HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR - IRMA HANNER
My name is Irma Hanner. I was born in Greystone, Germany 1930. I am a survivor of the Holocaust. Out of 250 school students, only 6 survived I was lucky enough to be one of the six. This is my story.
I went to a Jewish school in Greystone, next to a synagogue. One night in 1938, when I was 8, the synagogue was burnt down and part of the school was destroyed because it was attached to the synagogue. That night, the Nazi’s burnt down every Synagogue in every German city. My mother was informed that night that we couldn’t go back to school. My father was already gone.
After a few months, they fixed up the school and we could go back. We still had school until 1940, partially. During the years that we did have school, this was when, for me, the trauma really started because every day, children disappeared. We did not know what happened to them, nobody knew. Close friends and teachers were gone. This horrific experience interfered with my learning I was taught, but nothing went into my head because I was too distraught from my experiences. I always used to come home upset.
My mother was Jewish and communistic, which was not a good combination during World War II, especially in Germany. So, she was arrested one day in November 1939. I was not home. I was at a neighbours playing with them. They took her away and when I came home, the house was empty. I never saw my mother again. I was home alone for two days sitting in the corner crying, until my aunty came. In those days, there were no telephones in every house. So, she came after two days to visit us and found me.
At the age of nine, having lost my mother, I went to live with my aunty. She had married a Christian man in 1933. Shortly afterwards, the racial law came out and her marriage was really not allowed. But my uncle never left her. So, my uncle and aunty were punished by the Nazi’s because my uncle wouldn’t divorce my aunty. He had to lose his profession. He was a musician he used to play in big orchestra’s. He had to work in a forced labor camp.
They had to shift from a very nice area to a working class factory area. They had factories on the bottom and flats on the top. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be alive and neither would my aunty; he saved my life and my aunty’s.
In 1940, the school was eventually closed. There were no young people left; no children left. My aunty had to work in an ammunition factory and my uncle continued to work in the forced labor factory. I was always home alone. I used to read a lot and play games that my aunty bought me. I was alone all the time.
On the bottom of the building, there was an ice cream parlour. The man was Italian. I used to always have ice cream in his place. One day he said: “Sorry, but I can’t give you any more ice cream. I’m not allowed to sell ice cream to Jewish people.” He was upset, but he did sell it to me a few times. The Nazi’s warned him that if he didn’t stop, they would send him back to Italy.
I used to walk down the street with the Star of David pinned to my chest and the children used to bash me with a stick. They used to hit me and spit on me as well. They used to call me “bloody Jew”. It was terrible, it was terrible.
I was always lonely, so my aunty bought me a little frog that I could look after I had to feed it and take care of it. But it wasn’t a very good idea. I needed to get out, I needed someone to talk to. I needed a friend.
One of the owners of the factory (a Nazi, I later discovered) was suspicious because every night at 7:00pm, the Gestapo came to check on my aunty and uncle. They had to be home and they were not allowed to have any friends over. So, that man got very suspicious and wanted to know what was happening in our flat.
One day, I decided to go out walking and covered my Star of David with my school satchel. I knew it was dangerous, I was told not to do it, but I was frightened to be hurt both physically and mentally by the nonJewish children. I felt somebody following me. I wasn’t sure, so I continued walking. About three streets later, I uncovered my Star of David, and the person who had followed me came up to me and spoke to me in a deep, nasty tone: “You will pay for ever being a Jew; you are a disgrace to all of mankind,”.
A week after that, the doorbell rang at 7:00 o’clock in the morning. Gestapo. It was the Gestapo. My uncle was already at walk and my aunty was just ready to go to work. So, one came, the Gestapo, and ordered my aunty to pack a suitcase for me.
He took me downstairs, where another Gestapo was. I was 12 years old. I was shipped off to a camp in Greystone.
My uncle protested, but it didn’t help much. My uncle went to the Gestapo and tried to adopt me and get me out of it, but they refused.
In 1942, they started the transports; no one knew where they went. In late Spring in the same year, I, 12 years old and alone, was put on the transport which was destined for Auschwitz. However, they took me off the transport and put me on another transport which went to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp and ghetto in Czechoslovakia instead.
When I arrived I saw families being separated; children were separated from their mothers and fathers, husbands and wives were separated. I was all by myself. I didn’t know anyone there no friends, no mother, no father, nobody.
I had to walk by myself for about kilometre into the camp with my suitcase because the train stopped outside the camp. I had to then stand in the que to get assessed.
