God Gave This Holocaust Survivor the Will to Live

Mark Ellis : Jan 3, 2017
God Reports

"God gave me the strength. I didn't want to be buried there. I wanted to see my parents again."

[God Reports] In the closing days of WWII, a British soldier found her almost lifeless body collapsed amid a pile of corpses at Bergen-Belsen. Thousands died from forced starvation and disease before the liberation of this notorious Nazi concentration camp—but one young Jewish woman found God's strength to survive. (Photo via God Reports)

"God had a purpose to save me to tell my story," says Magda Herzberger, 90, a poet, lecturer, composer and author of four books. Herzberger survived three Nazi death camps during her nightmarish ordeal. For the past 41 years, she's lectured at schools, universities, churches and through various media appearances.

She was only in fourth grade when "bad things" started happening in her native city of Cluj, Romania. The Romanian government was seduced by the ascendant Nazi and Fascist movements, and anti-Semitic laws began to be enacted. The number of Jews who could attend public schools was drastically limited. On the first day of class, the Jewish students were told to stand and identify themselves as Jews. "We were humiliated in class," Herzberger recalls.

By 1940, no marriages were allowed between Jews and Romanians. Jewish teachers and college professors lost their jobs, as well as Jewish public employees and those in important managerial positions. As a result, her father lost his job and they were forced to move to a small apartment.

"The Jews had to turn in their gold and silver jewelry and their radios," Herzberger recalls. "There were curfews for Jews and we could only shop at certain hours."

German troops entered Herzberger's city in March 1944. After that, all Jews were ordered to wear the Star of David on their clothing. A month later, her family was forced to leave their apartment and move to a designated ghetto on the outskirts of town. "We slept on the ground outside an old brick factory," she says. "There was no running water."

By the end of May, Herzberger and her family were loaded on cattle cars headed for Auschwitz. "For three days and three nights they locked us in the cars without food or bathroom facilities. You can imagine the conditions–we had small children and elderly people."

"When the doors opened the nightmare started," she says. German soldiers herded the new arrivals off the cars with rubber batons, beating those who didn't move quickly enough. Then they were placed on a platform, where a crude selection process began headed up by Dr. Josef Mengele, the notorious military officer and doctor who performed sadistic medical experiments on prisoners. Camp inmates nicknamed him "The Angel of Death." (Photo: Magda [in square] shortly after arrival at Auschwitz/via God Reports)

Children under 14, older people, pregnant women, invalids and the mentally disturbed were directed by Dr. Mengele to the left. "They didn't know where they were going," Herzberger says. "To the left meant death."

Those selected for death were directed on a five-minute walk to one of four huge gas chamber/crematorium complexes at the edge of the camp. Two had an underground dressing room and underground gas chamber capable of holding 3,000 people. In order to avoid panic, victims were told they would be showering.

To complete the masquerade, shower heads were installed in the ceilings. Victims were ordered to...

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