An Auschwitz survivor who was just 13 when she arrived at the concentration camp says the recent rise in antisemitism is driven by “ignorance”.
Separated from her mother as she passed through the gates, Susan Pollack told Nazi guards she was 15 so they would keep her alive.
“Somebody whispered to me, your mother will be gassed. How could I respond? I was just hopeless.”
Susan, now 94, shared her story with Sky News presenter Sarah-Jane Mee ahead of Holocaust Memorial Day.
Born Zsuzsanna Blau in 1930 in Hungary, Susan became aware of antisemitism around her from a young age. Her uncle was murdered by fascists. His attacker was sentenced to just two years in prison.
After Germany invaded Hungary in 1944, the Nazis and their Hungarian collaborators organised the deportation of Hungarian Jews, under the supervision of high-ranking SS officer Adolf Eichmann.
In May that year, Susan and her family were sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland by cattle truck. In less than two months, almost all of Hungary’s Jewish population, some 825,000, was deported.
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“On arrival we scrambled out of the trucks, and men and women were separated immediately,” Susan says, recalling her first moments at the concentration camp.
“I was left on my own, surrounded by shouting. I felt pure terror and devastation.”
Inside Auschwitz, she says she was “dehumanised” and survived by behaving as a robot.
She described having to stand in front of Dr Josef Mengele, the infamous camp physician, every morning, who would look at their naked bodies. Those who were deemed to be losing weight too quickly were sent to the gas chamber, Susan recalls.
Prisoners from Hungary arrive at the Auschwitz concentration camp in spring 1945. Pic: AP/DPA
The railway leading to the concentration camp. Pic: AP
“You don’t think that you live in a world which does those things.”
Amid the advance of Allied forces in 1944, Susan and others were put on a “death march” from Auschwitz, like tens of thousands of others.
Prisoners were moved out of camps near the front and forced to walk long distances in the bitter cold, with little or no food, water or rest. Those who could not keep up were shot.
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The ‘Arbeit Macht Frei’ (Work Sets You Free) gate at Auschwitz. Pic: AP
Susan was taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where she suffered from tuberculosis and typhoid.
“I wanted to die. I had no energy anymore,” she said.
“When I was liberated in Bergen-Belsen I couldn’t walk, I could hardly talk and I just crawled out to die,” she continued.
“I felt a gentle pair of hands, lifting me up. A gentle pair of hands. And he was a British soldier.”
She and others were then taken to Sweden, where she says they were given regular food.
“And we had a Jewish man in his 20s, and he played music every night,” she says.
“The lights were turned off and he played classical music every night, and that is what saved my life as well, in terms of thinking and hope and understanding.”
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Auschwitz remembered 80 years on
It is estimated that 1.1 million people were killed at the Auschwitz extermination camp in the less than five years it existed. The majority, around a million, were Jews.
Susan, who now lives in London, regularly talks about her experience and was made an OBE for services to Holocaust education and awareness in the 2023 New Year Honours.
Asked about the recent rise in antisemitism, and how it makes her feel, she says she thinks it is down to “ignorance”.
But she said the “kindness and helpfulness” of individuals will make us “stronger”.
Susan Pollack’s full interview will be aired on The UK Tonight with Sarah-Jane Mee programme on Sky News at 8pm this evening.
