My life in Auschwitz

Sixty-five years ago, the largest and most notorious Nazi death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau, was liberated by the Soviet army.

Around 3,000 prisoners were rescued in the camp and others were intercepted on death marches as their Nazi captors attempted to avoid the Allied advance from the West and Soviet advance from the East.

Death marches were the mass movement of prisoners to other concentration camps, mostly taking place between April 1944 and April 1945 as Germany lost its occupied territories.

At the end of January 1945, Hajo Meyer was marched with thousands of other Jewish prisoners from Auschwitz to a small camp on the Eastern border of the River Oder in Poland.

“One morning, SS soldiers selected the healthiest prisoners for another march to a different camp and I was one of those selected even though I was very weak, but I could still walk.”

Hajo laments that it is possible to sleep while walking. “It can be done I assure you,” he says. “Me and my friend, Jos, would take it in turns to sleep as we walked, making sure the other didn’t fall over.”

Not many friendships endured, and survived, the hardship of Auschwitz. “That was rare in such extreme circumstances,” he confesses. “Jos was one of my best friends from the Netherlands and we knew we could trust each other 100 percent.”

“I kept hope because I never ever tried to survive at the cost of others. My life wasn’t worth a penny [in Auschwitz] but much can be overcome when you have both luck and hope.”

Hajo was born in Bielefeld in Germany in 1924 but when he was only 14 years old he fled alone to the Netherlands in 1939 to escape the Nazi regime.

“My father fought on the German side in World War One but he died of illness soon after he returned home and my mother committed suicide because she didn’t think my father’s war status would protect her from the Nazis.”

One year later, the Netherlands was invaded and Hajo went into hiding with forged identity papers. He managed to evade capture for four years, but was caught by the Gestapo and deported to Auschwitz in February 1944.

Hajo spent ten months in Auschwitz and for half of his imprisonment he worked indoors in the industrial camp known as Gleiwitz. This saved him from the severe winter that year.

“While I was a refugee in the Netherlands, I learned to be a locksmith so the Germans used me as a metal craftsman in an industrial factory outside of the main camp of Auschwitz.

“Every morning, I had a joyous moment as we marched from Auschwitz to our factory for work. We passed the officers camp and would hear a record of the Berlin philharmonic orchestra which I loved.

“Working in Gleiwitz was a huge stroke of luck because it meant I got to work inside during the very, very cold winter of 1944.”

In sheer desperation, Hajo broke into a train wagon carrying potatoes to feed German soldiers at the camp. He was caught by an SS officer and taken away but amazingly received a very mild punishment.

“The officer gave me a few hits with a cane, but it was so soft that it was not really torturous. He then released me so I presumed he was lenient because he had a son of a similar age.”

That was the only time Hajo suffered physical abuse, which he attributes entirely to sheer good fortune. “I never had anybody to betray during interrogations and it helped that I knew the thinking of the Nazis.

“I was educated in Nazi Germany, I knew their discipline and I knew the SS ranks so whenever I was called to do something, I would always address the officer with a military salute, perform a 180 degree turn and stamp my heels.”

Hajo was liberated from his German captors by the Soviet army at the end of January 1945. A Soviet solider handed him an apple in what he describes as “a most fantastic moment”.

After the war, he moved to Poland, Romania and Russia but eventually settled in the Netherlands when the UN decided that victims of the Holocaust should be resettled in the country of their arrest.

Overall, 107,000 Dutch Jews were deported to concentration camps between 1940 and 1945, with only around 4,000 surviving. Hajo and Jos were within the fortunate fraction of Dutch Jews.

They stayed in close contact but Jos died soon after becoming the first chairman of the Netherlands Auschwitz committee. Hajo received a doctorate in theoretical physics, and aged 86 he is politically active within an anti-Zionist network.

“When I was a kid in Nazi Germany I couldn’t go to school and my life was in danger. If you can’t realise your life ambitions you feel threatened - things have certainly changed for me.”