Thud, thud, thud, left, right, left.

Ruth Goldschmiedova Sax remembers seeing the hundreds of Nazi Schutzstaffel (SS) soldiers marching outside her house, down the streets of her hometown of Brno, Czechoslovakia. Even after all these years, at age 90, living in peace and safety at Paradise Village Retirement Community in National City, she still gets a shiver down her spine recalling the deafening stomp of those black rubber boots.

Thud, thud, thud, left, right, left.

Early life

Sax was only 11 when the Nazis invaded Czechoslovakia on March 15, 1939. She would survive three concentration camps and endure one of the darkest chapters in mankind’s history. Yet all the horrors that Hitler and his henchmen threw her way could not break her hopeful spirit.

Born on July 6, 1928 in moravsky Šumperk, Sax was the only child of Oskar and Erna Goldschmied. The family moved to Brno in 1934, when Sax was six.

“Life was really beautiful and simple those first couple of years,” she said. “I went to school, I played with friends, everything a normal child does.”

Early life for Sax was uneventful, she said, but around the time she turned 10, in 1938, she began to notice people acting strangely around her.

“The non-Jewish neighborhood children would avoid me,” she said. “They were afraid to play with me. My parents told me that if I really cared about my friends I would let them go because they could get into very serious trouble being around me. So, regrettably, I did.”

Nazi invasion

Then came the day that changed everything.

March 14, 1939 started out happily enough. It was her grandmother Klara’s birthday and the family spent all day celebrating. When evening approached and the festivities began to wind down, the family hunkered by the radio to listen to some music. Instead of soothing melodies, a loud and brash voice rattled the tiny speakers, telling listeners Hitler was invading Czechoslovakia.

“I remember my mother waking me up, telling me to get ready, that there was an emergency,” Sax said. “So we rushed into a taxi and went to the factory where my father worked at because we didn’t know where else to go.”

The factory director greeted the Goldschmieds at the entrance with a swastika on his lapel and a sour look on his face. The man looked at Oskar dead in the eyes and told him in a gruff voice to go home.

“The two of them had known each other for years,” Sax said. “The man had always been so friendly and nice. But all of that kindness was gone in an instant, replaced with hate.”

Sax and her family tried hailing a taxi to get back home, but found it was a whole new world for Jewish citizens.

“The driver refused to take us home,” Sax recalled. “Not because he hated us like my father’s employer, but because he was afraid. He was afraid that he would be caught giving us a ride. So he dropped us off at the train station, which still allowed Jews to travel, and we got back home that way.”

Home was not safe anymore.

Two SS officers with revolvers were waiting at the Goldschmiedova’s front door demanding entrance.

The family stood on the curbside feeling helpless as the officers ransacked their house, helping themselves to whatever they wanted.

“A couple of days later, my father told a customer of his who was not Jewish that the officers had taken his car,” Sax recalled. “The customer marched right up to the SS’s office and got the car back — not for my father, but for himself. He told the Germans that my father had given him the car.”

Life was turned upside down for 11-year-old Sax, her family and the rest of the Jewish community of Brno.

They were forced to pin the Star of David, emblazoned with the word Jude (German for Jew), onto their clothes. If a Jew was caught without the star they risked being killed. Groceries were severely rationed and stores could only sell to Jewish customers between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. Jewish workers lost their jobs or had their businesses taken over by the Nazis, and they were forced to move into ghettos.

Sax’s family was lucky enough to be allowed to stay in their apartment because it was already paid for by the factory her father worked in.

Life was not any easier for the family, however. Routines like Oskar’s weekly visits with his cousin Viktor came to an abrupt end.

“One day Viktor was walking down the street, minding his own business, when a German officer came up to him and called him a ‘dirty Jew,” Sax said. “Viktor spat at the officer, who took out his revolver and shot him dead. That shook us all.”

Thersienstadt

On the night of December 5, 1941, Sax, her family and hundreds of other Jews were forcefully crammed into a single compartment of a train car. The ride was long and the conditions poor. They had to sleep on the floors and were given meager servings of coffee, bread and soup.

When the train finally stopped, everyone on board had to walk two miles in the blistering winter cold to a train station. No one knew where they were. The train was driven in circles and made frequent stops to keep passengers disoriented and confused.

At the station, everyone was pushed into filthier and more dilapidated transport trains. Everyone felt tired and frightened. Many were at their wit’s end.

The train delivered Sax to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp in Terezin in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. It would remain in operation for three and a half years, from November 24, 1941 to May 9, 1945. The camp was billed in Nazi propaganda as an area of safe, comfortable resettlement for elderly Czech Jewish citizens.

