Eva Circulation is standing where she should have died. That’s what the National Socialists wanted. They deported the almost two-year-old Eva and her parents to Auschwitz-Birkenau in November 1944. Now, a good 78 years later, Eva Runde is standing in the building that they called “Sauna” at the time. “Dear Naomi,” she begins her speech.
She is happy that her granddaughter is with her. Naomi is 19 years old, she came specially from the US, where she lives with her family, to accompany her grandmother who, as a survivor of the concentration and extermination camp, is giving a speech on the commemoration of the liberation. Every year, at the end of January, survivors meet at this place, and the number decreases every year. Eva Runde has lived in Munich since the 1960s.
On January 27, 1945, Soviet troops opened the gates of Birkenau, and on January 27, 2023, Eva Runde says: “I see myself as a legacy of feelings and as a peace worker.” She is standing in front of a wall full of photographs; they were found in the luggage of those who had been deported to Auschwitz by the Nazis. They are shots of the kind that might hang on living room walls or stand on the dresser, photos from many previous lives.
Eva Runde talks about “life with the inner destruction caused by Auschwitz” – and doesn’t mean her own, but that of her beloved mother. You put a spoken memorial to Eva Runde on this day in Birkenau, the extermination camp, also known as Auschwitz II. It is now part of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum on the outskirts of the city of Oświęcim, which is the Polish name of Auschwitz.
Eva Runde is one of the youngest survivors; she has no memories of the camp of her own. She arrived in Birkenau on November 3, 1944, shortly after the National Socialists had stopped killing mothers with their children on the spot, the camp was already in liquidation.
Was it a coincidence or luck that Eva Runde survived? The girl was later considered a “miracle,” EvaUmlauf remembers what people said to her. A wonder? The kid thought that was great. She has long known that survival had its price. Her mother Agnes had to pay for it.
Eva and her mother were the only ones of their Jewish family to survive. Shortly before the liberation, her father Imro was sent on one of the death marches and was murdered in Austria. Eva circulation does not remember him. She only found out that he allegedly died of blood poisoning a few years ago while researching her autobiography. “My mother, on the other hand, lived with the uncertainty about my father’s whereabouts.” how did he die Was he violent?
For many, the road to death: the railroad tracks in the direction of the Auschwitz camp.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
The mother was pregnant when the family was deported to Auschwitz, and Eva’s sister Nora was born in the camp in April 1945. Only then did they return to their old homeland, today’s Slovakia. The mother made it possible for the sisters to have an almost normal childhood, says Eva though. How did she do it? That is a mystery to her.
There was a taboo at home. Auschwitz, the Shoah – “even in our family it was hardly ever talked about, it couldn’t be talked about”. As children, they would not have dared to speak to their mother or ask where their grandparents were, or Franzi, Poldi, Berti, their mother’s siblings. “We didn’t want a disturbed, sad mother,” says Eva though that everyone had been murdered. Those wounded in Auschwitz always carry what they have experienced within themselves. “We don’t know where my mother kept all the horror, great fear and deep sadness about losses.”
Every year the commemoration takes place, every year the number of survivors decreases.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
In retirement, when mother and daughter had long lived in Munich, the mother suffered from depression. The daughter, a psychotherapist by trade, is certain that the illness was a result of degradation and dehumanization. In 1995 the mother died “of the long-term effects of Auschwitz”.
And now it is Eva Runde who diagnoses this “emotional inheritance” in herself. “For me, Auschwitz is a traumatizing part of my biography.” There is the joy of surviving, but also this feeling that many survivors report: “Sometimes I just feel guilty about my survival.”
Intimate moment: The survivor Eva Runde with her granddaughter Naomi on the grounds of the camp.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Hand in hand: At the memorial event, the participants are close.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
The pause on this anniversary began at the “death wall” in the so-called main camp Auschwitz I. There the National Socialists shot countless prisoners. A small group of survivors light candles. The commemoration ends in Birkenau, just a stone’s throw from the “sauna”. Only a few low foundation walls of a once large building can be seen here. It was one of the gas chambers, with a crematorium attached. The SS destroyed the building shortly before the liberation, they wanted to cover their tracks. Eva Runde is sitting on one of the chairs, it’s cold, Naomi is standing next to her. Grandma and granddaughter, what a symbol. It was not death that prevailed, but life.
Eva Runde said shortly before that she did not want to pass on the burdensome legacy of Auschwitz. That’s why at some point she decided to address what she had experienced and its consequences, “to trace it, to talk about it, to talk to others about it”. That’s why she wrote an autobiography, why her speech in Auschwitz and the many visits to schools, why her commitment “for a humane, respectful and peaceful future”.
All of this is said by Eva Runde in the “sauna” where the newcomers had to undress to take a shower. They were the ones who hadn’t been selected at the ramp and killed on the spot. At the end of her speech, Eva Runde thanked those present: “Your focused presence encourages me to continue on the path to understanding that I have taken.”