Sonya's story

Entrance to Auschwitz death camp

Sonyah Mitelman, was 14 years old and living in Vojany, a small town in Slovakia near the borders of Hungary and Ukraine, during the 1930s.

Born in 1930, she is 89 years old now and lives in Israel.  She speaks widely and even has a Facebook page.

Sonyah, her mother Miryam, father Yosef, brother, and two sisters were taken from their home by Nazis when Sonyah was fourteen.  

They were yanked out of their home in Vojany and all their belongings were thrown into the street, where looters took what they wanted.

Then they were marched to a ghetto, Uzhorod (Podkarpatska Rus in Czechoslovakia). 

Her brother was shot and killed because he could not keep up with the march.

Finally they were put on a train and deported to a concentration camp, Kratzau in Bohemia, Czechoslovakia.  

From there they were sent by train to the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland, not far from Krakow.  You can see its location on Google maps, but you will see the Polish spelling of the nearby town's name, Oswiecim.

Sonyah remembers standing in front of the terrible Josef Mengele every morning for inspection.

"He showed up every morning, very drunk, and would pick those to go to be gassed," Aliza told us. "He would point the the left or to the right.  Those sent to the left were taken to the gas chamber."  

One day toward the end of the war when Russians were coming to liberate the camp, the Nazis were hurriedly trying to kill the remaining prisoners.  

They took Sonya, her sisters, and their mother with others to a huge fire pit and made them undress before being thrown in.  

Sonyah's mother was thrown in alive as Sonyah and her sisters watched.  Vicious dogs were used to control the prisoners.  

In the confusion, her two sisters ran into the forest naked.  

Sonya too was thrown into the pit, but suddenly she realized that she was still alive.  While workers were shoveling dirt in, she climbed out and ran into the forest, where she found her two sisters.  

Some local Polish people took care of Sonya and her sisters until the Russians came and took over Poland.  However, the Russian soldiers were often drunk and the survivors suffered greatly, even being raped.  

Men and women had been separated in the camp, but they learned the sisters learned that their father had survived for a couple of years there before being thrown into a fire pit and murdered.

Once they were free, they ran on foot all the way back to Vojany, about 360 kilometers (224 miles).  When they got to the town, all the survivors found that Christians were living in their homes.

"Why did you come back?" the new residents asked angrily.

After resting and trying to figure out what to do, the sisters received help from the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), commonly known as the Joint.  The JDC arranged for them to take a train to Carlsbad, a beautiful resort west of Prague, now in the Czech Republic.  Carlsbad, now called Karlovy Vary, is a spa town with hot springs, a resort since the 19th C. in west Bohemia (an area also called Sudeten).  There they regained their health and normal weight after years of near-starvation.

They wanted to get to Palestine, controlled by the British, but the British refused them entry.  They traveled by ship to Cypress, where there was a refugee camp, and eventually after the founding of Israel in 1948, they made it to Haifa.  

Sonyah was 19 by that time, and before the war, she had been involved in a youth organization called HaYeled.  She met with other members in Israel and soon joined the Israeli army.  

She also met and married Josef Perl, and they had three daughters.  One of them, Aliza Perl Klainman, teaches the Hebrew class I take at American Jewish University.

Though he was Czech, Josef had been living in Budapest, Hungary, after Czechoslovakia was captured by the Third Reich.  When Hungary fell to the Nazis, he was taken to a slave labor camp.  He was put in a unit that accompanied the German army and built a railway as the Germans advanced toward Russia.  He was always near the front lines during the war.

Josef Perl was from a very Orthodox family and was the seventh of 14 children.  Because he was young and strong, he was sent to a slave labor camp, but his mother was deported with her five youngest children to Auschwitz-Birkenau.  As soon as she got off the train, she was sent straight to the gas chamber with her five children and two more, seven in all.

Aliza remembers from her earliest years her mother speaking about the horrors of Auschwitz, but her father never talked about what he went through.

You can find out more Sonyah Mitelman Perl tell her story by going to the website for the Shoah Foundation.  

• First sign in and create an account.  
• Then search Sonyah Perl or use the link here in her name.  You will see photos.  Just one look at her face with its searching look speaks volumes.
• To actually watch her speak (in Hebrew), you will need to go to an access site near you, such as the Museum of Tolerance or the American Jewish University if you are in LA.
• Some of the survivor stories are available online.  For example, you can listen to Pauline Spulber online.

See also my blog post about Sonyah on April 16, 2015. 
https://marthaymaria.blogspot.com/2015/04/yom-ha-shoah.html