In reality, Theresienstadt served as a transit ghetto, where Jews were evaluated and sent to other camps based on their perceived usefulness.

“The Nazis wanted only the best of us,” Sax said. “If you were sick, or too young or too old, they took you to the side and shot you. They only wanted eighteen to thirty eight year olds so I had to lie about my age in order to stay alive.”

Theresienstadt was comprised of five barracks. Sax and Erna were separated from Oskar and would not see him for four years.

Sax remembers the conditions at the camp being terrible and harsh.

“The cots were full of thousands of bedbugs and you could feel them crawling on you in the night,” Sax said. “There was a lack of food and drinkable water. The toilet was simply a cut out box that was placed over a hole in the floor. It was very unsanitary, to say the least.”

When she first arrived in Theresienstadt Sax ran into her former gym coach, Fredy Hirsch, who gave her and her mother a valuable tip on how to survive in the camp.

“He advised us to find a job that worked around food because you could always sneak a bite of what you were working on,” she said. “He told us that if you worked in the camps you could easily get 800 calories a day, but if you didn’t you would only get 300.”

Sax’s mother worked as a potato peeler and would sneak bits of peeled skin back to her daughter. Erna then worked her way up to a supervisor position, and she and Sax would bathe in the potato water after closing the kitchen for the day.

Sax worked in the children’s garden growing vegetables. She was under constant supervision, and if anyone was caught stealing food they would be killed on the spot. Sax met the wrath of the officers one day after attempting to shake an apple out of a tree. She was put into 24-hour isolation.

While Sax and her mother were relatively safe time at the camp, others in the family did not fare so well.

Sax’s uncle Zikmund, his wife and children were forced to dig their own graves before being brutally shot to death. Bodies were quickly burned in the camp’s crematory. The acrid odor of burnt, searing flesh hung in the atmosphere for the entire day.

Auschwitz

After spending three and a half years in Theresienstadt, Sax and her parents were transferred to Auschwitz on October 20, 1944.

Auschwitz was an extermination camp, its sole purpose was death and destruction. An estimated 1.3 million people would be sent to the camp, 1.1 million died.

“Everyone was forced to strip and be shaved from head to toe,” she said. “I felt humiliated, having someone shave my most intimate parts. The Nazis would stare at our bare bodies and snicker and laugh, mocking us.”

Everyone was then marched single file to a tall man wielding a crop whip. Sax remembered his gap-toothed smile, neatly parted black hair, and pristinely pressed Nazi uniform.

The man was war criminal Dr. Josef Mengele.

“We were still naked, and he would inspect every inch of us,” Sax said. “He would then point his whip either to the left or to the right. If he pointed left, you were safe. If he pointed right, you were sent to the gas chambers. I would survive six encounters with Mengele.”

One particular encounter almost proved fatal for Sax’s aunt Elfie and cousin Dita.

Elfie was not feeling well and Mengele was on his way to inspect the woman’s barracks. Sax’s mother was incredibly worried, and hit Elfie on the cheeks to bring back some color. She then took a red wrapper from an imitation coffee product and smoothed it onto her sister’s cheeks, which brightened them up considerably and gave her a healthy glow.

Just as Erna finished applying the concealer, Mengele stepped into the room.

Mengele ordered everyone to strip and he began what he called his “appeal.” The women feared he would see through their ruse, but he did not even offer a second glance.

Elfie and Dita lived another day.

Sax only spent a week in Auschwitz, but the camp burned an indelible impression into her memory.

“They treated us like animals here,” she said. “They made us stand naked in a cold field for hours at a time until we were exhausted. When we went to take showers, they would taunt us. They knew we knew about the gas, and they would have us stand there for 10 minutes in utter anxiety and anticipation waiting to see if water came out of the spout, or gas.”

The barracks were even worse. Up to seven people slept in a single bunk with one small blanket shared between them. Their bathroom was a small bucket in the corner, which was always overflowing. If someone was sick to their stomach, had diarrhea and did not have the energy to get up, they would simply evacuate their aching bowels in the shared bed.

Oskar’s journey

Sax’s father fared even worse.

Oskar was utterly humiliated and dehumanized. He received the customary numbered tattoo for identification (Sax and her mother would not receive one because they were in Auschwitz for only a short period).

Sax’s daughter, Sandra Scheller, said her grandfather always avoided talking about his tattoo, but on occasion he would use humor to liven the gloomy atmosphere.

