True to tradition, the Niverville Heritage Centre ballroom was once again full to capacity this Remembrance Day, bringing out about 800 people for the annual service.
Attendees this year were treated to a filmed interview with Angela Orosz, funded by the Remembrance Day committee and conducted by The Citizen’s Brenda Sawatzky.
The event also saw the playing of Terry Kelly’s “A Pittance of Time” and Melanie Bergen’s soulful rendition of the wartime classic “We’ll Meet Again.”
Local veteran Jack Stott also returned posthumously by video, reading “For the Fallen” in a recording taken at Niverville’s cenotaph many years ago
Wreath-layers, escorted to the stage by the 3234 Manitoba Horse Army Cadets and local chapter of the Girl Guides Embers, included Ted Falk on behalf of Canada, Joan Golebioski on behalf of the province of Manitoba, and various representatives from the Canadian Armed Forces, the RCMP, and survivors of conflict.
Hailing from Montreal, Angela Orosz has become known as one of Auschwitz’s youngest and last remaining survivors. She was born in the Nazi concentration camp in December 1944 weighing only 2.2 pounds.
Orosz’s parents were newlywed Hungarian Jews when the Nazis infiltrated Hungary in 1943. Her father was an esteemed lawyer and her mother dreamed of becoming a teacher.
Orosz’s mother, Vera, discovered herself three months pregnant just as the German and Hungarian armies set out to eliminate the Jews from Hungary. Orosz described conditions in the cattle cars on which thousands of Jews were transported either to their death or years of hard labour.
“There was one pail for water for all of these 70 or 80 people and one pail as a washroom,” Orosz says. “You know when the train moves? So did the water and [the contents of] the washroom. You couldn’t imagine the smell. And there was big kids and little kids and old people and, as my mother said, it was standing room only.”
For three days they travelled without food, some dying en route. They were unaware that their final destination was the infamous concentration camp known as Auschwitz.
Upon their arrival, the train car occupants were divided to the left and right by Joseph Mengele, a man who history remembers as the “angel of death.” Seniors, the infirm, young children, and pregnant women were relegated to the gas chambers. The rest were subjected to hard labour.
“My mother, being so naïve, she said to Mengele, ‘I’m pregnant,’ and he yelled at her, ‘You stupid goose!’ He waved her to the working group, and later my mother said, ‘What a miracle that was.’ She wasn’t sent to the gas chamber.”
Miracles continued to manifest amidst the unspeakable hardship of life in the concentration camp. When she became too weak for the heavy work of roadbuilding, Vera was sent to kitchen duty instead of being shot, as was typical at the camp.
In the kitchens, she supplemented her diet with raw potato peelings, castoffs from the Nazi soldiers’ meals. It gave her and her unborn child a little extra nutrition in addition to the rotten vegetables or poison ivy soup that was served to the prisoners.
Unfortunately, Vera was unable to escape the sadistic experiments carried out by Mengele. At his hands, she was subjected to weeks of barbaric and inhumane treatment, as were so many others during the Auschwitz years.
“My mother said he gave an injection into her uterus and that was very painful,” Orosz says. “And when he gave the injection on the right side, I moved to the other side. Then the next day he repeated on the other side, and I moved the other way.”
Orosz says her mother was never told the purpose of the experiment, but she was rendered sterile following her time with Mengele.
On a chilly winter day in late December, Vera went into labour. Yet another miracle presented itself when the help of a barrack overseer was able to find clean water and a few rudimentary instruments to assist in the birth
Orosz was born in secret, too weak and fragile to cry.
Two hours following the birth, Vera headed outside into extreme winter temperatures to stand for rollcall by the Nazi guards.
“Can you imagine giving birth and then going outside in minus 21 degrees, standing there for hours and hours?” Orosz asks. “She didn’t have shoes because all they [were given] were wooden clogs and, on the ice, those are slippery. If they fall, they got shot. Therefore, they chose to go barefoot and stay alive.”
Despite these impossible conditions, Vera had a bigger reason to fight. In the barracks, on the top bunk, was a newborn child covered in rugs to prevent her from being eaten by hungry rats.
Six weeks after Orosz’s birth, the Russian army descended on occupied Poland, prompting the Germans to retreat. The survivors or Auschwitz were liberated at last.
Vera eventually returned to her native Hungary, but her home had been taken over by strangers. As an infant, Orosz barely clung to life, weighing a mere six pounds even at the age of one.
Nuns, doctors, and even Vera’s own mother convinced her to give up on the child and let her die. But Vera persisted, eventually finding a doctor who would help strengthen the weak child.
Vera went on to remarry a fellow Auschwitz survivor who’d lost his wife and daughter at the camp. He took Orosz on as his own, and Vera went on to live to a ripe old age.
This December, Orosz will celebrate her eightieth birthday.
In 2015 and 2016, Orosz was able to testify against two former concentration camp guards at trials held in Germany. In recent years, she’s become an active speaker at the Montreal Holocaust Museum, bringing her story to thousands of young students.
