re: Auschwitz survivors to return after 75 years for memorial ceremony

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Angela Orosz, 75, from Montreal, stood in front of former red-brick barracks and recalled her mother’s account of giving birth to her in secret on a top bunk in Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1944. "Because my mother had probably survived because of the peelings she had eaten and the goodness in them, she had been able to give birth to me and so I had survived, so of course the survival instinct I inherited from her made me always do the same.”

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“I was one pound when I was born, so therefore I didn't have any energy to cry,” Orosz said. The newborn’s inability to cry likely saved her life, her mother would go on to tell her.

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Orosz said her mother told her that a mere three hours after giving birth, she had to be standing for the camp’s regular roll calls.

She said her mother told her it was very cold that day, but that she didn’t feel it because, after giving birth, there was a “fire” in her.

Orosz said her mother thought: “I am responsible. I have to save the baby.’”

The infant was hidden on her mother’s top bunk for six weeks. She didn’t even officially have a name until the Soviets liberated the camp exactly 75 years ago.

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