How Did Mike Survive?

David's Journey

From my homeland in Czechoslovakia, the Nazis packed us in cattle cars heading to Auschwitz in the summer of 1942. When we arrived, we were beaten off the train, our clothing taken away, and our entire bodies shaved. Numbers were tattooed on our left forearms – my number is 65316!

Those healthy enough were then assigned to slave labor. After first working in an ammunition factory, I was assigned to the railroad camp, the place where all incoming prisoners were unloaded. Only the fastest runners were selected, and the Nazis would run behind us with whips to make us run faster. After we had lined up the incoming prisoners in rows of five, theNazis would then make their selections as to who would die right away and who would work awhile before being murdered.Those of us who did not obey their commands were brutally beaten. Once the area had been cleared of the new prisoners, we had to sort through the clothing and valuables the victims had brought with them. We then had to run with arms full of these articles to the warehouses and anything valuable was shipped to Germany. I survived by secretly eating any food I discovered while on the run to the warehouses. One of my friends who had the same job was beaten to death for eating this food. However, I was one of the lucky ones. I lived through Auschwitz. I have asked myself many times, "When so many others died, why did I survive?"

In late 1944, the Nazis hurriedly attempted to transfer all surviving prisoners of Auschwitz to other camps. They didn’t want the incoming Allies to know of the extermination camps. We were moved to another slave labor camp, Landsberg, and then in March of 1945, we were marched towards the Tyrolian Mountains and Austria. This became known as "The Death March" due to the deaths of so many prisoners. At one point during this march, there was an air raid of American Air Force bombers. Amidst all of the confusion and distraction, two other boys and myself were able to escape into the woods and after three or four days, I was picked up by soldiers of the U.S. Armored 774 Tank Battalion.

A very kind man named Captain Yogerling took me to an American army camp called "Home Run." I stayed there until the Army and Red Cross located my aunt who had left Austria for the U.S. in 1939 before the war, and in 1946 I moved to Detroit, Michigan to live with her.

It was 1944 and I was 14 years old. My family, consisting of my parents, an older brother, three younger siblings, grandparents, aunts, and cousins, had literally been packed with countless others in boxcars for three days and three nights with no room to lie down, no water, and no toilet. Suddenly the boxcars lurched to a stop. The nightmarish trip had finally ended. But another nightmare awaited us: the death-camp Birkenau-Auschwitz.

The doors opened. Orders were barked at us. "Leave everything behind! Line up to the right and left!" Somehow, my father understood what was happening and told me to lie about my age, so I stood on my toes in line with my father and older brother. The rest of our family stood in the other line. Little did we know at the time that they were marched to the gas chambers and crematorium that same day. Also on that day, at the age of 14, I, David Mandel, lost my name. The Nazis tattooed my new identity, A-9328, on my arm. I hadlost my close and loving family and my name.

Thereafter, I was separated from my father and older brother and shipped to another camp to work in a coal mine. The Nazis worked us on starvation rations. Men were reduced to skin and bones within 90 days. I witnessed brutalities no child should ever witness. Suicides were rampant. Despite this, for some reason there was a tenacity within me to survive. I felt driven to find my younger siblings, believing that they needed me. At the time I had no idea they had already been murdered.

In January 1945, the Russian invasion began and our camp of 4,500 prisioners was ordered to evacuate. After marching 3 days and nights without eating or sleeping, only about 1,000 of us remained alive. Any who could not endure the march were simply shot.

My buddy and I decided to escape as we approached a curve in the road. As we ran, three other prisoners followed us. The guards saw us and yelled, "Halt!" The three others were shot, but my friend and I managed to reach the woods safely. Two youngsters in the middle of the woods, lost, scared, and hungry, yet we knew the Russians weren’t far away. We found an empty cottage where we survived by eating potatoes and snow. When the Russians finally found us, I weighed 70-80 lbs.

I was taken to a refugee center in Krakow, Poland where I found my father. We gathered our strength and went back to our hometown to look for any family and friends who might have survived. My older brother, John, also survived. My mother, three younger brothers, ages 13, 10, 8, and my little sister, Ester, 6, did not survive.

In July of 1946, my father, brother and myself arrived in the U.S. through the assistance of an aunt who lived in Pittsburgh. After many years of silence, I made a vow to bear witness to the Holocaust – the blackest era of man’s history – which many unnamed others experienced as well. I am merely one of the fortunate few now able to tell the story of those long-silent millions. As painful as it is, I am committed to tell of these horrors so that future generations will know about this terrible historical era and hopefully prevent such a tragedy from happening again.