Holocaust Testimony

Ursula Levy was born in 1935 in Osnabruck, Germany. Her first memory was of her father returning from a concentration camp and that he died in 1939 from gangrene in both legs. Ursula’s mother made the attempt to get Ursula and her brother George out of Germany and to their aunt and uncle in Chicago, IL. A Couple in Holland helped children escape the Holocaust and Ursula and George were hidden in a Dutch Convent in Eersel, Holland. The convent’s purpose was to house malnourished children for six weeks to help them become healthy before they were released again. Ursula, her brother, and three other Jewish children were hidden in the numbers of the Dutch children and lived in the convent. The Germans conquered Holland and replaced all government officials with Nazi officials in 1940. Because of this, the children were discovered and sent a few at a time to concentration camps. Of the five children hidden in the convent only Ursula and her brother survived. In April of 1943 Ursula and her brother were taken to the Vught concentration camp. They were separated for the first time and Ursula was very depressed. George would visit her on Sundays. Ursula described the living conditions as being indescribable and mentioned the brutality of the German guards. At one point she was called to the Commandant’s office and said, “On my eighth birthday we were called to the Commandant’s office, and I thought we were going to be beaten.” They were not, however, and the man that had arranged for them to be placed in the convent was there to visit them. This man told the Commandant a lie stating that they had a Catholic father in Chicago. She described the concentration camps as a place of brutal starvation, disease, and emotional distress. Ursula and her brother were sent to Westerbock Concentration camp in October of 1943-February of 1944 and after that they were sent to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where they lived in the orphan’s barracks. There she described the starvation and disease but also described the dead being carted away in open trucks. “Every day I saw open wagons piled high with corpses with just their arms and legs dangling over the side without any dignity.” In the spring of 1945 they were given an immunization shot and put on a train. The train circled for 13 days because of the fighting nearby. She did not remember eating and that they drank from puddles whenever they could. Eventually the Russian soldiers overtook the German soldiers and the train. They took the corpses off of the train and piled the bodies beside the tracks. Of 2,600 people on the train only 600 survived. More died from typhus and typhoid after they were freed and sent to an abandoned town. After spending two months with the Stern family they finally returned to the man who had originally helped them hide in the convent and had told the lie to save their lives. Two years after this they were finally sent to live with their aunt and uncle in Chicago, Illinois. Ursula became a nurse later on, married and had two children.

1. “On my eighth birthday we were called to the Commandant’s office, and I thought we were going to be beaten.”
2. “Every day I saw open wagons piled high with corpses with just their arms and legs dangling over the side without any dignity.”