Holocaust survivor recalls horrors of Auschwitz in Spokane Convention Center speech

The doors of the cattle car swung open for the first time in three days.

It was a night in May 1944 in Poland and Irving Roth shuffled off the train with his grandparents, aunt, uncle, cousins and brother while armed men shouted and pointed guns at them. Roughly 100 other Jews spilled out with them, and guards separated the weak and old from the young and strong. Roth looked up and saw buildings with flaming chimneys against the black sky.

He had arrived in a death camp called Auschwitz.

Roth told his story of horror and survival to hundreds of people during a speech Wedensday night at the Spokane Convention Center. It was the fifth speech in a series showcasing survivors of the Holocaust brought to Spokane by Chabad of Spokane. Last year saw Nissan Krakinowsi and Marion Blumenthal Lazan.

Roth wrote the full account of his story in his book “Bondi’s Brother.”

Rabbi Yisroel Hahn of Chabad of Spokane said firsthand accounts of the Holocaust won’t be available for much longer, as fewer and fewer survivors remain.

“People are very inspired,” he said of the speeches. “If a Holocaust survivor can still trust in humanity and God, still smile and laugh, then we don’t have an excuse.”

He said the speeches are a message to Americans during internal strife. “This shows where hate leads,” he said.

Roth remembers all the family members he came with, except his brother, were dead within 24 hours of arriving at Auschwitz. He had been separated from his parents before Nazi soldiers shipped him to Poland, and he last heard they were in Budapest, Hungary, seeking work.

Shortly after arriving at Auschwitz, a German guard tattooed a number on Roth’s arm. He was 15 at the time.

“I became property of the German government,” he said.

Guards forced him to drain swamps and plow fields. He drank foul coffee for breakfast, soup for lunch and ate three pieces of bread for dinner.

“This was scientifically calculated,“ he said, so prisoners couldn’t walk or work in six months time. That is when they would be executed.

But Roth and his brother survived. As the Russian army closed in on the concentration camp in the dead of winter, the Auschwitz commander led all the prisoners on a death march to another camp, Roth said.

“You march or you die,” he said. “You slow down and you were shot down. I wanted to live.”

They arrived in the other concentration camp in the early months of 1945, but within days the guards fled as the American forces neared the camp. Roth hid in a barracks with roughly 250 other young people, one of them Elie Wiesel, author of the popular book “Night.”

Roth saw two American soldiers walk into the barracks. The soldiers looked at the kids and saw “skeletons shuffling along,” he said. “They broke down and cried.” Roth remembers his recovery included being fed chocolate, but the sweetest thing for him was finding his parents alive in Budapest.

He arrived in the city shortly after his liberation and asking people in the Hungarian city if any Roths were living there. Eventually, he was given an address, and Roth walked into the kitchen and saw his mother.

“Hi, Mom,” he said, smiling.

“She couldn’t catch her breath,” he said. “She almost fainted.”

This story was corrected to accuretly state that Roth gave the speech on Wedensday, June 5.