Margo De Wilde was born in Holland in 1921.
When she was 21 years old, the first laws restricting Jewish activities were passed in her neighborhood. Over the course of a few weeks she was forced to surrender her radio, lost the privilege to ride on city buses, and had to start wearing a Jewish star at all times. Margot joined the resistance movement soon after and began falsifying papers and helping other Jews in her neighborhood leave for America and other countries. It was also around this time that the first men were called by the Nazi’s to “go build.” These men built the concentration camps and were never heard from again.
Shortly thereafter Margot herself was forced to board a train to Germany, and from there was sent to Auschwitz. Her first memory after the boxcar doors opened was that of a very well dressed German man screaming for them to get out, fast. That man was Dr. Mengele. Once everyone had gotten off the train the women and men were separated from one another, and Margot was taken with 23 other young women to have their hair shaved, receive their single set of blue and white striped prison clothes, and have a number tattooed on their arms. Margot later managed to remove some of the ink by rubbing clay on it, but was caught and retattoed – 47574. For the next few weeks the women were woken up every morning by soldiers yelling at them, given a mug of something warm and brown to drink and a bowl of food, and then sent back to their barrack. There, the women waited as one by one they were instructed to go downstairs. Many times they returned in tears, but could not bring themselves to tell the other women waiting what had happened. Eventually Margot was called down, where she endured Mendele’s efforts to sterilize Jewish women. She says she survived because she never lost her determination to make it through and because she could understand German and escaped beatings for not following orders.
Finally the war began nearing the end, and Auschwitz was emptied. Margot says the prisoners marched for either three days and two nights, or three nights and two days, and that many fell or were shot. Finally they arrived at their destination and were shoved into boxcars like sardines to be taken to Ravensbruck, a female political prisoner camp. A few weeks after their arrival, the Germans suddenly disappeared, and a prisoner from another camp arrived holding an American flag and told them they were free.
Not long after that, Margot had managed to walk to the house of old family friends who lived in Germany and was having tea in their yard when a Canadian soldier approached. The soldier was her brother, who has enlisted after being liberated months earlier, and he told her that both of their parents were alive. Margot’s entire family had survived the war.
Eventually, they made their way back to their home in Holland, and Margot’s brother returned to his house in the hopes of finding a photograph of his wife and child, who he was certain must have been killed in the years since he had seen them. He knocked on his old front door, and she opened it.
The amazing thing about seeing a survivor, is that after everything they endured the story still has a happy ending, because they had the strength to arrive here today and tell us about it.
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