Lois Flamholz

Lois Flamholz (F / Czechia, 1928), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Auschwitz> <Bergen-Belsen> <Liberation of Bergen-Belsen> -- <Sweden> <United States>

Biography

Lois Flamholz come from a small town from an orthodox family. She was the oldest of 4 children. She had a younger sister who was 10, a little brother who was 6 and a little brother who was 3, and I was 16 at the time. From the ghetto we went to Auschwitz together with my paternal grandparents and my father’s sister and her family. All were exterminated except for 4 cousins with whom she went through the whole concentration camp together. After the liberation from Bergen Belsen, She went with 3 of her cousins to Sweden, because one of them died in Bergen Belsen. She was in Sweden 2-1/2 years before her mother’s two brothers brought her to America in 1948. Once in America, she went to the Bronx to night school, where she met her husband, got married in 1948 and built a new family.

ABC News (27 January 2020)

Lois Flamholz and her family were living in a small town in the Carpathian Mountains, which became a part of Hungary in 1939. When the Germans arrived, her family was told to pack up their belongings and move to a Jewish ghetto.

In the ghetto, she said, they were all put in cattle cars on a train and taken to Auschwitz. She was 16.

"They told us to strip naked, throw all -- everything on a pile, the shoes on one pile, the clothes in another pile. And that's when we had to stand naked. They shaved us from head to toe," she said. "The soldiers standing there and watching."

She and several cousins were separated from her mother, father, grandmother, aunt and siblings immediately when they arrived. She said she never saw her family again. She and other girls were put in barracks, where they cried and asked the women when they would see their mothers again.

"She says, 'Oh, you wanna see your mothers? You see the smoke over there? That's where your mothers are.' And that's when we found out about the crematoriums. 'Cause we were very close by the crematoriums," said Flamholz, 92.

She stayed in a work camp till February 1945, when they were told to march. They marched for about six weeks.

"I was so sick. It got to a point that, when we had to stand on line… that two other people from the other two lines had to hold me up, in order to stand up," she said. "I refused to go to the infirmary… I said to my cousin, ‘If I go to the infirmary, I’m not gonna come out.’"

Her group was liberated by the English in Bergen-Belsen. While she was in the hospital with other girls, a cousin fell very sick. Flamholz said she tried to give her cousin a sip of water and pleaded with her to stay alive.

"I picked her up, sort of," she said. "I didn’t realize that she was dead. I was trying to tell her, ‘The war just ended.’ … I says, ‘Please, hold on.’ And she was dead."

Flamholz told ABC News that it took her many years to be ready to talk about what had happened to her during the Holocaust.

"When my children were little, they only asked me once, ‘How come their friends have grandparents and they don’t?’ So I started crying. … I couldn’t talk to anybody about anything. I just couldn’t even think of what I went through," she said.

She said her children and grandchildren were what kept her alive and going.

"I said, ‘Hitler destroyed my whole family. He tried to kill me also. He is dead and I built a beautiful family that I’ve very proud of.’ And, that’s it. That’s my life," Flamholz said.