From: Adriel Koschitzky
Date: Sunday, March 20, 2016 at 2:14 PM
To: Deborah Lipstadt
Subject: Question about Holocaust
Hi Professor Lipstadt,
I was speaking with my great-grandmother, and she told me a story about her time in Auschwitz when she was marched into - and out of - a gas chamber. She says that Mengele did as a sort of "show" - to demonstrate that people did in fact return from the showers. My great-grandmother says she saw the inside of the gas chambers- and was subsequently marched back to the work camp.
I had never heard this story before and was wondering if you know any corroborating first person accounts, and perhaps how often this happened. (Was this regular occurrence, or something unique?) My great-grandmother was brought to Auschwitz relatively late - summer of '44, I think.
Thanks,
Adriel
On Sun, Mar 20, 2016 at 6:10 PM, Lipstadt, Deborah wrote:
I am not familiar with this but I would suggest you
Get her name as it was in 1944 (you probably have this)
As precise a date as possible for when she arrived in Birkenau
Any more details that she can provide you with (why was she with Mengele?
Thinking about it, it is possible that it was a shower (and she assumed ex post facto that it was the gaschambers)…. But that is just pure speculation on my part.
Once you have that we can dig a bit deeper and find out if there are any details available.
Put on your historian’s hat….
Fri, Mar 25, 2016 at 6:48 PM
1. Her name is Esther Landa. She had already married my great grandfather at that point, so I assume she changed her name from Volvowich to Landa.
2. She came to Birkenau at the end of the summer of 1944. She is from a village in the Carpathian Mountains, Iglia (spelling?) and hid in the mountains for some time before being captured.
3 In her words: She always wondered what happened in that day, since it was not part of the normal routine. Every day, they would line the women up and take a look at them, with Mengele standing there (overseeing?). But on this day, in the middle of the day, they called the women back out and marched them to the showers. They gave them a rag and a small piece of soap. A few drops of water fell, then nothing. They were then marched back. Thinking about what happened, she suggested that maybe they wanted to suppress any sort of resistance when people were marched to the gas chambers by showing them that the women marched back...but that is only conjecture.
Thanks! Shabbat shalom,
Adriel