Eva Slonim
Author: Eva Slonim
Publisher: Black Inc Books (Schwartz Publishing)
Place of publication: Melbourne, Australia
Year of Publication: 2014
Location of Book: LAMM Jewish Library
Cities/town/camps: Slovakia – Bratislava, Dobrovicova, Nitra, Poprad, Tatra Mountains; Poland – Auschwitz-Birkenau; Switzerland – Bex-Les-Bains; Australia – Melbourne
Gazing at the Stars: Memories of a Child Survivor is the story of Melbourne Holocaust survivor, Eva Slonim. The first 18 pages detail her family background and life in Bratislava before the war. Pages 19-67 describe the German invasion of Slovakia, increasing anti-Jewish measures, being confined to Klariska Ulica (where the Jews of Bratislava were enclosed) and the anti-Semitism of the local population. Pages 68-104 outline how Eva’s father desperately looked for people to smuggle his children across the Slovak/Hungarian border. Eva and her sister Marta obtained new identities as Catholics and lived in Nitra, Slovakia. Eventually the girls were captured and put on a cattle train to Auschwitz. The next part of the book (pages 105-130) vividly depicts the horrors of incarceration where the sisters were subjected to torture, extreme deprivation and medical experimentation at the hands of Dr Josef Mengele. The last section (pages 130-175) deals with the aftermath of liberation, returning home, reunification with the surviving members of the Weiss family and migration to Australia.
Eva was born in Bratislava, Slovakia in 1931, to Eugene and Margaret Weiss, the second eldest of ten children. She grew up with her cousins and siblings in a strictly Orthodox Jewish, yet highly cultured household. After the German invasion of Slovakia in 1939, the Hlinkova Garda (Slovak equivalent of the SS) beat up her grandfather and arrested her father, demanding a large ransom for his return. Their house was confiscated, along with the successful family business. It was then that Eva’s parents made the decision to split the family and send their children (either individually or in pairs) to relatives living in Hungary. Eva remained in Bratislava as she was the oldest daughter and did not look Jewish.
By 1944, the family was warned that the Jews of Hungary were the next targets in Hitler’s plan to annihilate European Jewry. All the siblings were smuggled back across the border, except for six-year-old Judith who was captured and transported to Auschwitz where she was murdered.
Eva and Marta were sent to Nitra with new identity papers. She was 12 and Marta was 10. In Nitra, the girls went to Church every Sunday, however, they were constantly worried that the locals would denounce them for being Jewish. The siblings lived in Nitra until October 1944 when Gombarik, the head of the Hlinkova Garda, arrested them. Eva was beaten by Gombarik* as he tried to force her to admit she was Jewish, but Eva refused. The girls were sent to Nitra detention centre and from there, were put on a crowded cattle train bound for Auschwitz.
On 3 November, Eva and Marta arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Eva was tattooed with the number A27201 and together with Marta, she was taken to the toddlers’ barracks. The sisters were mistaken for twins and subjected to experiments and injections by Dr Mengele. The girls survived the cold winter months, hardships, deprivations and cruelty. On 27 January 1945, the Soviet Army liberated the camp. Eva was 13 years old.
Two months after regaining their strength, Eva and Marta hitchhiked and walked their way to a border town between Poland and Slovakia. From Popgrad, to a hospital in the Tatra Mountains and then a train back to Bratislava, the girls made their way across war-torn Europe. In June, they were reunited with their parents and siblings in Bratislava. Miraculously the Weiss family had all survived in hiding, except for Judith.
In 1948, Eugene and Margaret Weiss, together with their seven daughters, travelled from Genoa to Australia aboard the SS Napoli to begin a new life. Eva married Ben Slonim in 1953 and they had five children and many grandchildren. Her dream, to recreate what had been lost, was fulfilled. Eva ends her memoir with the fervent wish to be vigilant, to preach tolerance, to perpetuate and to commemorate the memory of the one and a half million children who vanished without graves and without tombstones.
Eva’s memoir is a fast-paced book and well-written book. Her narrative provides testimony to the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust, as well as a link to Jewish values and a way of life that existed in Europe before the devastation of the Holocaust.
* Shortly after the war, Eva was summoned to Nitra to testify as a witness in Gombarik’s trial for war crimes.