Dita Kraus - Part 2
- Brutal Nazi Torture of Jewish Girl & Her Revenge - Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen

2 September 2022

Category: Nazi Victims

After spending years under the Nazi occupation and one year in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, Dita and her parents were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in December 1943. They were placed into BIIb family camp, called Theresienstadt family camp Auschwitz, established on the 8th of September 1943 for the Jews from the Ghetto in Terezin. It was one of the nine camps built by the Germans in the Birkenau subcamp of Auschwitz and about 18,000 Jews deported from the Theresienstadt ghetto were placed there between 1943 and 1944. This was the second camp, after the Gypsy family camp, where men stayed together with women and children, but slept in separate barracks. It was set up by the Nazis for propaganda purposes. But other living conditions were the same as in the other camps—hunger, beatings, hard labor and limited access to water.

The Theresienstadt family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted of thirty-two wooden barracks, originally horse stables, with no windows, only some narrow apertures in the walls which let some air in. Each of them housed 300 prisoners. The only food they received was a bowl of soup at midday and in the evening a piece of bread with a spoonful of margarine or fake jam. The prisoners were so hungry that they could think of nothing but food. One of the “privileges“ in the Theresienstadt family camp, was the Children’s Block. It was in barrack number 31.

Librarian from Auschwitz

Dita was the one who was responsible for the books, becoming the camp’s “librarian”. Head of the children's block was Freddy Hirsch, whom Dita knew from Prague and Theresienstadt. Hirsch had managed to convince the camp’s commander to allow this Children’s block, claiming it would keep the children busy, while their parents had to perform forced labor. Hirsch was also able to obtain some additional food for the children. He arranged for the Children’s Block to be heated and the roll calls for children to be held indoors. Hirsch was extremely strict about the children‘s hygiene, insisting that they wash daily, even in the frigid winter of 1943–44 and conducting regular inspections for lice.

In February 1944, the Auschwitz resistance movement decoded the meaning of “SB6” which was a cryptic abbreviation for the “special treatment 6 “meaning “murder in the gas chamber after 6 months”. On the 8th of March 1944, Fredy Hirsch and the other 3,800 men, women and children from September transport were loaded into trucks and driven to the gas chambers where they found their death. Dita, who had come into Auschwitz in December 1943, knew that her life would end six months after her arrival, namely in June 1944.

The selection by Josef Mengele

However, that May new orders came from Germany, to select men and women from among the prisoners, who would still be able to work in the German armaments industry. The doctor who performed the selection was known at Auschwitz as the angel of death, it was Josef Mengele. Josef Mengele sent Dita to the group destined for hard labor. The Theresienstadt family camp was liquidated in July 1944. The remaining 7,000 men, women, children including babies were murdered in the gas chambers.

About 2,000 women and 1,000 men, who survived the selection, were put on a train and sent to other camps in Germany such as Stutthof or the subcamps of Neuengamme near Hamburg where Dita arrived together with her mother and other Auschwitz prisoners. Toward the end of the war, the death rate among the prisoners in the Neuengamme concentration camp and its subcamps, which had been steadily climbing, reached catastrophic proportions. In March 1945, the SS emptied the subcamps of Neuengamme, and the prisoners, including Dita and her mother, were sent to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

When on the 15th of April 1945, the British 11th Armored Division liberated Bergen-Belsen, the prisoners finally got food and clothes. Among the liberated prisoners were Dita and her mother Elisabeth. Dita's mother died shortly after the liberation. The next morning a coach was traveling from Bergen-Belsen to Prague. A few weeks after her return Dita met Otto Kraus. They got married in 1947. They moved to Israel in May 1949. They had three children and lived a happy life together until 2000 when Otto passed away.

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