My Aunty Madzia
Updated: Sep 12
3.6.23
I loved Madzia as much as my own parents. She and her husband, Rafael, lived in Tel Aviv, and whenever I travelled to Israel, I would usually stay with them. They were always so good to me, and I felt so happy in their company.
Rafael passed away in 2014, and Madzia, in December 2021. It was very sad that, because of Covid, I hadn’t managed to see her before she died.
Here is a very brief summary of Madzia’s life:
Madja was four years younger than my father and a year younger than my mother. During the war, as a young teenager, she spent time in Auschwitz before being sent to the women’s concentration camp at Halbstadt.
The story goes that she managed to hide a diamond in her mouth until nearly the end of the war. By then, she was exhausted and had lost the will to live, so she handed the diamond over to a Kapo (an inmate guard) called Pola. Fortunately, Pola had a heart. She cared for Madzia, giving her extra food and clothes and helping her survive.
Madzia and mum met each other at the Halbstadt labour camp and became friends. When the Russian Army liberated the camp on 9 May 1945, the two young women walked through the gates to taste the freedom.
Around the same time, the Russians liberated the men’s labour camp at Friedland, where dad was an inmate. Dad discovered that the women’s camp was only about nine miles away, so he borrowed a bicycle and headed there to search for his only sister.
On the way, he noticed two girls with shaved heads who looked like boys. One looked very familiar. It was his sister Madzia, whom he hadn’t seen for nearly two years. The other was mum, who would soon became his wife. But that is another story.
The three of them planned to leave Europe and migrate to Palestine, together with dad's half brother, Staziek, his wife, Franka and baby son, Dovi. At the last moment, however, mum changed her mind. She decided she didn’t want to migrate to Palestine. Her reasoning was that she needed to get as far away as possible from 'Dead Europe' and the history and hatred that seemed to follow the Jewish people.
So, after receiving permits from dad's uncle who had spent the war years in Shanghai, mum and dad sailed to Australia in 1949. Madja, together with Staziek and his family, had set out for Palestine two years earlier, in 1947, aboard The Exodus. That is a big story too.
In a nutshell, The Exodus was a worn-out passenger ship, carrying more than 4,500 Jewish refugees, many of them Holocaust survivors living in displaced persons (DP) camps in Germany. The ship attempted to sail to Palestine, which was under British mandate, and didn't have permission to land. The British prevented the passengers from entering Palestine and eventually sent them back to Germany. It was a horrific ordeal for people who had so recently survived the concentration camps.
The small family group eventually made it back to Palestine on the brink of the 1948 War of Independence. Madja and Staziek were conscripted into the army, but Madja was injured soon afterwards. That was when she met Rafael in a hospital in Tel Aviv. They married and had two children, my first cousins, Igal and Anat.
Dad, mum and Madja were finally reunited in Tel Aviv in 1960, after not seeing each other for twelve years.
From then on, they remained in constant contact and wrote hundreds of letters to one another in Polish. I still have those letters today.
Adolek’s half-brother and his wife married in 1944 in Lublin, Poland. Dovi (Bolesh) was born in October 1945 in Łódź. In 1946 they moved to Landsberg am Lech, near Munich
MADZIA'S STORIES
'The Day after The War'
by Madja Ahouvi
5th May, 1945
.
The end of 1944. Auschwitz was working powerfully. The Germans knew that their end was near. They wanted to burn as many Jews in their crematoriums as possible. We went five by five, in ranks to the showers.
I didn't believe that we would be left alive. I told the girls: I want to die quickly (we had heard about the gas). But then a miracle happened. It was water, real water.
It was hard to believe, but they sent us to work. After a whole night in a goods train we came to a factory. We didn't know where we were, but it was in Sudetenland, Halbstadt.
We worked there for half a year. We slept on beds of boards in a big hall in another factory. Every morning we went, hungry and barefoot, to the weapon factory. SS women were our inspectors. The Frenchmen were prisoners of war. They examined our work. They whispered words, consoling us. They very quietly told us the news. They were afraid of the S.S. women. Sometimes we found some raw potatoes or a carrot. It was the most beautiful present. Once I found a comb and a little mirror in my drawer. I noticed that I had some hair growing on my head.
