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profile: Dora Niederman The first in a series of profiles based on interviews with refugees living New Orleans. by Mark McGrain with photos by Cheryl Gerber |
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For
Dora Niederman, a World War II Holocaust survivor, it took 50 years to rise above the
effects of trauma inflicted by life in the Nazi death camps and begin speaking publicly
about the horrors she has experienced. The memories of persecution, abduction, torture,
and death were never discussed, except amongst a very closed circle of fellow survivors
also living in New Orleans. After half a century of guarded silence, it was the searing
supremacist statements of Louisiana politician David Duke that ignited her passion to
prevent history from repeating itself by sharing her story with others. |
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| I interviewed Dora in June of 1999 at her home in the New Orleans’ suburb of Metairie. We met in the living room of her apartment, located in the 34-unit complex that she and her husband have owned and managed for 45 years. An abundance of colorful, hand-made afghans adorn the sofa and chairs -- she laughed self-consciously as she confessed to her prodigious passion for crocheting then confided, "hard work will get you a good life! It’s an unsettling paradox that forged into the iron gates of Auschwitz are the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" -- "Work Makes You Free." It was only with luck, perceptiveness, and the kindness of strangers, that Niederman survived the horrors of the infamous death camp to give triumphant new meaning to those words. In the end it has been work, hard work that’s brought Niederman peace and today makes her free. Niederman came to New Orleans with her husband in 1950 and together they have worked ceaselessly to rebuild their lives after the Holocaust. "If you work hard, you can survive,'' she said. "The first time -- I went to talk at Mandeville Library I couldn’t talk. I cried the whole time I was talking. I broke down," remembered Niederman. "None of us could talk because it’s very painful. There are so many things that I still can not say. What brought us out, I’ll tell you the honest truth, was Duke. Because he kept on saying that there was ‘not such a thing as the holocaust.’ It really hurt me because I know we were there and we know that there was one. As a matter of fact I almost got killed from Mengele. I was as close to Mengele [the notorious Nazi doctor] as I am to you, in Auschwitz. And he’s going to tell me there was no holocaust? So we just had to, all of us had to come out." With a deep breath and reflective sigh, Niederman began her story.
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| "They came in the middle of the night and took us to the ghetto then later to Auschwitz. When [we got to Auschwitz] it was late at night. They shaved you off, I had long blond hair, they shaved this all off, took all our clothes off, took everything away. My grandfather was 67, my great grandmother was 100, some of my cousins, my uncles, they were older people, so they separated us. They took the older people on one side, the younger people on one side. I was running to go with my aunt and this German came and yanked me back, he says ‘you have to go work’ and my aunt says to me ‘go to work, maybe you can help me,’ she had two little babies. She says ‘maybe you can help me with the children.’ I say O.K. That’s how I survived because I went left and they went right. |  |
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| "The next morning when we got up, they said ‘you see that, that’s where your families got burned last night.’ All the crematoriums, they put them in the gas chamber and gassed them then burned them." While in Auschwitz, Niederman befriended a group of girls who happened to be from the town where her stepfather lived. "We stayed all, the whole time together," Niederman continued, "then Mengele came and we had to undress and he looked and I had about three or four rashes on my body so he put me in the hospital. I was two days in the hospital when I said ‘no, I’m not going to stay here’ because this is dangerous. The nurse gave me two buckets of [excrement] and says ‘take them out and dump them.’ I did, I took [them] out and never came back. I went to where my friends were. That night they took us to Stutthof." After several months in another camp at Stutthof, they were taken by train to nearby Danzig to work on a private farm. "We were eight girls from one town. Because they promised they were not going to separate sisters, two girls came over to us and said ‘tell them you are 10 sisters.’ [The owner of the farm] said ‘I don’t mind, I’ll take the 10. I want 10, 10 sisters can be with me.’ We stayed [at his house] for about three or four months. He put us back on our feet, he gave us food. He gave us everything; nice beds, bath houses build especially for us -- he was very nice to us. Then came September, he came up and said ‘I’m very sorry, [you] have to go back to Stutthof. I’ve tried everything in this world, I tell them I’ll pay them, I sign papers that you will not escape, and I’m responsible for you. They wouldn’t take it, [you] have to go back.’ So we went back to Stutthof. It was horrible. People were hungry, full of lice, everything was terrible, terrible." |
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Niederman was later moved to yet another camp where she worked building a landing strip. After work was completed, she narrowly escaped yet another intended act of genocide by the Nazis. "They were supposed to take us on ships. They had ships ready to explode, exploding ships, so the people wouldn’t live. But they didn’t have time enough. The Russians came in and they liberated us. I was 14." Niederman said she was taken to a Russian camp in western Poland. From there she was placed on a train that passed through Budapest. |
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| "When I got to Budapest I jumped off the train. I went to look for [my brother]. I was walking down the street and he was walking down the street. I was going this way and he was walking the other way. We looked at each other but we didn’t recognize each other,'' she said with tears in her eyes. "I must have weighed about like 50 pounds and he did too. When I got into my stepsister’s apartment, he was there. We both started crying because we passed each other on the street. I didn’t even know who he was." Niederman registered to go to Palestine but instead was sent to a camp in Italy. "I stayed in the Italian refugee camp for five years. In there I met my husband. We got married there. "In 1948, when Truman opened the door to come to America, we registered [to emigrate]. We’ve been [in the U.S.] since 1950." Niederman still suffers from injuries she incurred in Auschwitz. "I have back problems, terrible problems. I was beaten on my back in the concentration camp and I do suffer, sometimes I can’t move." She continued to explain how, at times, the very smell of smoke rekindles anguish. "When I arrived at Auschwitz, you had smoke constantly burning. You smelled the human flesh -- human smoke." When asked if she had ever revisited Auschwitz she replied, "I couldn’t go. I think if I go to Auschwitz I [would] cry. I can’t even watch any movie on television that has to do with the Holocaust because, if I ever watch, I scream all night. Everything comes back. I start dreaming, I start screaming. I don’t want to watch it." "I’ll tell you one thing," Niederman said in closing, "there’s no other country in the world that’s a better country than here. I don’t care what anybody says. This is the best country anybody can come to. If you want to stay here and work hard and make yourself a living, this is the place for it. The people have open arms, they welcomed us. We learned a lot of things in 50 years."
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