Cecilia Kleinová

* 1928

  • "We arrived at Auschwitz, and those who were able-bodied, like me, went to the right. The small children and the elderly went to the left. And Mum and the two youngest boys went to the left, and we never saw them again."

  • "When a boy reaches thirteen years of age, we have a confirmation ceremony, the Bar Mitzvah. It was a tradition to buy the boy praying straps for the occasion, and for Mum to sew a decorative pouch to wear them in. So Mum sewed him a pouch for the straps, the tefillin as they're called. He didn't save anything, only the tefillin and the pouch that Mum had made him." (Q: "He had that with him the whole time at the concentration camp, like you said?") "Yes, he had it with him the whole time, he kept them safe all the way home. And he has them stored as..." (Q: "A special relic of sorts...") "Mum made it for him. He didn't save anything else, just that."

  • "My mum was a strange person. We weren't rich, but we were never short on food. In those days there were many so-called beggars who would stop by, and every Jewish beggar knew that if he came to the Rothmanns, he wouldn't go hungry. She hadn't learned to cut a slice or two of bread and put that on the table, but instead she would put there the whole loaf, or half a loaf depending on what she had. And she didn't put a bit of butter, but instead however much she had churned, she put all the butter on the table. One time this one beggar cost her dearly. As she placed bread on the table - it was easily half a loaf. And next to it she placed a plate heaped with butter that she had churned that evening. And he ate it all. He spread the butter on the bread like this! Mum was abashed, I was just a child. But as I watched him bite into it, I could see his teeth marks deep in the butter. Well, that's when Mum learned not to put everything on the table."

  • "Since then I don't eat spinach. Because they served us spinach soup in Auschwitz. And it was made out of nettles and all sorts of weeds, complete with gravel, mud and stones... And they called it 'spinatsuppe' - and that was our lunch. And since then I just can't stand anything green."

  • "That's how I know that after Passover... I don't know if you know that we have to have different sets of dishes for Passover?" (Q:"Well, not only that but it mustn't touch anything fermented.") "Yes. And we took the dishes to the stream to wash them. We were used to do that every year, to wash, dry and wrap them with these rags or with paper. And when they were wrapped up, we put them in the loft. And that's what we were preparing to do. So all the dishes were at the stream, because we were washing them there when they came for us. And the dishes stayed in the stream. Because they didn't let us do anything, just quick, quick, pack a few things. Fifteen or twenty kilos, I can't remember. Then they herded us all into the synagogue, and from the synagogue into wagons and to Uzhhorod into the brickyard."

  • "My sister was a seamstress by trade, and she hand-sewed things for the prison matrons. They brought her scissors, a needle and thread, and she sewed clothes for them. And in return she got, depending on what she could steal, a piece of bread extra, a chunk of butter to go with it, a drop of honey... And this sister of mine - like I said, we weren't full sisters, only half through our dad - she gave that all to me, so that I would eat well, as I was a child. And I didn't want to eat, because I wanted her to eat too, so we kept arguing about that. And I told her that there's no need for me to live when my parents don't live. So we kept arguing about that, about the food."

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    Teplice, 25.05.2009

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„A Jew shouldn‘t lie, but instead behave like a Jew should behave.“

Cecilia Kleinova - detail 1.jpg (historic)
Cecilia Kleinová
zdroj: foto: Lukáš Krákora

Cecilia Kleinová, née Rothmannová, was born in October 1928 in Porúbka, a small village in the Sobranka district of Eastern Slovakia. Her parents Áron and Fany (née Weissová) managed a small estate and the local village shop. The family honoured Jewish traditions. Cecilia had six siblings all in all. Apart from the oldest, her step-sister Růžena from her father‘s first marriage, they were all boys: Alexander, Samuel Viliam, Emil, Adolf and Ignác. The persecution of Jews during World War II claimed the lives of both her parents, of her brothers Samuel Viliam, Adolf and that of the youngest Ignác. The region the family lived in became Hungarian territory following Czechoslovakia‘s collapse. The situation was not good for Jews, but the Rothmann family was allowed to stay in their own house for quite some time - until Passover in 1944, when they were suddenly deported, being sent through the Uzhhorod brickyard ghetto to the concentration camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her mother and her two youngest brothers were sent „to the wrong side“ straight away during the first selection. Cecilia lived in the so-called „gipsy camp“ of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and she was greatly helped by her sister Růžena, who supported her with food. After half a year in Auschwitz, she and her sister were transferred to the labour camp in Zittau, Saxony, where they arrived on the 1st of November 1944. Cecilia worked in a factory repairing military air planes damaged during combat, her sister Růžena worked in quality control. After their liberation in May 1945, the two of them returned to their native Porúbka. Cecilia later moved to Velké Kapušany to start a family - she lived there until 1974, when she moved to Teplice in Bohemia. She wedded a second time, marrying Chaim Klein. She was a long-standing member of the local Jewish religious community. She died on October, 15th, 2014.