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Casa Blanca- A harrowing tale of hope and survival was told before a riveted assembly of students at the Ira H. Hayes High School in D5 on Jan. 19, 2010.

Magda Herzberger, 84, was invited by the Freshman English class to give a presentation on her experiences at three German concentration camps; Auschwitz, Bremen and Bergen-Belsen . Herzberger was introduced by Leigh Myers, Language Arts Teacher at Ira H. Hayes High School, whose class wanted to learn more about the Holocaust after several interesting lessons on the subject.

Myers interfaced with the Phoenix Chapter of Holocaust Survivors who put her in contact with Herzberger. “If it wasn’t for the strong interest from the students in my Freshman English class, and my desire to make their wishes a reality, we wouldn’t have had this opportunity,” Myers said.

Herzberger was very gracious in her opening statements. “I was looking forward so much to see you and I feel very fortunate to have the opportunity to meet all of you,” she told the assembly.

Herzberger gave the students an eyewitness account of the tragedy she experienced as a young girl in war torn Europe in the 1940s. She took the children on a journey of unimaginable horror and miraculous liberation; the details of which have been compiled in an autobiography entitled “Survival” published in 2005.

She was born in Cluj, Romania in 1926 to a large and loving orthodox Jewish family. Jewish discrimination was rampant at the time and on Mar. 27, 1944 the Germans began their occupation of Romania. Herzberger and her family were forcibly driven from their homes and hauled in cattle wagons to Nazi Germany’s largest concentration and extermination facility, Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The train ride carried on for three days and nights, and the passemgers were cramped without food or facilities. It was only the beginning. “If you want to know what Auschwitz was like it was an extermination camp,” she said. When they arrived at Auschwitz, the prisoners faced an agonizing selection process. Herzberger recalled the chief SS officer who was conducting the selection, Dr. Josef Mengele. Mengele secured the moniker Angel of Death” based on his sweeping selection process and his ghastly human experiments. Mengele had the prisoners form two lines. One line was for women and children and the other for men. He would inspect the captives and point them to enter the camp either to the right or the left. “To the left meant death, to the right meant life,” said Herzberger. The unfortunate souls who were quickly dispatched to the left were children up to 14 years old, the sick, the elderly, the disabled, and the mentally ill.

Before the inspection she recalled the words of her father. “My father reminded me to follow the path of love; forgiveness; and tolerance and never let hatred enter my heart no matter what happens.” She never saw him again as her father and her uncle died in a separate camp. “Ninety percent of my family was killed in the various concentration camps,” she revealed.

Herzberger said that she was thrown into a spiritless environment where love and compassion were dead and hatred, violence and cruelty ruled. She didn’t know from one day to the next if she was going to live. Guards with machine guns kept watch on the camp that was surrounded by barbed wire that carried a deadly electric charge. She recalled the prisoners who took their own life by grabbing the barbed wire in an attempt to escape the camp; if not through life then through death.

Despite the daily horrors, starvation and widespread disease, Herzberger kept her wits. “If I did not have a positive attitude I could not be here today.”

In July of 1944 she was transferred to a concentration in Bremen until March of 1945. At the end of her stay in Bremen the prisoners were lead on a merciless “death march” to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp which was over 50 mi. away. “I will never forget my fellow prisoners who were shot right in front of me,” and, “only half of us survived the death march.”

She described the grounds of the camp being littered with corpses in all stages of decay and the barracks were infested with rats and lice. While there she was collecting corpses to be buried in a mass grave. At this point, Herzberger was very weak, extremely malnourished and gravely ill. “While dragging the corpse I collapsed by the trunk of an old birch tree.”

With her last ounce of strength she embraced the tree because she wanted to feel the closeness of a living thing as her own life slowly slipped away. Though her body was ravaged she was still able to maintain a lucid mind while her last active thoughts turned to God. “I promised to God that if I survived I would keep alive the memory of all those victims left behind.”

Then a man who she described as her “guardian angel” discovered her body among the corpses and lifted her up and carried her away. It was a British soldier. The war was in its final days and Bergen-Belsen was voluntarily handed over by the Germans to a British- Canadian unit after negotiations on Apr. 15, 1945. “I don’t know how he discovered me, it was a miracle,” she said of the soldier who was weeping as he carried her skeletal body to safety.

After a lengthy recovery, Herzberger worked as a nursing assistant in a Typhus hospital in Bergen-Belsen. Later that year she returned to Romania where she was amazingly reunited with her mother whom she lost contact with in the concentration camps. It was a moment of indescribable joy as her mother lived a long life thereafter, passing away just 15 years ago.

Herzberger was scant on money and means but not on motivation as she studied extremely hard to get into medical school. Her only hope to register was through a full scholarship which she received after a year of arduous study. She met and married a fellow medical student named Eugene who she has been married to for over 60 years. Unfortunately, the tide of times was once again swayed by political upheaval as she left Romania before she could earn a degree. After a stay at an internment camp on the island of Cyprus, the family moved to the newly established state of Israel in 1949 where Eugene studied in a neurosurgical program. The Herzbergers became United States citizens in 1963.

Since the 1960s Herzberger started to write poems and stories professionally receiving a multitude of awards while also lecturing about the Holocaust. She shared with the students at Ira H. Hayes High School several excerpts of her poems and autobiography. Another interesting fact about Herzberger is that she is a marathon runner, mountain climber and long-distance cyclists and among the messages she shared one of them was to stay healthy and active throughout their lives.

After her presentation with the students Herzberger spent the afternoon Myers’ class where she discussed her poetry and read from her book, “The Waltz of Shadows.” She remarked to Myers about the “wonderful group of students” at Ira H. Hayes High School.

Students who spent time with Herzberger walked away with a greater sense of tolerance and understanding. “She taught me the importance of having love in my heart,” said Amanda Ahmsaty, 17, D5. Michael Pablo, 17, D5 said learning about the Holocaust from Herzberger left a deep impression on his outlook on life. “Her presentation was very poetic. Her message about the meaning of life and always having everlasting hope made my year memorable.”

For more information on Herzberger go to www.magdaherzberger.com and for the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors Association call 602-788-7003.

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