I was allotted into a room with 20 other girls and one elderly lady. They gave us a building with bunks and we had a small kitchen downstairs. We had no hot water, only cold. Food was starvation; we were given a loaf of bread for eight people a day. Once a week, we were given either a piece of sausage or a piece of cheese.
I had to work. I worked in a garden, like a small farm, growing vegetables for the S.S (not for us). Then, I had to go and pick chestnuts from trees, big trees. I loved it because we were marched out of the camp and there was a whole ally of chestnut trees.
I had one friend from school with her parents, but one and a half years later, they were eventually sent to Auschwitz because Theresienstadt was not a camp where people stayed permanently; it was a transit camp.
At any time, there were approximately 40,000 people in Theresienstadt. We had a lot of diseases because we were kept with so many people, with no home, with no hygiene. We had typhus. We had lice. We had bed bugs. We had encephalitis, which was bought in by infected mosquitoes and affected the nervous system. I had that sickness. I don’t know how I got out of it, but I did.
I was surrounded by many people, but I was alone; I felt that I was alone.
One day, 11 young men escaped, so they took all 40,000 of us and marched us out of the camp, in the middle of winter, and they told us: “You won’t go back to eat or sleep until we find them.” And they did catch them, the 11 young men. They hung them in front of us and announced: “Let that be a warning to you, there’s no use to escape because you won’t make it; we won’t let you.” We were there all day and all night in the freezing cold. A lot of people collapsed. Eventually, they marched us back into the camp.
Under mounting pressure to account for the fate of Jews deported to Theresienstadt, an order came from Berlin and the Nazi’s agreed to a visit from the Red Cross in the summer of 1944. They wanted to make a film about Theresienstadt concentration camp. There was Jewish man from Berlin who was a famous filmmaker. They ordered him to help them make a film; a disgusting film.
Conducting an elaborate hoax, they created the facade of a vibrant and happy Jewish community. They put tables in the square (there was a big square there) loaded with food, they had merrygorounds, the men had to play soccer. Music was played; everybody had to act happy. It was all filmed for the Red Cross. The tables were loaded with food; all the children were sitting there. Some young people smuggled the food in their shirts to eat later. They stopped the filming and dragged them away, never to be seen again. Once the filming was finished, the food was taken away we were not allowed to eat it. I was hoping to be in the film. I thought that maybe my aunty would see me. They told us that it would be broadcasted in Germany and to the rest of the world to show what paradise it was there.
I began to become very ill; I had very bad tonsillitis and a high fever. The elderly lady in my building called a Jewish doctor in the camp who had some instruments. He removed my tonsils, but he had no medicine to give me, so he put a clothes peg on my tongue so that my tongue wouldn’t go inwards, and he took my tonsils out. It was a miracle that I survived.
In 1944, they sent 11 transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. On the way, the Russians went to Auschwitz, so their transports all had to come back to Theresienstadt. When they opened the trains, the Jewish people in Theresienstadt were all standing there. 3⁄4 of them on the trains were dead no water, no food, horrible. Young boys looked like men of 80; it was horrible, it was horrible.
In the last 4 months, they had an order from Berlin to liquidate all Jews in Theresienstadt. The ones that they killed by cremating them, were put in boxes. One day, we were told that we were to take the boxes and throw the ashes into the river, so that there would be no evidence.
Theresienstadt was liberated on 8th May, 1945. The Russians marched in the middle of the night. No one knew what was going to happening to us whoever survived. There were only 150 young people who survived, including me.
My aunty and uncle in Dresden ran away on the 14th February, when the city was completely burning. They ran away to the country and survived. I had another uncle who
survived in the English army for all six years of being in the military. I was lucky that I had my aunty she found me after the war through the Red Cross.
In January 1949, I migrated with my aunty and uncle to Australia. There, I met my future husband. In 1953, we got married. He was the sole survivor of the Holocaust from his family in Poland.
I was full of hate after the war, full of hate; I really was. I lost my childhood, I lost my youth, I lost my family.
For years after the war, I couldn’t cry and now, now I can’t stop it. A lot of people who helped me, didn’t make it themselves. Innocent people were killed. Something like this should never ever happen again.
We all belong to the same human eye; the same human race. No difference of the colour of our skin, or the shape of our eyes, or our ethnic, or our religious background should make someone more superior than the other; we may be different but no one is superior. What hurts one human being, also hurts another.
