The Interview with Eva Kalish הראיון עם אווה קליש

1990-01-01T03:59:00.000-08:00

Eva Kalish was born in 1927 in Eger, Hungary. She grow-up in a very religious home with her parents and her three sisters: Clara, Barbara and Valreia. She studied in the only Jewish elementary school in her town till 4th grade and then moved to the town school. In this school there weren't a lot of Jewish kids, and in high-school the government expelled them because they didn't allow Jewish people to go to school.
Eva learned how to sew, and the Christians used her to sew things.
After some time they gathered all the Jewish people in a ghetto – and all of her extended family and her lived in one small room. Later, they took them to a factory a few kilometers outside the town to make building blocks.
"The people who watched us were the "border guards", also called "the feather guards" (because of their hats). Eventually they took us, the girls who knew how to sew, and put us in the toilet to clean."
"After we were in the factory, they gathered the entire city in the train-station and the German soldiers put us on the train. Over 90 people in one wagon, with 2 buckets: one with water and one for our needs. We were there for 3 days, on our way to Auschwitz. There was no air and nothing to drink or eat."
"When we got to Auschwitz, we didn't know where we were and all of the sudden we saw a lot of people in striped-clothes shouting: "fast! fast!". At the beginning we thought they are crazy-peoples, but then they shouted at us to stand in 5's and then I lost all my family, and I was just with girls from my town. Thousands of people – and then you suddenly stand in-front of an officer that sends you right-life or left-incinerator. We got to this camp in 1944, the last year of the war, and there were a lot of people there. The incinerators burned day and night, it was red and there was a lot of smoke and a smell of something burning, but we thought it was some-kind of factory."

One day, here sister, who had studied Cosmetics in another town, came to the camp and they lived together for a short period of time. One time they sent them to cut the grass, and her sister got bitten because she didn't understood what the Germans wanted from her.
After a while they went to chop vegetables in the kitchen, and her sister took a little bit kohlrabi to give to one girl from their town. The guards saw her and wrote-down her number, A-9139.
"Next after they came and took her, and from that point I haven't seen her. After I got-out from the camp, in January 1945, some people told me she had died from stomach typhoid because when the British freed her- they gave her a lot of fat-food"
"When the Russian came close, the Germans did the "death walk" so they can escape, with us, from the Russians. The one's that couldn't walk fell to the ground and got shot. We didn't have food and we ate things from the snow. We walked day and night and were in all kinds of camps. In one camp I got very sick and someone stole my shoes and they gave me a wooden shoe, so I needed to walk with rags on the other one. Months went by and it was really hard. After that they brought us to Magdenburg, and we saw lots of frozen bodies they hadn't burned yet. Then they took us to the woods, we had no clothes – just rags and at 4am there was a parade and we needed to stand still while they checked no-one had escaped during the night. After that we, about 2.000 girls, arrived somewhere in the woods. Suddenly, the Germens disappeared, some girls crawled out-side the walls to seek for food, we were skin and bones."
Eva and the other girls were released on May 3ed. The Russians released them and wrote their names and gave them food – but girls got sick from that because they weren't used to eating. After the release, everyone decided what he wanted to do. Eva decided to go home to see if someone had survived, but she didn't found anyone. Her father came after some time very sick, he was in the woods and had been apart and seen awful things. Eva went to Budapest and lived with her ant, which hide with her little girl and her husband, but she decided she don't have anything to do there and went to a preparation program, so she could come to Israel. She met her husband there, through friends in "Elizabeth" school. In 1946 they went with "Neder Israel" ship to Israel, but the British caught them in front of Israel's coast and took them to Haifa and they had a fight with them, but they (the British) threw tear gas at them and took them to Cyprus with a prisoners and they were there a year.

The Town of Eger על העיר אגר

1990-01-01T03:57:00.000-08:00

Eger

Eger is one of the most beautiful towns of Hungary. Eger lies in a valley near the Eger Stream, in the Western side of the Bükk Mountains, northeast of Budapest.

The origin of the name Eger is not certain, but some say that it comes from the name of the Egerfa (Elder) flower which grew near the stream. The town has a German name also, Erlau that also means Elder Grove.

World War II brought destruction to the area of Budapest, and because of the Nazi Conquest in 1944 and later, the liberation of the city by the Russians in 1945, the city suffered great human loss, about 12,000 people died, most of them Jewish.

During the war Budapest had been a subject to allied bombing, which was supposed to stop supplies armaments from getting to Germany. The Germans occupied and fortified Budapest and also began deporting the Jewish community in Budapest.

The Jewish citizens of Budapest were put in a Ghetto in the former "Jewish Precinct" of the city. Many people died in the Ghetto from hunger and diseases, but many others were murdered inside the city itself, by the Nazi And the Arrow Cross anti-Semitic party. Many other Jewish citizens were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered.

The German Soldiers finally surrendered to the Soviet forces on the 4th of April 1945 following a bloody siege.

Eger Hungary אגר הונגריה

1990-01-01T03:56:00.000-08:00

Eva (Berkowitz) Kalish אווה (ברקוביץ') קליש

1990-01-01T03:54:00.000-08:00

Eva (Berkowitz) Kalish

RelatioNet KA EV 27 EG HU
Eva (Berkowitz) Kalish

Interviewer:

Ben Vaknin and Liel Avrams
Email: Ben: benvakn@netvision.net.il Liel: liela_@walla.com
ICQ: Ben: 159313546 Liel: 243790030
Messenger: Ben: bv_beaver@iol.co.il Liel: liela_@walla.co.il
Address: Kfar Saba

Survivor:

Code: RelatioNet KA EV 27 EG HU
Family Name: Kalish First Name: Eva
Father Name: Yosef Mother Name: Lea
Birth Date: 1927
Town In Holocaust: Eger Country In Holocaust: Hungary
Profession (Main) In Holocaust:
Status (Today): Alive
Address Today: Kfar Saba Israel
Email: kalishev@walla.co.il