‘It was the open-pit fires, where they would toss the newborn babies’

Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2005 | 9:19 a.m.

Auschwitz survivors Ben Lesser, Ernie Ostreicher and Perry Oehlbaum of Las Vegas say they never will forget their arrival at the infamous Nazi death camp, their most haunting memories of the ordeal and the day of their liberation.

The following are excerpts from recent interviews with them regarding the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, which will be observed on Thursday:

SUN: What events do you most remember that you would most want to forget?

LESSER: I'll never forget coming out of the cattle cars and being beaten by clubs and told (by the Nazis) to leave all of our belongings behind. I remember the huge chimneys with flames shooting out 10 feet and ashes falling on us. I thought we were at a smelting factory. Later, of course, I learned otherwise. Also, from a forest area in the camp each night we'd hear screaming and see in the distance an orange glow. It was the open-pit fires, where they would toss the newborn babies from the many women who had arrived at the camp pregnant.

OSTREICHER: When I had arrived at Auschwitz I weighed 180 pounds. When I was liberated from (the) Flossenburg (Nazi concentration camp) I weighed 70 pounds and was lucky to have survived. What I remember from just before liberation was that so many people were dying so fast from rampant typhus that the bodies were not buried, but just piled body upon body.

OEHLBAUM: I was 11 years old when I arrived at Auschwitz and I cannot forget how I sobbed when they cut all my hair off. We had no beds. We slept on the floor. I remember looking outside the barracks every night and seeing the women scream as their babies were taken from them and put in what we called the black truck and driven away.

SUN: Do you recall any acts of humanity amid that great inhumanity?

LESSER: I was doing slave labor in a rock mine. The commandant came down and he was angry because three people had escaped. He said he would teach the rest of us a lesson we would never forget. He pulled out every 10th person in line to receive 25 lashes. I saw that my uncle would be a 10th person so I stood in front of him and took his lashes. (Lesser said several people were shot for miscounting the number of lashes they had received and that the three escapees were later caught and hanged in front of the others to discourage anyone from even thinking about escaping.)

OSTREICHER: There were 12- and 13-year-old boys in our group, and some of the older men in their 30s and 40s would give them their food because the attitude was that the older men already had lived their lives and that they should give the younger ones a chance to survive and live theirs. Imagine being considered an old man who had lived his life by age 30 or 40.

OEHLBAUM: A Czechoslovakian woman inmate kept telling me "go to work," but I did not understood what she meant because her Hungarian was so bad. Eventually I understood that she was trying to tell me to get on one of the transport trucks because it would take me to a job in an airplane factory and away from Auschwitz. All along she had been trying to save my life.

SUN: What were your feelings and what did you do on the day you were liberated?

LESSER: It was April 29, 1945. I had arrived at (the) Dachau (Nazi concentration camp) three days earlier with my cousin. We were lying on the floor of a barrack when we heard sounds of joy and laughter. My cousin and I went outside and saw American GIs walking in the camp. We were not elated to be free, but rather relieved. An American soldier gave us a two-pound can of Spam. We were so hungry -- I weighed about 65 pounds -- and we ate all of it. But our weakened systems could not take it. I got very sick and my cousin died that night from dysentery.

OSTREICHER: It was April 12, 1945, and I had a feeling of utopia, thrill and happiness. Two American soldiers took me to a German home where the family there fed me potatoes. Then the GIs took me to a (supply) warehouse where they let me fill my pockets with all of the packs of cigarettes I wanted. I got sick and passed out. I woke up days later in a German hospital.

OEHLBAUM: (Liberation came following a death march to the small town of Dubrichan.) It was May 5, 1945, and the Germans who had been guarding us abandoned us in a field because for them the war was over. We walked into the town where people took us into their homes. I couldn't wait to get into a shower. We were starving. I sat at a table eating a bowl full of sugar with my hands. I had wanted sugar so badly. But it was a mistake. I wound up getting very sick.