RelatioNet GO MI 27 DE HU

Interview

Miriam Gottdiner was born on 10^th Jun 1927 in Debrecen in Hungary.

The Gottdiner family included parents Rachel (Schindler) and Israel (Gottdiner) and their 15 children: Pnina, Matke', Miriam, Yoel, Golda, Shevah, Lea, Yehuda, Edna, Eliezer, Shoshanna, Haim, Sara, Moshe and Hanna.

Miriam said in her testimony: "We were a big family, 65 people and because of that we were intended it be exterminated by the Germans.
We had a wine business in Hungary that the Germans took control of.

Our house was nearby the synagogue. My mother took care of the house which was always arranged. In addition, the education issue was very important to my parents, that's why my brothers and I had studied in Orthodox School in our jewish quarter.

When I was 16 years old (1938) the Nazis invaded Hungary. We were transported from Hungary to Poland trough Slovakia with a train. The atmosphere in the train was difficult: density, warmth, instating, and no water of food at all. While we were on the train my father got a heart attack. My mother shouted to the German soldier "There is no water! Help me! Someone!" and my father survived it with no help. Suddenly the train had stopped- the Germans divided us to two groups. Half of the people were sent to Auschwitz to be exterminated and the rest were sent to work camp like my family and I. We all took care of each other and we tried to be positive as much as we could in order to stay sane. In the work camp, my father got another heart attack and he did not survive it and he died. Today he is buried in Israel.

After a few selections we were sent on a train to Bergen-Belsen in Poland until the end of the war. Bergen-Belsen is located south of the small towns of Bergen and Belsen, about 11 miles north of Celle, Germany.We survived the Selections, but many prisoners from Bergen Belsen were transferred to Auschwitz. Between1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 people died in Bergen Belsen, up to 35,000 of them dying of Typhus in the first few months of 1945. While we were in Bergen-Belsen, a soldier from the Red Cross gave us food. Unfortunately, we lost two brothers because we were starving.

On April 15 1945, British and Canadian forces liberated Bergen-Belsen camp. They found thousands of bodies unburied and forced the remaining SS personal to bury the bodies. Many dying prisoners were found in the camp. The British forces gave us food. Although the British prevented the entrance to Palestine in 1945, we were organized in immigration groups of teenagers .We arrived to Palestine, and Eliezer and I settled in Kibutz Yavne. We joined the army, I was in the Air Force like my sister, Sara. My brothers served in underground organizations. My Mother arrived later to Palestine and settled in Petah Tikve. She worked in immigration office. I got married in January 1951, to a Holocaust survivor too. We have children and grandsons. "

posted by GOTDINER-KOMPLER MIRIAM @ 6:58 AM