I lost my husband 29 years ago and I decided 19 years ago to share my experiences to the world so that nothing like the Holocaust will ever happen again.
I went to a Jewish school in Greystone, next to a synagogue. One night in 1938, when I was 8, the synagogue was burnt down and part of the school was destroyed because it was attached to the synagogue. That night, the Nazi’s burnt down every Synagogue in every German city. My mother was informed that night that we couldn’t go back to school. My father was already gone.
After a few months, they fixed up the school and we could go back. We still had school until 1940, partially. During the years that we did have school, this was when, for me, the trauma really started because every day, children disappeared. We did not know what happened to them, nobody knew. Close friends and teachers were gone. This horrific experience interfered with my learning I was taught, but nothing went into my head because I was too distraught from my experiences. I always used to come home upset.
My mother was Jewish and communistic, which was not a good combination during World War II, especially in Germany. So, she was arrested one day in November 1939. I was not home. I was at a neighbours playing with them. They took her away and when I came home, the house was empty. I never saw my mother again. I was home alone for two days sitting in the corner crying, until my aunty came. In those days, there were no telephones in every house. So, she came after two days to visit us and found me.
At the age of nine, having lost my mother, I went to live with my aunty. She had married a Christian man in 1933. Shortly afterwards, the racial law came out and her marriage was really not allowed. But my uncle never left her. So, my uncle and aunty were punished by the Nazi’s because my uncle wouldn’t divorce my aunty. He had to lose his profession. He was a musician he used to play in big orchestra’s. He had to work in a forced labor camp.
They had to shift from a very nice area to a working class factory area. They had factories on the bottom and flats on the top. If it wasn’t for him, I wouldn’t be alive and neither would my aunty; he saved my life and my aunty’s.
In 1940, the school was eventually closed. There were no young people left; no children left. My aunty had to work in an ammunition factory and my uncle continued to work in the forced labor factory. I was always home alone. I used to read a lot and play games that my aunty bought me. I was alone all the time.
On the bottom of the building, there was an ice cream parlour. The man was Italian. I used to always have ice cream in his place. One day he said: “Sorry, but I can’t give you any more ice cream. I’m not allowed to sell ice cream to Jewish people.” He was upset, but he did sell it to me a few times. The Nazi’s warned him that if he didn’t stop, they would send him back to Italy.
I used to walk down the street with the Star of David pinned to my chest and the children used to bash me with a stick. They used to hit me and spit on me as well. They used to call me “bloody Jew”. It was terrible, it was terrible.
I was always lonely, so my aunty bought me a little frog that I could look after I had to feed it and take care of it. But it wasn’t a very good idea. I needed to get out, I needed someone to talk to. I needed a friend.
One of the owners of the factory (a Nazi, I later discovered) was suspicious because every night at 7:00pm, the Gestapo came to check on my aunty and uncle. They had to be home and they were not allowed to have any friends over. So, that man got very suspicious and wanted to know what was happening in our flat.
One day, I decided to go out walking and covered my Star of David with my school satchel. I knew it was dangerous, I was told not to do it, but I was frightened to be hurt both physically and mentally by the nonJewish children. I felt somebody following me. I wasn’t sure, so I continued walking. About three streets later, I uncovered my Star of David, and the person who had followed me came up to me and spoke to me in a deep, nasty tone: “You will pay for ever being a Jew; you are a disgrace to all of mankind,”.
A week after that, the doorbell rang at 7:00 o’clock in the morning. Gestapo. It was the Gestapo. My uncle was already at walk and my aunty was just ready to go to work. So, one came, the Gestapo, and ordered my aunty to pack a suitcase for me.
He took me downstairs, where another Gestapo was. I was 12 years old. I was shipped off to a camp in Greystone.
My uncle protested, but it didn’t help much. My uncle went to the Gestapo and tried to adopt me and get me out of it, but they refused.
In 1942, they started the transports; no one knew where they went. In late Spring in the same year, I, 12 years old and alone, was put on the transport which was destined for Auschwitz. However, they took me off the transport and put me on another transport which went to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp and ghetto in Czechoslovakia instead.
When I arrived I saw families being separated; children were separated from their mothers and fathers, husbands and wives were separated. I was all by myself. I didn’t know anyone there no friends, no mother, no father, nobody.
I had to walk by myself for about kilometre into the camp with my suitcase because the train stopped outside the camp. I had to then stand in the que to get assessed.
