Gena Turgel, Auschwitz Survivor, Author: I Light a Candle
Krakow-born Gena Turgel was 21 years old when she and her mother were told to strip naked and wait in an Auschwitz gas chamber.
"We walked into that room—stone floors, openings in the ceiling which I can still see in front of me—and we were trembling," Turgel said in a video interview posted by The Israel Project. "It was bitter cold—waiting, waiting."
Turgel said she did not know to expect a shower of Zyklon B—the hydrogen cyanide that would suffocate multitudes of prisoners, pushing them to claw at the walls and one another, to try reach for clean air near the ceiling.
As they waited, Turgel saw "walking skeletons in every sense of the word—heaps of bodies lying everywhere; you could not distinguish whether they were men or women." After waiting, no poison fell. (TIP)
"As we came outside, the women there said how wonderful it was to see us. They screamed with happiness," Turgel told the Associated Press in 2005, suggesting the gassing system must have been broken. "They said, 'Don't you know? You were in the gas chamber.' I lost my voice. I couldn't produce any saliva."
"I have two daughters and a son, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. It's a wonderful feeling to have family and to see it all—I was so thankful to God for that," Turgel added.
"Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins." Isaiah 40:1–2
For the sake of this generation and the generations to come, may each of us, whether Jew or Gentile, take it upon ourselves to actively keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
On Yom HaShoah and every other day, we must not be silent, but vigilant, understanding that there are a growing number on the international scene who do not share the sentiment "Never Again."
While there are no easy answers for why the world allowed the Holocaust to happen, let us diligently ensure that it does not happen again.
Krakow-born Gena Turgel was 21 years old when she and her mother were told to strip naked and wait in an Auschwitz gas chamber.
"We walked into that room—stone floors, openings in the ceiling which I can still see in front of me—and we were trembling," Turgel said in a video interview posted by The Israel Project. "It was bitter cold—waiting, waiting."
Turgel said she did not know to expect a shower of Zyklon B—the hydrogen cyanide that would suffocate multitudes of prisoners, pushing them to claw at the walls and one another, to try reach for clean air near the ceiling.
As they waited, Turgel saw "walking skeletons in every sense of the word—heaps of bodies lying everywhere; you could not distinguish whether they were men or women." After waiting, no poison fell. (TIP)
"As we came outside, the women there said how wonderful it was to see us. They screamed with happiness," Turgel told the Associated Press in 2005, suggesting the gassing system must have been broken. "They said, 'Don't you know? You were in the gas chamber.' I lost my voice. I couldn't produce any saliva."
"I have two daughters and a son, eight grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. It's a wonderful feeling to have family and to see it all—I was so thankful to God for that," Turgel added.
"Comfort, comfort My people, says your God. Speak tenderly to Jerusalem and proclaim to her that her hard service has been completed, that her sin has been paid for, that she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins." Isaiah 40:1–2
For the sake of this generation and the generations to come, may each of us, whether Jew or Gentile, take it upon ourselves to actively keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
On Yom HaShoah and every other day, we must not be silent, but vigilant, understanding that there are a growing number on the international scene who do not share the sentiment "Never Again."
While there are no easy answers for why the world allowed the Holocaust to happen, let us diligently ensure that it does not happen again.