From Theresienstadt and Auschwitz to Israel
March 30, 1998
The understated tone of this memoir adds to the author's powerful re-creation of her life as a young Czechoslovak Jewish woman during the Holocaust. After the 1939 German occupation of her country, Elias, with her father and sister (her parents were divorced), lived undercover in a Czech village until 1942, when they were betrayed and removed to the Theresienstadt ghetto. To avoid deportation to a concentration camp, Elias married her boyfriend, Koni, a member of the Jewish ghetto police. But the two were eventually sent to Auschwitz, where she tried to hide her pregnancy. Horrifyingly, the author describes how camp doctor Joseph Mengele allowed her to give birth, then conducted an experiment to determine how long it would take her newborn son to starve to death. Another prisoner helped Elias inject the baby with morphine on the sixth day. Also detailed is Elias's harsh struggle to survive until the end of the war. She subsequently separated from Koni, remarried and emigrated to Israel. Photos.