Tel Aviv, 2016
One nice sunny day…
I am Matilda, daughter of Bentsion Roza. My married name is Amon. I was born in Thessaloniki in 1924. We were caught, we were caught by the Germans in 1943. One nice sunny day, we were surrounded by Germans, and they dragged us out onto the street. They made us stand in sura [Hebrew for “line”], five per row. I was next to mum; I will never forget that as long as I live, I don’t know… We used to live just around the corner and when we came back home, I gave my hand to my mother and, I don’t know why, but I looked up, up above the windows, everybody got out and I saw that, I saw [them being persecuted]. I didn’t like that, even though I was very young. I told mum “mum, look up”. My mother didn’t speak any Hebrew, but the only thing she replied was “my sweetheart”, she said, “it’s gzera mishamayim” [“fate”, “heavenly command” in Hebrew]. I will never forget those words.
So, after I heard my mother’s words, we walked ahead and they took us to Baron Hirsch. In Baron Hirsch, the first thing we had to do, they told us, was to turn out our pockets. The Germans took everything. My mother had prepared us beforehand. “Kids”, she had told us, “we don’t know where they’re going to take us”, so each one of us carried a few gold sovereigns and when the Germans did the appell, when they counted us, they took our money and gave us a piece of paper as a receipt. I remember it as if it were yesterday. From there, they moved us to the train wagons, they took us. It was unbearable inside the train, there was just one door and as we were in rows of five, it was an ordeal to get in… “Schnell, schnell, schnell” [“quickly” in German] they shouted and beat us with a wooden stick. We got into the wagons. What can I say… Those were wagons for horses…
And that was when… our suffering began. After we disembarked, we entered Auschwitz, in a very large square; they separated us, children on one side, women on the other side, men on another; I can’t recall how we spent that evening. When we woke up in the morning, we looked for our parents. All parents had been killed and we asked those who were there before us: “Where is mum? Where is dad?”. “Ah, forget about it”, they said. They were Jewish people there from all minim [“nations” in Hebrew], all minim. What can I tell you… Auschwitz was unbearable, the things Germans did there are unspeakable, unspeakable… And we Greeks suffered even more because it was cold and snowy there and…
[…]
Every day they did the roll call, three, four times a day, the appell. Sometimes someone would start moving and they would shoot them. Someone else would stepped out of line and jump, but the barbed was electric; they would shoot them all.
My sister and I had a friend from Czechoslovakia who was a kapo, because she spoke German. One day, while they were doing the appell, they singled me out to burn me; ah, my sister ran and cried and did everything she could and saved me. I worked in many places. If I’m hard of hearing it’s because I worked as Aussenkommando on the ground; we would lift stones. And the dog was… the Germans would throw it at me, sometimes on this side, sometimes on that [points at her ears: right, left, right again].