Holocaust survivor Gena Turgel – who tended a dying Anne Frank and met ‘Angel of Death’ Dr Josef Mengele – recalls the abject horror of life at Auschwitz and Belsen
LOOKING at this frail great grandmother - now 93 - you would never guess she survived the worst genocide in human history.
But Gena Turgel is much stronger than she looks, and her tale of living through the Holocaust is both heartbreaking and inspiring in equal measures.
Gena has spoken to The Sun to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (January 27) thanks to the .
Today, survivors attended a prayer and tribute ceremony at the Memorial of the Victims at the former Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Born the youngest of nine children to Samuel and Estera Goldfinger in 1924, Gena and her family were sent from the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow, Poland, to Plaszow-Krakow concentration camp in June 1942.
Gena would go on to survive THREE concentration camps, a gruelling death march, and encounters with the 'Angel of Death' Dr Josef Mengele - famous for his sick experiments on camp inmates.
Of her family, only she and her mother survived the Second World War.
“The world is beautiful, but people are nasty,” Gena says – as she looks back on the horror of the 'Final Solution', which claimed the lives of six million Jews in total.
She recalls: “When I arrived in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, I saw heaps of bodies lying around. Not just one or two, but mountains as high as a tree in the garden.
“You could not distinguish if they were men or women – bones, skeletons, children’s bodies. You can’t possibly imagine the state of the place, it was horrendous.”
Gena arrived in Belsen in February 1945 and incredibly cared for Anne Frank, the Dutch wartime diarist, as she lay dying from typhus.
Gena said: “Her bed was around the corner from me. She was delirious, terrible, burning up. I gave her cold water to wash her down.
“We did not know she was special, but she was a lovely girl. I can still see her lying there with her face, which was so red as she had a breakout. And then she died.”
At the time, there were outbreaks of both typhus and dysentery in the camp and when British soldiers came to liberate Belsen, Gena told them “people are dying like flies”.
“Which was true,” she says, “500 people per night”.
Belsen was liberated on Sunday April 15, 1945 – just two months after Gena had arrived. At the time, she was working as a nurse in a makeshift hospital.
She explained: “When we arrived in Belsen, I saw those skeletons and I said to myself ‘I am not going to die like that’.”
Gena sneaked into a neighbouring barrack, which had a hospital, and asked if she could help.
She told the staff: “I’m not a nurse but I will do my best”, and was asked to return the following day to work.
As a prisoner, Gena’s valuables had all been confiscated by the Germans - all she had was a little bag with a zip on top.
In it she carried her most prized possession, a picture of her sister Miriam who was shot in Krakow-Plaszow concentration camp.
Miriam and her husband had been caught smuggling food into the labour camp, where Gena lived for two and a half years.
“We had to dig their graves, and those of 50 other men with them,” Gena recalled. “I treasured that picture.”
Shortly after arriving at the hospital for work, Gena recalled: “All of a sudden I heard a German voice: ‘Halt Jew’.
“We froze, and a warden said ‘What have you got there?’ She snatched the bag and tore up that picture into tiny bits.
“I was very upset but she simply lashed across the face, and said ‘Now you can go to work’.
“Miriam and I were very close. We were like twins, but she was more beautiful. She was a very beautiful girl - those things you can’t possibly forget.”
Another of Gena’s sisters, Hela, was experimented on in Auschwitz. She added: “They injected her with petrol, to draw out her blood.
“Myself and my mother had to say goodbye to her. We had to leave her behind at Auschwitz as she was too sick to move.” They never saw her again.
In December 1944 Gena and her mother, Estera Goldfinger, travelled to Belsen on a 'death march' via Buchenwald – in temperatures which regularly plummeted to -20C.
At Buchenwald, the Jewish prisoners offered them their soup – despite being close to starving themselves.
Gena added: “This little boy walked by and he whispered in Polish, ‘Heads up, the war is coming to an end’.
Just two months later, the British arrived at Belsen.
"The loudspeakers came on, in all languages, saying: ‘We are British, we come to liberate you. The Nazis have got nothing more to say to you. Be happy’.
"I remember tears of joy fell down my cheeks."
But the Allied advance was too late to save thousands who died at the hands of the Nazis. At Belsen alone, British troops counted 13,000 corpses waiting to be buried.
Gena recalls: "They could not believe their eyes. Apparently six of the officers were taken ill, and were off for several days from the shock.
“They were crying like children saying, ‘How could they do this to innocent people?’”
When the soldiers first spoke to Gena, she told them she only knew one phrase in English: “The sky is blue and the sun is shining,” much to their amusement.
Later the same day, Gena met a sergeant called Norman Turgel, who was part of the British Intelligence Corps and charged with rounding up SS commanders.
Three days later, Norman invited her to dinner with his commanding officer.
Gena recalled: “I saw beautiful decorated tables with white table cloths and flowers, which I hadn’t seen for six years.
“I said ‘You must be expecting special visitors, what am I doing here?’ So he said ‘You are the special guest. This is our engagement party’.
“I said ‘Pardon?’ All his colleagues said ‘congratulations’ too and I thought to myself: ‘They must be mad’.
“But, you see, Norman made up his mind when he first saw me in the hospital, in a white overall, that this is the woman he is going to marry.
“Never mind me, what I thought - he had made up his mind.”
The couple were married in Germany on October 7 1945, by a rabbi who was a Major in the British Army.
Gena added: “As a British subject, I wasn’t allowed to remain in Germany.
“So Norman was given compassionate leave to take me to England and I was the happiest woman in the world.
“My mother came over to England and lived with us for 29 years. She lived to see one of my grandchildren.
“She was a wonderful woman, charming, very educated. It was lovely having her with me in a strange country, just wonderful.”
Gena’s world was ripped apart when the Nazis bombed her hometown of Krakow on September 1, 1939 – the first day of the war.
She said: “The Germans took my freedom away. They tortured people to death, sent them to gas chambers. My sister and her little boy went with her.
“My brother lived in a different town, with his wife and three children. They came in and just killed them all.
“The memories are always there in the back of your mind. It is unforgettable and of course it is very painful. The torture you had, what you’ve gone through.”
Today, Gena has two daughters, one son, eight grandchildren and 13 great grandkids - a loving family which she sees as 'the reward for what I suffered'.
Gena has met the Queen several times, and even has an MBE.
During one of these meetings, the Queen discussed her upcoming trip to Belsen – and asked Gena what it was like.
Gena told her: "There is nothing. There is no grass, no birds, just silence.”
The focus of Holocaust Memorial Day is to remember the atrocities of the Second World War, and ensure that mankind doesn't repeat the horrific mistakes of its past.
HMB is a UK remembrance day, which we have followed since 2001. The event is also in tribute to those who died in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur - in similarly horrific genocides.
Today, tributes were made to honour those who lost their lives, as this date, in 1945, marks the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in modern-day Poland, by the Soviets, nearly eight months before the war officially ended.