. But then genocide continues all over the world - in Bosnia and Darfur and other parts of the world where innocent people are being deprived of innocence and life.
"Sadly as humans we are very cruel."
9:57am Thursday 3rd April 2008
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