Nazi Death Camp Survivor on 70-Year Liberation: 'Why Kill Babies? Have We Learned?'

Barbara Boland | January 26, 2015
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Interview with Holocaust Survivor

“Why? Why? Why kill babies? Have we learned?” asked 85-year-old Zigi Shipper, a Holocaust survivor sent to Auschwitz, the largest Nazi death camp, at 14 years old.

In memory of the day the infamous concentration camp was liberated 70 years ago, Shipper and over 100 other survivors are returning to the nightmarish former camp and providing a heart-rending account of the place they survived.

Shipper arrived at Auschwitz, all those years ago, on a cattle-truck so full of passengers he could not sit down until several people onboard had died. Because his name was on a list of prisoners slated to work elsewhere, his life was spared, but most of the people he arrived with did not leave the camp alive.

“There were German SS guards pointing right, left, right, left,” Shipper told ITV. “All the people that went to the right were old people, disabled people, children, babies. And also women, holding children. So the guards came over and told the women to put the baby down, and go to the other side.”

Shipper continued: “Well you can imagine, a mother wouldn’t do it.  They tried to rip that baby right out of their arms. Sometimes they didn’t succeed, [so] they shot the baby, shot the child."

“Every time I talk about it, I feel like crying. How can you kill babies?” asks Shipper.

The Polish landscape is blanketed in a heavy snow, making a bleak landscape that much darker. Many of the gas chambers and barracks were destroyed by the Germans before the Russians got to the camp on January 27, 1945, but even the remains of the 28 brick buildings show a dark and depraved moment for humanity.

 

Drone Footage of Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Survivors of death camps often endured a self-imposed silence after their horrific experiences. When they did speak, they found that people could not believe the camps were as awful as they described.

After decades of silence, survivors are reclaiming this part of their past by visiting the camps and speaking about their experiences.

A wall of smiling photos, evidence of executed inmates’ former lives, greets visitors to the camp, providing eerie proof of the humanity extinguished there.

“They told [the Jews] they’re going into the showers. And of course there’s no showers. It was a building, you see, and they packed them into the building, closed the door, and then they killed them – they gassed them. But you know, every time I come here, I can’t believe the SIZE of this place. It’s like a little town almost. Just unbelievable, just for killing people,” said Shipper.

The gate to Auschwitz warns those who enter: “Arbeit Macht Frei,” or “Work Makes You Free.”

In reality, 960,000 Jews of the 1.1 million Jews that were deported to Auschwitz were killed at Auschwitz. The Nazi SS deported an additional 200,000 people to the camp, of which 74,000 Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war and 10,000–15,000 other nationalities were killed.

“Why? Why? Why kill babies? Have we learned?” asked Shipper. “I don’t know, but we must not give up.”

(See the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum site for more information on Auschwitz)

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