Page 98 - Witness

I Was a Lonely Rock
Asher Aud was 12 years old when his father and older brother were deported from the ghetto of their Polish town, Zdunska Wola, near Lodz. Two years later, his mother and younger brother were murdered in Chelmno. Now on his own, the 14-year-old was sent to Lodz Ghetto.
“From the moment I was separated from my mother, I was a lonely rock. I didn’t have friends, I didn’t have anyone.... There were no days of the week, no Monday or Tuesday, all the days were the same.” In August 1944, Aud was deported to Camp E, Block 4 at Auschwitz. There he found his older brother, Berl, who helped him survive the brutal camp. In January 1945, 17-year-old Asher Aud was sent on a Death March, finding himself in Mauthausen and Gunskirchen before being liberated and immigrating to Israel. Almost 40 years later he was reunited with his brother.
“How did a young boy survive this? I went through it,” Aud says, “but can’t explain it. I wanted only one thing: I wanted to live. There was nothing else, just the desire to live.
“I didn’t talk about the Holocaust for more than 50 years. It wasn’t that I wanted to forget, but there were no social workers, no psycholo- gists to tell us how to act after this. If we wanted to live, we couldn’t talk about it. To talk is to live it.... Then, following a visit to Poland, I told my story for the first time. In light of all the Holocaust denial, I came to the conclusion that anyone who could talk must! The impact is very different; I see and hear its effect in the responses from the students.”
90