Zwi Steiger - March 27, 1982
Learning Fate of Family III
It was never confirmed.
Never confirmed, no, no. Now there was, you know, some people's recollection is--isn't exact and they--some people told me that he was--that he--while they were retreating in Austria that uh, he was put on a transport going towards Dachau, and apparently nobody survived on that transport. Some uh, people told me that he was injured or that he was sick. That was one guy told me he was injured during a raid. And some told me that he was uh, just sick from, from malnutrition and dysentery. And that uh, his traces were lost around probably in April of '45.
So you really don't know what camp he ended up in or...
No, he was, he was in the vicinity of Dachau in '45.
And do you assume your parents were in the same place?
No, no, no, my parents never left Auschwitz. They were killed in Auschwitz.
And how do you know that?
How do I know that? Because most of the ??? elite, maybe one or two exceptions, in their age group nobody came out alive from Auschwitz.
They were exterminated as soon as they got there.
They got there the same day. The next day nobody uh, there no survivors. Maybe from our area there is maybe one or two people who passed Auschwitz in their age group--fifty. There was one physician who, who uh, survived Auschwitz who was about my father's age, or maybe even two or three years older. And my father's brother who was younger, about five or six years. He, he passed through Auschwitz and was with his son and I think with my younger brother and all of them uh, survived.
Your parents were in their fifties at the time?
My father was fifty...uh, nine--fifty-three and my mother was uh, forty-six and none of her contemporaries survived--maybe one woman that I know of from our hometown. It was her age that, that made it. And she was younger--a few years. And none of my father's contemporaries that were in town survived. None. Maybe--there was one who was a manager of the--who was the chief engineer in the electrical plant who stayed at home a few weeks longer than, than most of the people because he had to run the, the power plant. He had been to--or he didn't go to Auschwitz when, when he was taken later on. Apparently some people saw him in France. He was running there. So he, he passed through Auschwitz but he never made it.
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