"We were in Auschwitz until the liberation on January 27, 1945. Then we stayed there because they couldn't transport us. Mum and me, we were very sick. My mother came to Auschwitz already four months pregnant with my sister. And then there was the Polish and Russian Red Cross, because it was the Red Army that liberated Auschwitz. They made a kind of makeshift hospital where we lay down and got care - clean linen, food and medical care. We were very, very sick. My mother still gave birth to my sister in Auschwitz and stayed for six more weeks and then slowly started to travel with two small children and a third child. That was one boy who was six years old at that time. So I had two and something, he was six and my sister was six weeks old. And my mother walked, then hitchhiked in these trucks to Trencin. In the direction of Trencin to watch and see who came back."
0:06:25 - 0:07:55 - Liberation in Auschwitz and the journey home
"We lived our childhood in Trenčín as any other children. I never went to kindergarten, I just remember - well, what has stayed in my memory - are two things from my childhood. The first thing is that when we were walking down the street, my mother and I and my sister, everybody was surprised that we even existed in the world. They called us - "Oh, it's a miracle - Agi (my mother's name was Agnes) - you are alive, and the children, and how is that possible?" And we always got some candy and then they patted us on the head. And I remember I was walking with pride, I was very proud that I was a miracle and I had no idea what they meant by that, not even what was a miracle. It wasn't until later that I understood what they meant. That's what I remember and I still remember my mother, that I was playing in the sand and this was at Palacký and we had a window from the kitchen to the backyard and I was playing in the sand and some boy who was playing there with us started not hitting me, but grabbing me by these "spilhose" that had braces in the front to hold the trousers. So he grabbed me and he was shaking me so hard, I don't even know why, and I was just screaming and screaming and my mom was looking at us from the window and she said to hit him- "Hit him!" - and I don't know if I hit him in the ed, but she was giving me this feeling that I should always defend myself, that I shouldn't let everybody do what they want to me, that I must defend myself. And with that "Hit him!", it stayed with me. I don't know if I spanked him on the face, because I'm a coward, I never fought back because I knew I was going to lose. That was never my strength."
0:10:55 - 0:13:00 Two of the strongest memories from Eva's childhood
"It definitely affected me. The political situation was very anti-Semitic. I don't know if you heard about the Slánsky trial and about all that, [I remember that] because I was already an older kid. When was the Slánský trial? In 1952? There was this Slánsky trial, and my parents were always talking and they thought we weren't listening. They, when they had guests, they talked. My mother's mother tongue is German. When they didn't want us to understand, they would talk in German and sometimes they would switch to Slovak. The fear that they were coming for us again. That was, fourteen were executed in that Slánsky trial and 11 of them were Jews. That fear was not, what I would say, was not, one can say fear as a luxury. They were afraid because they had a strong reason. They were always just scared anyway. We were afraid all the time - don't say this, don't say that, what's cooked at home is eaten at home, the walls have ears... These are all things that I learned as a kid. I got such a double-track upbringing - different at home than outside. But I understood it right away. So those years were very difficult, because that situation repeated itself, and it made my mom and my stepdad very scared. It impacted me also, because that fear was always in the air. And it's transmitted. We lived in that fear. All the time."
0:28:50 - 0:31:00 - The political processes of the 1950s and living in fear
Eva Umlauf, nee. Hechtová, was born on December 19, 1942 in a labour camp for Jews in Nováky. Her father, Imrich Hecht, worked as an accountant in Zamarovce near Trencin. Mother Agnes, nee. Eisler, came from Bratislava. At the beginning of the war, she and her family moved to Trenčín. Her mother and Imrich married after a short acquaintance because they believed that only the unmarried would be deported. Eva survived with her parents in the camp for a year and eight months. After the outbreak of the Slovak National Uprising, they fled to Piešt‘any, where they lived under an assumed name. However, they were denounced and taken to Žilina and later to the camp in Sered. From there, at the beginning of November, they were deported again to Auschwitz, where they saw their father for the last time. They tattooed Eva and her mother with a number and also separated them. The witness was ill, she was in an infectious disease barrack, Agnes was pregnant. At the end of January 1945, the Red Army liberated them together with the rest of the deathly ill prisoners. In April, Agnes gave birth to Eva‘s sister Eleonora. In June, with their two small children and a five-year-old boy, Tomi, they arrived in Trenčín, where they were assigned a small apartment. They started a new life. In Trenčín, Eva graduated from elementary school and high school. She went to study medicine in Bratislava. On holiday in Yugoslavia she met Jakob Sultanik, a Polish Jew living in Munich. Because of the acquaintance, she came to the attention of the State Security. In 1966, they married in Bratislava and half a year later, after obtaining an emigration passport, Eva managed to follow her husband to Munich. In September, her mother, stepfather and sister also emigrated to that city. They stayed there. Eva‘s husband died after an accident, in 1971. She soon met her new husband, the doctor Bernd Umlauf. Two more sons were born to her. After giving birth to her third, the trauma of surviving the Holocaust returned. She expanded her education to include psychotherapy. In 2014, she wrote a biographical book, The Number on Your Forearm is as Blue as Your Eyes. She is currently engaged in outreach work.
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