“A favorite joke of his is very darkly humorous,” Scheller said. “An old Jewish guy in the United States won the lotto jackpot of $120 million. While being interviewed by the local news, he was asked what he was going to do with the money. ‘First thing I’m going to do is give half the money to the Nazi Party in Germany.’ Somewhat surprised by this response, the news guy asked, ‘Why the hell would you do that after all the things they put you and your family through during the Holocaust?’ He said, ‘Well, fair’s fair’, and rolls up his sleeve. ‘They did give me the winning numbers.’”

Back at Auschwitz, Sax’s father had a friend who had bad case of diarrhea one night. The Nazi officers became disgusted with the man and threw him onto a toilet and started to beat him. The man laid in his own blood, vomit and excrement as they mercilessly kicked his face. Oskar rushed to the man’s aid, but he was too late. The man was already dead.

The Nazis grabbed Oskar beat him as well, nearly killing him. A Jewish supervisor found him, cleaned him up and covered his cuts and bruises. A couple of days later, the supervisor found a way to transfer Oskar out of Auschwitz and into another camp, Blechhammer, and he would then be transferred to Gleiwitz.

Gleiwitz was a sub-camp of Auschwitz built on a rolling stock repair yard in Gliwice, Poland. The prisoners built roads and repaired damaged cars.

On January 18, 1945 the camp was evacuated and the prisoners were marched back down to Blechhammer, in freezing temperatures. Many died from exposure, malnutrition or being shot for holding up the line.

Oskar, along with three other prisoners, avoided this fate by hiding in the kettles in the kitchen for 24 hours. When they slid the lids off of their makeshift refuges, they found the camp entirely empty. They scavenged clothes and a few supplies and fled into the mountains.

Oskar found his stepbrother Manfred Konka, who avoided the camps through a mixture of bribery and hiding. Konka graciously provided Oskar with money, free meals and a place to stay.

Oskar had seen firsthand the worst mankind was capable of, and the hatred that the Nazis had for the Jewish people. Yet he held out hope that his wife and daughter were still alive.

Oederan

After only a week and a half at Auschwitz, Sax and her mother transferred to Oederan, a labor camp in Saxony, Germany.

Life at Oederon was not as demanding and deadly as Auschwitz. Numbered tattooing was not used and there was no uniform for the prisoners. Instead, a giant white letter and stripe were painted onto prisoners’ clothes every week. Sax still has the long black dress her mother wore, the huge X and line crudely scrawled in fading white paint.

Now 16, Sax took a job at the camp’s factory, producing bullets. When no one was looking she would clog the bullet machines with sand, making the ammunition useless. In the winter there was not be enough power for the whole camp, so Sax volunteered to lay electrical cable in the street.

On April 11, 1945 Sax and her mother were awoken by German soldiers and told to grab their belongings.

“I remember as we went outside there was a group of Nazi youth standing there, pointing bayonets at us,” Sax said. “I asked one of them how old they were, and they weren’t much older than I was.”

The prisoners were counted, hosed down and led onto trains bound to Flossenberg, an extermination camp. The path to Flossenberg was in disrepair. Roads were bombed out and bridges were broken. The Nazi regime was in its final days.

Most of the soldiers went on the run, taking what they could and going into hiding. Those that stayed disguised themselves in the garish striped pajamas of the prisoners, hoping to blend in and go unnoticed.

The Russians eventually found their way to the train carrying Sax and 500 other prisoners, offering them food, water and medical supplies.

“The soldiers were nice to me, giving me chocolate,” Sax said. “Though not all of them were so gentle. Some of the Russians felt that since they liberated the Jews they were entitled to some of the women. Many women were raped, but my mother helped me by swaddling me up in a blanket and pretending I was a baby.”

Since the rails were bombed out, Sax and the rest of the prisoners walked and rode open wagons back to Terezin. The trip took two agonizing weeks, and they could hardly contain their joy as they rounded the corner to the entrance of the citadel.

But they weren’t free yet.

Everyone was forced into typhoid quarantine just a stone’s throw away from freedom.

Reunited

Time went slowly in quarantine, but there is one day in particular that Sax remembered clearly:

“I was in the kitchen working and someone yelled at me, ‘Ruthie, there is someone at the gate who wants to talk to you.’” Sax said. “So I ran to the gate and I saw this really thin, clean-shaven man. At first I didn’t know who it was, but then the man smiled at me and said, ‘Don’t you remember your own father?’”

The truth was Sax did not recognize her father. Oskar had always worn a moustache and malnutrition thinned his once portly frame. Sax said she was in shock when she finally recognized him.

“All these years I had thought that my father was dead, but here he was standing on the other side of the gate,” Sax said. “I wanted to hug him, but the gate was electrified. I ran to my mother, yelling, ‘Papa is at the gate!’ She was so happy to see him. He had found us by looking up our names through the Red Cross list.”

