Many books have been written about the atrocities that occurred at the notorious Auschwitz Concentration Camp during the German occupation of Poland in WWII. Survivors of Auschwitz and the death march west in the dead of winter have shared their heartbreaking stories, and each one holds a valuable lesson for readers. But one Auschwitz prisoner who was chosen for execution managed to escape. 

 

Klara Lutkovits was a teenager from Sighet, Hungary (part of Romania before the war). She, her parents, and five of her siblings lived in the Sighet ghetto, which was formed in early 1944. One very hot day in May, Klara and her family were told to pack a few clothes and some food—they would be taken to a work camp and would not return home. 

 

The Hungarian police loaded Klara, her family, and hundreds of others into railroad boxcars, and the Nazis transported them to Auschwitz, just one year before Germany’s surrender. They reached the notorious camp on the third night of travel. Dr. Joseph Mengele, a medical officer at the camp, met them on the selection ramp. He was tall and handsome, only thirty-three-years-old, and resembled the Hollywood actor-type. He had a magnetic personality. Mengele talked and joked with the deportees and then sent them to the gas chambers. 

Because Klara’s transport arrived during the night, German soldiers grouped their flashlights around Mengele, and he made his selections. He sent Klara’s sister and brother and her parents to the right and Klara with her two other sisters to the left. He smiled and said they would see their family members the next day. The guards led Klara, Rose, and Hedy to a barracks in B Camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau. The rest of the family went immediately to the gas chambers. 

 

Over the next several months, Klara and her sisters worked eleven-hour shifts in the surrounding fields and factories. They were fed three meager “meals” a day. The girls endured the cold and SS beatings and observed hundreds of new arrivals herded into the gas chambers daily.

Klara’s mind as well as her body began to break down, and she stopped eating. In November, Dr. Mengele announced that he would conduct a selection among the prisoners. After he viewed Klara’s emaciated body, he chose her and others in the same condition to die in the gas chambers. 

The Nazis knew they were losing the war and needed to eliminate the evidence of their atrocities, so they pushed their extermination efforts to the maximum. A backlog of prisoners awaited execution, and Mengele could no longer send those housed at Auschwitz directly to the gas chambers whenever he wanted. New arrivals had priority. Klara and the other women selected were taken to the bath house, given black dresses to wear, and told to wait. Klara wanted to die rather than continue suffering in the camp. Her sisters, Rose and Hedy, came to the window of the bath house to comfort her, but they were pulled away and beaten for their efforts.

 

The guards moved Klara’s group to another holding room, a smaller brick-style building next to the gas chamber. Once the others fell asleep, Klara inspected her surroundings. The walls were made of inferior brick, and she noticed someone had dug around the bottom of one of the bricks. She pushed and pulled until she freed it and then used the brick to chip away at the others. After pulling out more bricks, she slipped through the small passage and into the night. The fresh, cold air and Klara’s newfound freedom awakened her. She decided she wanted to live.

Klara moved through the camp, staying close to the buildings. The wet, snowy rain and very cold weather, kept the guards indoors. She noticed lights on in the bath house. Thick steam covered the windows. Klara found an open window and climbed inside, hidden from detection by the steam. After taking a shower, the girls were given dresses and shoes and were told to line up outside—the Nazis has chosen one hundred young women to work in a factory in Czechoslovakia. The guards counted one hundred and one prisoners and started to drag the last girl in line away. She objected, so one of the other girls volunteered to stay behind with her family and returned to the barracks.

After traveling for three days and three nights, Klara’s train arrived in Weisswasser, Czechoslovakia, the home of a Nazi slave labor camp and the privately owned Telefunken Company. Klara lined up with the other girls but collapsed before making it to the camp gates. She awakened later in a hospital bed in the infirmary, where a female Jewish doctor nursed her back to health.

After six weeks, Klara went to work in the town factory, putting wire transmitters and radio relay systems together. She began to eat again, but the process was painful. Those in charge fed the workers three meals a day, including bread and meat with each meal.

A few months later Klara and her co-workers were ushered to their job site as usual but nobody brought work for them to do. The girls discovered the Germans and their soldiers had left. They were free! The next day Russian soldiers arrived, and their captain arranged transportation for the girls to the nearest operating trains—two days away. The girls were all allowed to board without paying, and Klara traveled home to Sighet.

Several weeks later her sisters, Rose and Hedy, arrived home. They thought Klara had died in the gas chambers. What a reunion of crying, laughing, and screaming took place!  

Klara met Ezra Wizel in Sighet, and they married in 1947. Having no desire to live under communism, the Wizel’s escaped and emigrated to America. They eventually settled in Los Angeles, California.    Source:  Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.

 

Source:  

Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story by Danny Naten and R. Gifford, 2014.