5th May, 1945. In the morning the S.S. women didn't come. We were locked from outside in the big hall. It was impossible to open the iron door. Suddenly we heard crashing and breaking. The French prisoners came to open the door. They told us that the war had finished. The Germans ran away. Our joy was great, so great, we wept and laughed. After that we were told that the Germans had put a bomb in the cellar before they left and that the French had diffused it.
Again luck was with me. We were alive. We were free. We went out to freedom, to the sun, to the free world. We wanted to cry: Youth, lend me wings to fly!!
It was a wonderful nice day. The sun was shining, the trees were blooming, the air was clear. The whole world was ours. We were so young. We were full of hope. I walked with my girlfriend, Marysia, along the street for the first time – free -- without the S.S. women. I wore my only black dress, absurdly long with an open neck. On my feet, wooden sandals. Under the dress, nothing. But who cares (I thought) how I look like. We carried the freedom, the youth, the happiness, and hope in our hearts.
My lean body on my thin legs moved slowly along the street. Suddenly we heard the noise of motorcycles. Then we saw hundreds of Russian soldiers on motorcycles. They ran after the Germans. And then, after the whole convoy - it was unbelievable – appeared three Jewish boys on bicycles. I said to my friend, look, one of them looks like my brother. At that moment, he jumped across to me and hugged and kissed me. My dear brother, he recognised me at once. We all were looking terribly thin.
My brother had been looking for me from early that morning, driving from one camp to another. He was sure in his heart that I was in one of them. At once he took me with him. After that, he and his friends looked for some (more) relatives or friends in the camp. My friend, Marysia, became my brother's wife.
My brother found me on the first day after the war. Half a year earlier I had been separated from my family at the Auschwitz gate. My second brother escaped from Treblinka. That's all. From the whole family only the three of us won our lives.
To Jane with love,
Madzia, 1996
'My Birthday'
by Madja Ahouvi
May 1945
There were different birthdays in my life. There were noisy ones and there were quiet ones. There were sad ones and there were happy ones, rich and poor ones. But only one of them is unforgotten.
It happened in 1945, near the end of the war. It didn't stop the Germans from working hard and being cruel. At that time I lay on my bunk bed of boards, very sick. In the morning my girlfriends covered me with a blanket. They went to work. I stayed alone. I pressed myself into the straw mattress, because I was afraid of the ‘Kapo’.
I was losing my senses. I was dreaming: I was at home lying on my white bed. Opening my sleepy eyes I saw the sun through the windows. The balcony was wide open, and I smelt the fresh lilac’s odour of May. I hear from far away: ‘Madziunia, wake up!’ Today is your birthday. Everybody is kissing me and I’m carrying lots of chocolate in my pockets. I'm going delighted to school. How wonderful is the taste!
But… the reality was different. No chocolate, no PARENTS, no kisses, no happiness. I lay on the wooden bed till the evening, hungry, thirsty and sick. In the evening the girls came from work, tired, hungry but happy. They saw the black flags outside, Hitler was dead on the first of May. We hoped that the end of war was very year. The girls brought me some wildflowers.
My best girlfriend brought me the most wonderful present in my life, because it was given from her heart, from her hungry lips. She was so hungry – but she gave it to me. It was fresh and sweet like nothing in the world. It was a big CARROT!
Miriam Ahouvi, 1 May 1996
To Jane with love, M
Note: Madja wrote her memoirs in English during her years in English class in the 1990s.
'1st Exodus'
'2nd Exodus'
Top row, L–R: Yasmin (Korman/Vinkler), Jane (Kohn/Korman), Guy (Ahouvi) Middle row, L–R: Madja (Ahouvi), Coby (Korman), Bee (Nyugen), Rami, Anat, Yoav (Ahouvi) Bottom row, L–R: Evie and Sunny (Korman-Inbal), Ben (Korman-Inbal), Mia (Korman-Inbal), Justine (Peleg), Amir (Inbal)
Mum is saying:
Our beloved Madzunya!
Thank God, after so many years, our bodies and minds are still healthy!
We wish you good health. We are lucky, that is, you are lucky to have children that wrap you with love as if you're a child yourself. And I am lucky that I have my beloved Adolek, who I also look after like a child :-)
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