On June 15, 1945, after 30 days in quarantine, The Goldschmieds and thousands of former prisoners were told they were free to go.

Czechoslovakia was in shambles and supplies were still scarce. Sax and her family had to rebuild their lives from scratch.

“Everything we owned was gone,” Sax said. “The only thing I had was a blanket. My parents and I made our way from Terezin back to Brno, and we relied on the hospitality of strangers and what little food and shelter we could get at the Red Cross stations scattered throughout Czechoslovakia.”

When they finally reached Brno, the family found that their former home had been turned into offices for the Nazis. Since Sax’s father had gotten a month’s head start, he had procured another apartment, though the furnishings were minimal. The former occupants had a daughter Sax’s age and, for the first couple of weeks, Sax wore the clothes she left behind. The family ate at a local soup kitchen in a hotel basement across from the train station.

“At first the soup was very bare, just broth,” Sax said. “Then as the weeks went by and the kitchens got more supplies, the soup grew heartier. Potatoes, leftovers, canned food. It wasn’t much, but food is food.”

The Jewish children were finally able to return to school, and Sax eventually completed her primary education. She then enrolled in a local designing school and studied the history and design of clothing.

“I have always loved clothes and sewing, ever since I was a little girl,” Sax said. “My dream was to live in Paris and follow in my father’s footsteps and work as a tailor. When I came to America, I became a factory worker, but I would still always be sewing, creating.”

Leaving Europe

Sax began to have correspondence with her second cousin, Kurt Sax, who frequently played with Ruth when they were children.

Kurt fled Austria at the start of World War II and ended up in Northern Italy. After being sponsored by a family in America, Kurt immigrated to the United States and opened a successful newsstand in Anderson, South Carolina.

After getting Ruth’s picture and address from a friend, Kurt wrote letters to her. Soon a romance blossomed.

Kurt travelled to Brno to marry Ruth, and the newlyweds spent their honeymoon in Czechoslovakia while Ruth finalized her passport.

“We arrived in America at Ellis Island in New York City,” Sax said. “We lived there for a while and then moved to San Diego on the recommendation of a friend and we’ve lived here ever since.”

Ruth saved every penny she could to bring her parents to the U.S. They would go on to try several business ventures, including opening a café and market, and lived a quiet, peaceful life. Erna Kohn died on February 27, 1982, and Oskar Goldschmied died on August 10, 1988.

Ruth and Kurt had two daughters and lived a modest life thanks to Kurt’s successful turn as a stockbroker later in his life.

Kurt died on May 11, 2012, one month after a major stroke. Ruth and Kurt had been married for 63 years.

Sharing her story

Sax never liked talking about her experiences in the war, but now that she has turned 90, she feels her story must be told so the past does not repeat itself.

“Ruthie enjoys meeting with young students and she has received numerous letters, awards, cards, flowers, and tears from people who found her story incredible and moving,” Scheller said.

Scheller said she wants to work with the City of Chula Vista to create a museum dedicated to her mother’s experiences in the Holocaust.

“Anybody can sit here and deny that the Holocaust happened, but we have the letters, we have the dress, we have the Stars of David, we have proof that it happened,” Scheller said. “Our goal is to get as many people as we can to see these things, and to perhaps get a sense of what it would have been like to live through this.”

Scheller wrote a book about Sax’s story, “Try To Remember – Never Forget: From Holocaust Hell To Paradise Village.” She is hard at work on a follow up containing the hundreds of love letters written between Sax and her late husband.

Sax is finally getting her story out, exorcizing years of pent up anxieties and fears. She used to spend her days fearing for her and her family’s lives. Now she plays bingo, talks about the stock market to her friends and makes jewelry. She is happy now.

But sometimes, in the dead of night, she can still hear the deafening stomp of those black rubber boots.

Thud, thud, thud. left, right, left.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On May 25, 2018 Ruth Sax was presented with the highest honor Southwestern College awards to members of its community – an honorary degree – for her tireless work speaking to students and civic organizations about the Holocaust. Mrs. Sax has spoken directly to more than 10,000 students in San Diego County and many thousands more via her television appearances and film interviews. When she was presented her degree, Mrs. Sax wore a doctorate tam given to her by a professor and jokes that she is now “the new Doctor Ruth.” In June she will be honored as a San Diego County Woman of Valor at the San Diego Lyceum Theater. In September she will achieve as a 91 year old something she was denied by the Nazis as a 13 year old – a bat mitzvah.