Remembering the Holocaust: "I don't know why we didn't die"

For years the question has haunted Bella Ouziel: Why did she survive when so many perished?

 

It is especially relevant today, on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Holocaust was the murder of some 6 million Jews and others deemed to be politically, socially or racially inferior by the Nazis, who came to power in Germany in 1933 under Adolf Hitler. By 1945 the Germans and their collaborators had killed nearly two of every three European Jews as part of the «Final Solution.»

Among the victims: Ouziel’s entire Greek family, including her father, Abram, her mother, Riketa, her older sister, Sylvia, her younger sister, Esther, and her younger brother, Levy.

She is 85 now, a charming woman, all of 4-feet-11, with warm eyes. «For my age, I think I’m doing pretty good,» she says. She sits in the dining room of her Evendale home, close to the kitchen where a pot of chicken soup simmers for her children, who will visit later this day.

She didn’t want them to be afraid when they were growing up, so she was reluctant to talk about the Holocaust. Her grandchildren, though, learned some of its history in school, and would ask questions. A granddaughter wondered about the numbers tattooed on her left forearm.

«I used to say, ‘It’s my telephone number, and I don’t want to forget it,’ » Ouziel says.

She has never forgotten what happened more than 60 years ago.

• Photos: Survivors and loved ones lost

Bella Ouziel – her maiden name was Benozio – grew up in Thessaloniki, Greece, a city with a large, thriving Jewish community. Her mother was a homemaker, and her father, a dentist. She was the second of four children. Like other girls, she went to work after completing grade school. At 13, she was making ladies’ hats.

A year later, in 1939, World War II began in Europe when Germany invaded Poland. In April 1941, the Germans attacked Greece. By the end of the month the country was under German and Italian occupation.

Persecution of Thessaloniki’s Jews began in the summer of 1942, when Ouziel turned 17. Jews were ordered to wear the «Yellow Star» and were placed on curfew.

«We knew we were in trouble,» she says.

But they had no idea of what was to come.

Jews were told they would be taken to Poland to work. About that time, a member of the Greek resistance movement came to her family’s home and offered to take Bella and Sylvia with him.

«My father said no. We thought we were going to be all together, all the time.»

Soon, Jews in Thessaloniki were forced to leave their homes and move into an enclosed ghetto near the city’s rail lines. As Ouziel’s family departed with a few suitcases, they watched townspeople enter their house and carry away their belongings.

German deportation of the city’s Jews began in 1943. Every three days, about 2,000 people were herded onto trains for the 950-mile ride to Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. They did not know their destination was a death camp.

They arrived at Birkenau, the largest of the camps that made up the Auschwitz complex. Four large crematorium buildings were built there between March and June 1943. The grounds were patrolled by the German SS.

«Right away they separated us,» Ouziel says. «No goodbyes, no nothing.»

Ouziel and her older sister Sylvia were moved to a line for people who had been judged fit to work. Almost all children, and women with children – including Ouziel’s mother and sister Esther, who was 5 – went to another line. So, too, did Ouziel’s father and brother, a young teen.

They were immediately sent to the gas chambers.

When Polish prisoners explained to Ouziel and her sister what was happening, they looked toward the crematoriums.

«We couldn’t believe it. These people are crazy. We couldn’t believe something like that would happen.

«You see all that smoke and you could smell the flesh that was burning day and night.»

Ouziel and her sister were stripped of their clothes and given uniforms. Their heads were shaved and they were tattooed with identification numbers. She was prisoner No. 40018. Her sister was No. 40017. They were assigned to the same lice-infested barracks.

Ouziel was put to work outdoors, lugging heavy bricks. Sylvia soon grew weak and could not work.

«One day I came back from work. I had a piece of bread to give her,» Ouziel says. «The whole block, everybody was gone. They said they sent everybody to the crematorium.»

She pauses, rubs her red, watery eyes, and takes a deep breath.

Ouziel’s next job was sorting materials in a shoe factory at Birkenau. She sometimes risked her life to run to a nearby canteen, where she might find food scraps in the garbage.

Most days, her breakfast consisted of watered-down coffee. Lunch was soup, also mostly water. For dinner, she might get a piece of bread and perhaps a slice of salami.

«We used to say, ‘Where’s God? How come he doesn’t see what we’re going through?’ We used to get mad, which was the wrong thing.»

From Birkenau, she was sent to Auschwitz, where she worked in a factory making German military uniforms.

In mid-January 1945, as the Soviet Army pushed toward Auschwitz, the Nazis retreated. Ouziel was among tens of thousands of prisoners evacuated from the camp and deported to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp about 650 miles away, in Germany.

Prisoners were transported by train in unheated freight cars. But they were also forced to walk for days on a death march.

«I remember one girl. A German had a dog. He threw – not meat, a bone – and the girl left the march to pick up the bone. And right away, the German shot her, right there, in front of us.»

They had nothing to protect them against cold and snow but their uniforms and wooden shoes.

«I don’t know why we didn’t die,» she says. She kept «hoping, praying. I don’t know why, but I always thought we’re going to be free.»

Others had no hope.

«My girlfriend, we were marching together. She said, ‘Bella, I’m going to give up. I’m going to let them shoot me.’ »

The young woman’s name was Stella. She and Ouziel had been schoolmates in Thessaloniki.

«I said, ‘No, you’re not going to give up.’ We were like sisters. I said, ‘I don’t have anybody. I lost everybody. I don’t want to lose you, too.’

«She made up her mind she would keep going. Finally, we made it.»

But the thousands of new arrivals overwhelmed Bergen-Belsen, which had insufficient food, water and shelter.

«People started dying because of no food, no nothing. The dead bodies piled up, piled up, piled up,» she says.

British soldiers liberated the camp on April 15, 1945. They found thousands of unburied corpses, and about 60,000 prisoners, most of them seriously ill.

Ouziel says she and her fellow prisoners looked like skeletons. But that day, she says, she went «from dead to alive.»

She and several girlfriends eventually made their way back to Greece, to Ouziel’s hometown, hoping to find relatives.

«There was nobody left,» she says.

Between 60,000 and 70,000 Greek Jews died during the Holocaust. Thessaloniki lost 94 percent of its Jews, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

She found work there and married Sam Ouziel, a man from her hometown whom she met at Bergen-Belsen after the camp’s liberation. His first wife and their child were Holocaust victims.

To escape anti-Semitism, they left Greece in 1951 with their young son and daughter and came to the United States.

«We knew it had freedom of religion,» she says.

Another son was born here.

«We worked hard,» Ouziel says, «and we were able to accomplish what we wanted.»

But she could never completely escape heartache. Her husband died more than 30 years ago, at age 59. She lost one of her three children, a son, to a heart attack at age 36.

Their deaths compounded her losses from the Holocaust. Which leads back to the question: Why did she survive when so many died?

Perhaps it was a combination of courage, determination and luck. Ouziel will never know. But she knows this: Something so horrific should bring lasting lessons to the world.

«I’m hoping there won’t be prejudice for anybody, whether it’s Jew or Christian,» she says.

The aroma of chicken soup wafts into the dining room, a reminder that her children will arrive soon. It’s Friday. Jewish tradition calls for a candle lighting to usher in the Sabbath, and Bella Ouziel, who endured the darkest days of the Holocaust, will bring light to her little corner of the world.

Source: News of Cincinatti written by John Johnston