By Lea Kahn, Staff Writer
It was only when Lois Flamholz took a sip of milk from a glass – brought to her by a hospital orderly who was a prisoner of war – that she realized that she had survived the war.
Not only had Flamholz survived “the war” – World War II – but she had also survived what became known as the Holocaust, or the systematic killing of Jews by the Nazis.
Flamholz, who will be 90 years old next month, related her tale of cattle cars, work camps, Auschwitz, a face-to-face encounter with Dr. Josef Mengele – the “angel of death” – and a forced march as the Nazis fled with their prisoners from the approaching Allies toward the end of the war.
Flamholz, who moved to the United States in 1948, spoke at Beth El Synagogue earlier this month in a lecture sponsored by the temple’s Werner Lecture Fund.
“The more people I tell, the better it is. The more people who know what happened – the deniers (of the Holocaust) can’t say it did not happen,” said Flamholz, who lives in Monroe Township.
Flamholz’s story begins in a small village in the Carpathian Mountains of what was then known as Czechoslovakia. In the years leading up to World War II, the village changed hands – from Czechoslovakia to Hungary.
Although Hungary had sided with Nazi Germany, life did not change drastically for Flamholz’s family. While Jewish businesses were forcibly turned over to Christians to own, some Christians allowed the former owners to secretly operate the businesses, she said.
But all of that changed in April 1944, when a jeep with four Nazi soldiers stopped at the police station with orders to round up all of the Jewish inhabitants, Flamholz said.
After initially being sent to a ghetto, they were forced into cattle cars – 60 people to a car. When the train of cattle cars stopped at the Auschwitz concentration camp, the Nazi soldiers ordered them to get out and to leave their possessions behind, she said.
That’s when they found themselves face to face with Dr. Mengele. Without a word, he pointed to those who were sent in one direction and those who were sent in another direction, Flamholz said.
Flamholz and her four cousins were directed to a barracks – the beginning of their imprisonment – while her mother, her younger brother and two younger sisters were killed immediately. Her father was sent to a work camp.
“I was 16 years old,” Flamholz said.
Twice a day, the prisoners were lined up and some were selected – for what, no one knew, she said. One time, the selection was made on the basis of the first letter of the last name, starting backwards with the letter “Z.” Since her maiden name began with a “W” – “Weiss” – she was certain that she would be chosen.
She told one of the nice “kapos” – Jewish prisoners and others who worked with the Nazis as functionaries – that she was with her cousins, whose last name started with “G.” When she was asked whether the selection process would get to “G,” she was told no and went back into the lineup. She survived.
Flamholz and her cousins were sent to work camps. Sometimes, they worked in munitions camps and other times they were forced to build railroads and roadways.
When the Nazis realized that the Allies were approaching the camp, they gathered up the prisoners and began a six-week-long forced march to escape. It turned into a death march.
On the second day of the forced march, a weakened Flamholz had doubts that she would survive. It was Feb. 2, which would have been her mother’s birthday.
“I thought, ‘If we survive tonight, I will survive.’ I survived. My mother was watching over me,” Flamholz said.
Along the way, the prisoners slept in barns, hay lofts and in the field. There were good Germans as well as bad Germans, she said. Some of the farmers boiled potatoes for them, while other farmers gave them raw potatoes.
She recalled one man who brought her a pair of his wife’s shoes, and although they did not fit, “he tried (to help),” Flamholz said. Another time, a woman squeezed pieces of bread through the cracks in the barn siding for the prisoners.
By the time the prisoners reached the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, only half had survived, Flamholz said. Soon, the camp was liberated by British soldiers.
Flamholz and her four cousins had survived.
“All I wanted to do was to survive the war for a glass of milk,” Flamholz said. “I kept saying, ‘I want a glass of milk. I have to stay alive for that glass of milk.’”
Soon after they were liberated, her eldest cousin became ill and was taken to the hospital. The hospital orderlies were Hungarian prisoners of war.
The Allied soldiers often distributed cigarettes to the prisoners, and Flamholz began collecting them. Noticing that one of the orderlies had been eyeing the cigarettes, she traded them for that glass of milk.
“I knew I had survived when I got that glass of milk,” Flamholz said.
