David Marks
David Marks / David Markovits (M / Romania, 1928), Holocaust survivor
Biography
David Markovits was the ninth child in a working family of 12 children. They were an upper middle class family in a prosperous Romanian village. They own a farm and the father was in the import-export business. The lives of Jewish families change dramatically when the village was annexed to Hungary.
The Jewish families, 80 people from the village (only 2 of his 15 classmates survived, David and his friend Israel Orgel) were boarded into train cars, without food or water, and transported for four days to Nazi occupied Poland. 35 of David's immediate and extended family members were slaughtered at their arrived in Auschwitz. David was 16 years old. In Auschwitz, 1,500 young boys shared a small barracks, sleeping on top of each other. Scarlet fever broke out and doctors checked the the boys three times a day. Boys who showed signs of illness were taken immediately to the crematorium for elimination. 650 male children who survived were taken to a Germany Labor Camp where 22,000 prisons were building fighter aircraft in a factory. They were eventually force marched to Dachau when we were liberated by the American 5th Army.
With only the clothes on his back David was dropped off in Italy, with no formal assistance. He survived due to the kindness of the Italians. Eventually, he was able to board a ship to Palestine with 1,400 other young survivors. The British intercepted the ship and David spent over 2 years in Cyprus. Eventually he was able to go to Palestine where he was reunited with seven siblings who also survived. David eventually emigrated to New York.
ABC News (27 January 2020)
David Marks was born in Hungary in a small town to a small family with 12 siblings. When Hungary joined the Nazis, he was not allowed to attend school after sixth grade so he worked as a laborer. He said the owner of the shop was terrified that the authorities would learn that he was employing a Jewish youth and teaching him a trade.
"He told me when somebody comes, I should take right away a broom and sweep up and I shouldn’t hold even a hammer in my hand," Marks said. "Of course, I was very happy to it and I was working 12 hours a day."
Marks worked in the shop for two years until the Nazis forced the Jewish people to move to the ghetto.
"We were in the ghetto about four weeks without food, without bedding. And from the ghetto, they took us into a little field and they took away from (us) all our documents, money, everything and (threw) it away," he said.
Marks and his extended family of 35 as well as other Jewish people were put into cattle cars.
"They put in two pails. No food. Nothing. Old people, the young people. … We are all in the train. The train was going about three, four days till we got to the border between Poland and Hungary," he said. "The next day, we were already in Auschwitz."
He was 16 when he arrived to the camp.
He never saw his parents, or most of his relatives again. Some close family members were killed that first afternoon at Auschwitz.
"I was maybe 10 blocks from the crematorium and we had no idea what they’re burning there," he said. "We were told that they’re burning waste, garbage because we saw the big building and smoke but we had no idea. No idea."
He was put in a barrack filled with 1,500 children. When scarlet fever broke out, he said, the ill children were killed. Fearing that they too would get sick, he and some friends escaped the barracks through a roof and hid from the soldiers for two days, but eventually returned.
He said at some point, Nazi physician Josef Mengele entered the barracks and checked to see whether he and his friends could work.
"He said, ‘If I will hit you in the face and you don’t fall over, then you’ll be able to go to work.' So, I didn't know what side he's gonna give it to me. So, I spread my leg a little bit so I should have resistance," Marks said.
Marks was struck repeatedly but he took the hits and was able to work.
"There was a kitchen and they needed 15 children to peel potatoes and volunteer. So, of course, I volunteered because at least you could have raw potatoes," he said.
After learning that some of his sisters were alive and on the other side of the camp, he even swapped potatoes for bread and shoes that he was able to get to his sisters on the other side of a fence in the camp. He spent three months in Birkenau, he said.
"We never thought that we’ll be able to escape from there," he said about himself and a friend. "You had no time to think of anything. You didn’t have time to plan to escape because there was no chance."
Marks said he and the others were not aware that the Russians and liberation was near. The prisoners were told to stop building a huge factory they'd been working on and start marching to a huge camp -- Dachau.
"We were so weak that we just didn’t know how this is gonna end and what are you going to do with us," he said.
When the Americans arrived to the camp, the Germans either surrendered or killed themselves. He said that he and the others didn't have the strength to rejoice in their freedom.