Pearl Samet (Part IV)

What happened to the other members of your family?

One sister was 21 years old at the time. It was Isru Chag, two or three weeks before liberation, when she contracted black fever. She was short and skinny and she just lay there. We needed to get her something to eat.

While sorting through the packages off the transport from Lodz, I found some diamonds. A Greek man used to come around to the camps. I offered this man one of the diamonds if he would bring some food for my sister. He took the diamond happily and brought us a bowl of meat and potatoes. My sister could barely eat. She ate some of the food and we finished the rest.

I remember that it was her birthday, March 17, and she said to me, “Do you think I will ever have another birthday?” She lay there in the children’s block with all the other people with black fever. They had terrible diarrhea. There was a long hallway to get to the toilets. By morning, the hallway looked like a toilet. They were too weak to get to the bathroom. If they found the “culprits” who made the mess, they would beat them for not cleaning it up.

Another two days with black fever and my sister was so weak, she couldn’t stand up. She was taken to the camp hospital. I went there every day and I would peek inside to see when I could run in to visit her. One morning, I arrived at the hospital and my sister was not in her bed. I found her lying on the floor — dead.

My married sister held out until Erev Sukkos before the death march, when she gave up and died.

How long did you walk in the death march?

On January 18, 1945, we left Auschwitz. By then, my sister was very sick, she had fever. But the Germans said, whoever could stand on their feet should go, so we went. We walked for three days and three nights. We walked and walked and walked. Once during the night we sat down to rest. At least my sister and I had shoes. We even had a coat. There were those who didn’t even have shoes, and they looked for a shmatte to cover themselves. The death march was horrific. Things got worse and worse.

Toward the end of the death march, we saw the Americans coming, but the Russians reached us first.

How did you keep your emunah through the horrors of the Holocaust?

Every day on our way to work, we quietly sang songs. This kept our spirits up.

On the transport from the ghetto to Auschwitz, they took my father’s tefillin. My mother comforted him, saying, “Der Bashefer ken noch helfen. Es ken zich noch osdrayen.” (“Hashem can still help. Everything can still turn out for the best.”)

What motivated you to go on?

I suppose, we were young and we wanted to live. I never thought about such things. I was never able to speak about what happened to me during the war. I never spoke about it to my family. I had one brother who was in Dachau, one brother in Auschwitz and one in a labor camp. Even though my children knew about this, we didn’t discuss it. There are stories and stories, but it hurts to tell them over.

Usually, when someone loses a parent, they sit shivah for him or her and they have a kever to go to. We never had these things and the hurting feeling has stayed with us our whole lives.

What can you tell children today?

Children, appreciate everything in life. Appreciate your parents and grandparents. We didn’t get an education like you have today. Kein ayin hara, what there is today in every sense, both materially and in Yiddishkeit, you should not take for granted. Continue on in the Yiddishe path and appreciate it.