- April 24, 2024
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It’s been 71 years since Angela Orosz and her mother were rescued from Auschwitz concentration camp at the end of World War II. Orosz was a newborn, weighing only a few pounds and one of only two children born at the camp.
“This is my mother’s story because I was just a baby,” she told those gathered at Temple Beth-el, on North Nova Road on April 26.
She said someone might ask why talk about something that happened 71 years ago.
“I’m afraid for my children and grandchildren,” she said. “Seventy-one years ago the world was silent and now the world is silent again.”
She warned of growing anti-Semitism in Europe and around the world.
In the Holocaust, six million were killed, and Orosz pointed out that following generations were also lost.
“It’s amazing to think what they could have accomplished,” she said.
Orosz was the guest speaker at the annual Holocaust Memorial Service by the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler Counties. Six other Holocaust survivors lit candles in memory of those killed while Rabbi Zev Sonnenstein sang “I Believe,” a song he said many victims sang on the way to execution.
In 1944, Germany invaded Hungary, and Orosz said one day her parents heard a bang on the door. They were crowded into cattle cars for a three-day trip to Auschwitz with no food or water.
When they arrived, her mother was not sent to death right away because she was “good stock” and healthy enough for labor. She hid her pregnancy for months out of fear she would be killed.
She was assigned to the kitchen, and that’s how Orosz believes she stayed alive in the womb, because her mother was able to eat.
She said her father was sent to labor and died at the camp from exhaustion.
“No,” she corrected herself, “he was murdered by exhaustion.”
On the day of liberation, another child was born in the camp, and her mother nursed both babies.
The camp was run by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted experiments on the prisoners, including her mother, who could never have another child because of them.
About 1.1 million people were sent to Auschwitz and only 200,000 are believed to have survived.
Asked by an audience member what a person should do today, Orosz said the important thing is to not be silent. If a person sees another bullied, for whatever reason, they should stand up and speak out.
