Sharing the hurt of the Holocaust
By Chris Simon

Photo by Chris Simon Holocaust survivor Judy Cohen spoke to an audience at Am Shalom synagogue in Barrie last week. The event was held as part of Holocaust Remembrance Day services.

It's been 63 years since Judy Cohen was freed from Nazi Germany's Auschwitz- Birkenau concentration camp.

Yet the memories of the most turbulent years of her life - which include the German occupation of her native Hungary and deportation to the camp - still remain vivid in Cohen's mind.

It still pains her to speak about her family, most of whom died in Auschwitz shortly after arriving there in 1944. Of the 90 members of her immediate and extended family, only 16 survived to the end of the Second World War.

Cohen was 15 years old when she arrived at the gates of Auschwitz, crammed into a cattle car with nearly 80 other people.

"You could not imagine what it was like," she said. "I remember constant hunger ... and lice-infested clothing. This brutality was a challenge to our survival."

While the memories are still difficult to discuss, Cohen has been sharing her experiences with members of the public for years. Last week, she brought her story to local residents, speaking at Am Shalom Synagogue in Barrie, during a Holocaust Remembrance Day program.

Am Shalom's social and adult education director Rosa Ringhofer says Cohen's speech raised important details about the atrocities of the war, and the need to prevent further genocide.

"This is something we cannot forget," she said. "What has happened in our past needs to be remembered. We need to take note so something like this never happens again."

Cohen was born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Debrecen, Hungary. Life was difficult for Jewish families, even before the Nazi occupation. Many Jews were stripped of their civil rights and forced to live in cramped, squaller conditions following the annexation of Austria, Hungary's neighbour, in 1938.

In fact, the Hungarian government was seen as allied both politically and ideologically with the Nazis, said Cohen.

"We were victims of Hungarian fascism," she said.

Once the Nazis took control of the Hungarian government, Jews were packed into ghettos, and were forced to wear yellow stars on their clothing.

Eventually, Cohen was shipped to Auschwitz, and was quickly stripped and shaved upon arrival.

Then, she was given two minutes to shower, before receiving a raggedy dress to wear. Cohen and several others were then marched to their new living quarters, where they would be stationed until the liberation nearly one year later.

After returning to Hungary, Cohen emigrated to Canada in 1948. Once in the country, she married a Canadian-born man and had two children.

And while she has lived a productive and normal life since moving to Canada, Cohen will always remember her experience under the Nazi regime.

"This was the ultimate manifestation of hatred," she said. "The Holocaust really happened; it happened to me and my family. If it can happen in the heart of 'civilized' Europe, it can happen anywhere."

And she sees the genocide being repeated in other areas of the world today, most notably in the Darfur region of Sudan.

"It seems like we've learned nothing," she said. "It's happening again, under United Nations watch. There is mass murder going on in Sudan, and we must stop this genocide. But stopping genocide is still not a priority. The world must not forget what has happened in the past, when governments turned a blind eye to injustice outside their borders.

"Civil society must stop (genocide) now, before it becomes an unstoppable force."