It was cramped. It was stuffy—the air rank inside the train car.
She couldn’t shift in her spot without feeling the shoulder of one of the people next to her through the thin fabric of her shirt—but the discomfort of the situation hardly stirred her when she was dealing with so much fear.
The fear stemmed from uncertainty. What had happened to her parents? Where was this train car taking them? When would it stop?
After what felt like a few days, the train finally came to a stop. At that point, she practically couldn’t feel her stomach anymore, as the intensity of her hunger had numbed it. But the train car doors were thrust open, and there it was: the feeling in her stomach. A jolt. Because standing before her were men with menacing rifles and vicious dogs.
She had arrived at a concentration camp.
It’s hard to believe that this powerful story could belong to one of the everyday, familiar faces in Morris County. But it’s true. Olga Menczer is our very own 92-year-old Holocaust survivor.
For most of us, it’s hard to truly understand the Holocaust—the systematic persecution and murder of Jews in WWII—when it is merely summed up in incomprehensibly large statistics. That is why it is so important that Ms. Menczer was able to share her inspiring story with students and spotlight the reality of this great tragedy.
On Monday, Menczer recounted her story with admirable eloquence and dignity, before Mr. Hoffman’s Honors Seminar on Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Up until her sixteenth year, Ms. Menczer had a “nice, simple life” in Budapest, the capital of Hungary. She enjoyed learning in school and spending time with her boyfriend and family, as high schoolers are known to do.
In March of 1944, however, “everything changed.” Menczer vividly remembers the exact Sunday afternoon: she and her boyfriend’s family had all tuned into the radio together. As soon as the shocking news was announced, her boyfriend’s family urged her to hurry home.
The news? The Germans had entered Hungary, a step forward on the timeline of World War II.
Jewish stars were stitched onto their clothing, asserting their inferior statuses. Screams of sirens warned them to seek refuge in their basement. The rubble ruins of their apartment. The threat of their new 5:00 curfew. Their father, taken away.
“If they saw you, they would just pick you up,” Ms. Menczer recalls. “People were disappearing on the street.”
Luckily, a man named Raoul Wallenberg was providing Hungarian Jews with “protective passports” that said they belonged to the neutral nation of Sweden. The girls were separated from their mother, however, when it was discovered that these papers were fake. Without any knowledge of their parents’ whereabouts, the girls were thrown into a windowless factory, forced to sleep on the cold cement floor.
Until they were put on the train. The train that took them away from the factory, to the concentration camps.
Once inside the all-female camp, the girls were instructed to stand naked in front of their superiors for an “assessment” before they were handed uniforms. “We became numbers,” Menczer says, remembering the way that each girl was assigned a number that was emblazoned on her uniform.
Interestingly, however, Menczer recalls that she and the other girls at the camp did not realize that the situation was so serious. They were still young; they became friends, and they would chat as they dug up potatoes during the day. Most of all, they would connect over the loss of their parents.
At the very least, Menczer was able to stay with her sister throughout their frightening journey. “As long as we were together,” she says, “it was quite okay.”
As months of imprisonment dragged by, Menczer remembers being brought to one of the camps and experiencing “people looking like skeletons. Just bones.” Her fellow inmates were starving and lice-ridden, not to mention dying of Typhus fever.
Then came the Death March.
As Germany began to lose the war, soldiers led Menczer and others away from the areas they could no longer defend; soldiers would watch over the group while they “marched” during the day and slept on the ground at night. Inevitably, the weak paraders were worn-down and starving; they found themselves eating grass. “The group was getting smaller and smaller,” Menczer remembered.
Menczer was a force to be reckoned with, however. “I never lost hope. I always knew that I had to survive.” She attributes this confidence to the fact that she was young, but also to the fact that “[she] wanted to be together with [her] parents.”
When the marchers were finally told to stop, they truly believed that it was because the Germans were going to kill them. Nothing happened, however, and the group fell asleep at the top of a hill. When they awoke, all of the German soldiers were gone.
Utterly confused, the girls wandered down the hill and into the vegetable gardens of a nearby village. They had ended up in Czechoslavakia, where everyone was shouting and celebrating. “Everyone was so very happy.” The war had ended.
“It was so wonderful. After so many months, we slept in a bed.”
Menczer knew right away that she had to find her parents in order to be truly satisfied. As soon as she and her sister could, they made their way back home to Budapest.
Their apartment building had been bombed. Menczer’s boyfriend had been killed for being a witness at a crematorium, where he had been forced to work. Many of their extended family members were killed. However, at last, the girls found their parents! Their mother had survived a ghetto, and their father had survived a concentration camp. “We were reunited. We were so lucky.”
From there, Menczer was able to restart her life. But with a cost, of course. In order to escape post-communist Hungary, the family disguised themselves as potato sacks in the back of a truck until they reached a camp in Austria. At this camp, Menczer fell in love with a man she met but had to reject his proposal so that she could stay with her family. Menczer and her family finally made their way to South America, to join some extended family. Menczer kept in touch with the man from Austria, however, and they ended up marrying. With her husband, Menczer came to America, where she has lived since.
Such a traumatic event, however, cannot be left in the past. Even so, it was a significant amount of time before Menczer was comfortable talking about the Holocaust. Now, as she approaches her ninety-second birthday, Menczer can reflect on her life-changing experience and use it to teach lucky listeners like us.
Everyone in the classroom was charmed by Ms. Menczer’s strong and vivacious spirit and impressed by her bravery and determination.
Ms. Menczer emphasizes how crucial it is that the Holocaust is never forgotten. With the pin that she has clipped to her blazer, she promotes that idea to “Love Your Neighbor”. She promotes advocacy saying, “If you see something, do something. Do not let it go.” Most importantly, however, Ms. Menczer emphasizes the importance of hope.
“Never give up. Even if one day is not perfect, life is still good.”
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