I was allotted into a room with 20 other girls and one elderly lady. They gave us a building with bunks and we had a small kitchen downstairs. We had no hot water, only cold. Food was starvation; we were given a loaf of bread for eight people a day. Once a week, we were given either a piece of sausage or a piece of cheese.
I had to work. I worked in a garden, like a small farm, growing vegetables for the S.S (not for us). Then, I had to go and pick chestnuts from trees, big trees. I loved it because we were marched out of the camp and there was a whole ally of chestnut trees.
I had one friend from school with her parents, but one and a half years later, they were eventually sent to Auschwitz because Theresienstadt was not a camp where people stayed permanently; it was a transit camp.
At any time, there were approximately 40,000 people in Theresienstadt. We had a lot of diseases because we were kept with so many people, with no home, with no hygiene. We had typhus. We had lice. We had bed bugs. We had encephalitis, which was bought in by infected mosquitoes and affected the nervous system. I had that sickness. I don’t know how I got out of it, but I did.
I was surrounded by many people, but I was alone; I felt that I was alone.
One day, 11 young men escaped, so they took all 40,000 of us and marched us out of the camp, in the middle of winter, and they told us: “You won’t go back to eat or sleep until we find them.” And they did catch them, the 11 young men. They hung them in front of us and announced: “Let that be a warning to you, there’s no use to escape because you won’t make it; we won’t let you.” We were there all day and all night in the freezing cold. A lot of people collapsed. Eventually, they marched us back into the camp.
Under mounting pressure to account for the fate of Jews deported to Theresienstadt, an order came from Berlin and the Nazi’s agreed to a visit from the Red Cross in the summer of 1944. They wanted to make a film about Theresienstadt concentration camp. There was Jewish man from Berlin who was a famous filmmaker. They ordered him to help them make a film; a disgusting film.
Conducting an elaborate hoax, they created the facade of a vibrant and happy Jewish community. They put tables in the square (there was a big square there) loaded with food, they had merrygorounds, the men had to play soccer. Music was played; everybody had to act happy. It was all filmed for the Red Cross. The tables were loaded with food; all the children were sitting there. Some young people smuggled the food in their shirts to eat later. They stopped the filming and dragged them away, never to be seen again. Once the filming was finished, the food was taken away we were not allowed to eat it. I was hoping to be in the film. I thought that maybe my aunty would see me. They told us that it would be broadcasted in Germany and to the rest of the world to show what paradise it was there.
I began to become very ill; I had very bad tonsillitis and a high fever. The elderly lady in my building called a Jewish doctor in the camp who had some instruments. He removed my tonsils, but he had no medicine to give me, so he put a clothes peg on my tongue so that my tongue wouldn’t go inwards, and he took my tonsils out. It was a miracle that I survived.
In 1944, they sent 11 transports from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz. On the way, the Russians went to Auschwitz, so their transports all had to come back to Theresienstadt. When they opened the trains, the Jewish people in Theresienstadt were all standing there. 3⁄4 of them on the trains were dead no water, no food, horrible. Young boys looked like men of 80; it was horrible, it was horrible.
In the last 4 months, they had an order from Berlin to liquidate all Jews in Theresienstadt. The ones that they killed by cremating them, were put in boxes. One day, we were told that we were to take the boxes and throw the ashes into the river, so that there would be no evidence.
Theresienstadt was liberated on 8th May, 1945. The Russians marched in the middle of the night. No one knew what was going to happening to us whoever survived. There were only 150 young people who survived, including me.
My aunty and uncle in Dresden ran away on the 14th February, when the city was completely burning. They ran away to the country and survived. I had another uncle who
survived in the English army for all six years of being in the military. I was lucky that I had my aunty she found me after the war through the Red Cross.
In January 1949, I migrated with my aunty and uncle to Australia. There, I met my future husband. In 1953, we got married. He was the sole survivor of the Holocaust from his family in Poland.
I was full of hate after the war, full of hate; I really was. I lost my childhood, I lost my youth, I lost my family.
For years after the war, I couldn’t cry and now, now I can’t stop it. A lot of people who helped me, didn’t make it themselves. Innocent people were killed. Something like this should never ever happen again.
We all belong to the same human eye; the same human race. No difference of the colour of our skin, or the shape of our eyes, or our ethnic, or our religious background should make someone more superior than the other; we may be different but no one is superior. What hurts one human being, also hurts another.
I lost my husband 29 years ago and I decided 19 years ago to share my experiences to the world so that nothing like the Holocaust will ever happen again.