Born in Hungary, Dr. Eva Olsson experienced some of the worst hate in the world, as a Jewish person under the Nazi regime. Having lived through the Holocaust Olsson now uses her harrowing experiences to talk about hate and bullying.
She attended both G.F. Kells High School (with visiting students from White Bear) and Arcola School, for their Pink Days focused on anti-bullying, to speak to the student bodies on Thursday, May 7. In the evening she brought her powerful words to Carlyle Memorial Hall for the community to hear.
As a Holocaust survivor Dr. Olsson is compelled to share her story and the story of her family, this she does for everyone who can’t, whose stories are forever lost in the concentration camps and death camps of the Nazi regime.
“You’re going to hear me speak about the Nazi bullies, but not every German was a Nazi and every Nazi was not a German,” she stated as she began speaking to the students at G.F. Kells.
One of the first things Dr. Olsson asked the students was who amongst them uses the word, hate.
“My hand didn’t go up, it’s not because I’m shy, when you get to my age you’re not shy anymore,” Dr. Olsson says. “I don’t use the word hate, never.”
This is something that she has passed down to her children and grandchildren as well. While babysitting them, they would use the word, but Olsson would not stand for it.
“I taught my grandchildren to say I don’t like, that sounds better than hate,” she stated.
“What is, ‘I don’t like?’ I don’t like it when I’m called names, do you? And I don’t like it when I’m pushed around. But I don’t hate, because hate is a killer, not a joke.”
This is why Olsson is proud to call herself a Canadian: “People come from everywhere and that’s what makes Canada a very special country. Whether young or not so young, you’re Canadian.” “I wasn’t born here but I have been a Canadian for 64 years and I am very proud to be a Canadian. You know how you become a Canadian? By accepting the values that Canada represents, that’s what makes us Canadians. That means no bullies and no bystanders.”
Olsson then brought the focus of her talk to her life during World War II and to thoughts of her family.
“I was bullied by the Nazi bullies; I was 19 when they bullied me,” Olsson said. “They didn’t like my religion.”
“Don’t be a bystander please, because that’s what happened in Europe. I was there. Seventy-one years ago.”
In 1939 the Nazi regime had come to occupy Poland. At this time, Olsson was a young teenager living in Hungary whose thoughts were of the war ending soon. It didn’t, for six years war ravaged Europe and the Nazis reigned.
The reason why Olsson now speaks came out of her telling the students about her past: “One and a half million children under 15 were murdered. Five of them were my nieces, little girls: a three and a half-year-old, a two-year-old, a one-year-old, a six-month-old, and a 2-month-old. I made it my mission to speak for them and all other children, all whose voices were silenced by hate. They died because they were hated.”
Though Olsson’s family wasn’t wealthy, they all, her parents, brothers, sisters, their spouses, and her nieces all lived together.
“We didn’t have electricity and we had no indoor toilet, or water… we had a wooden toilet outside for all of us, but it wasn’t bad, the family was altogether at that point,” she explained.
In 1944 this would all change as the Nazis occupied Hungary. Olsson and her family were told to pack their bags because they were being shipped to Germany to work in a brick factory, or at least that’s what they were told.
Together they marched the seven kilometres to the train station where endless rows of boxcars were lined up, waiting. People, 100 to 110, were packed into the cars with standing room only.
“There were two buckets in each boxcar, one was for drinking and the other was to be used as a toilet. There was little air and the older people died. People were crying. People were praying.”
When the boxcars stopped people fell out of them attempting to inhale fresh air, but there was none as black smoke stung their lungs instead of the stale air of the boxcar. Olsson, her family, and the others in the car had arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland.
“Black smoke covered the skies, machine guns, electric fences, guards everywhere, I turned to my mom and I said ‘Why are we going here? This does not look like a brick factory.’ Auschwitz-Birkenau was a killing factory.”
As they stood there, Olsson was holding onto the hand of one of her nieces when a prisoner passed near her telling her to “give the child to the older woman.” Olsson wouldn’t let go, not until the prisoner came back a third time, telling her to let go. He didn’t tell Olsson why, but she soon found out.
“Had I not let go of her hand I wouldn’t be standing here, I would have gone where most of my family went, except at that point I didn’t know where that was.”
As they were moved through the line up, Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” inspected each person. Men in one line and women in another, he would look them up and down, then flick his wand to the right or to the left.
Olsson and her family took their turn in line, she and her younger sister were sent to the right, while her mother (or any woman with a young child) was sent to the left.
“I was sent to the right and I turned to look for my mom, but it was so quick, I didn’t see her. I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye, or I love you, or I’m sorry for disobeying you.”
Breaking from her account, she asked the students if they had ever disobeyed their mom. Hands went up and a sad look crossed her face, “I wish I hadn’t. What matters is love and rules parents have are made out of love. It’s okay to disagree, but not to disobey.”
Olsson would never see her mother again. In an instance she was ripped from her life. The older men and women, children, and anyone in poor health were all taken to the gas chamber.
A second inspection after Dr. Mengele’s initial separation was done was completed. Those who were not sent to the gas chamber were ordered to strip, if you were healthy you were sent to the bathhouse, deloused, and then to the barracks. Given rough, scratchy prisoner clothes of varying sizes, nothing ever fit properly.
“We were given rations, one piece of bread that was 70 percent sawdust, do you know what sawdust is?” Olsson asked. “Well that’s what our bread was made of and ‘dirty water soup,’ that’s what we called it because it was made from unwashed potato peelings.”
Olsson explained that this was not the end of the terror the Nazis inflicted. In Romania she explained to the students that the boxcars the Romanian Jewish people were packed into were in fact death trains with no destination, simply travelling up and down the track until everyone in the boxcar was dead.
If Nazis were told to shoot a woman holding a child, Olsson explained that they were taught to shoot through the baby to the woman so as to only use one bullet.
“Not everyone was a bully and not everyone was a bystander,” Olsson stated. “The Nazis occupied Bulgaria, but the Bulgarians wouldn’t allow anyone to be taken. In Denmark, Danish Jews were smuggled to Sweden on fishing boats.”
The Holocaust saw 11 million people killed. Many were Jewish, while many others were also targeted by the Nazis and they were all silenced by hate.
“Before you tell someone you hate them, or say you hate something, please, I ask you to count to 10. That’s not too hard, but think of the victims, victims who were your age, that died because of hate.”
From the camp, Olsson and her sister were sent to Dusseldorf for hard labour. The slept on the ground, covered by a pup tent that didn’t help keep them dry. The rain would pool on the ground, so they were still soaked when they woke up at 4:30 a.m. to unload bricks.
She and her sister were then sent to an ammunitions factory, which was appreciated by them because here they were shown some kindness. The factory owners fed them.
In October of 1944 they were taken to Bergen-Belsen, another concentration camp. They remained for a harsh winter, always cold and wet, and it was during their time here that dysentery infected the prisoners.
“There was not enough food or water to sustain life,” Olsson stated. “I had a fever and there was no water, so I peed on a rag to hold against my forehead. I saw other women drinking their own urine because they were so thirsty. But you can only put out as much as you put in and we had very little.”
It was during this time that the Allied forces were pushing into the countries where the concentration camps were and the Nazis running the camps were attempting to leave the prisoners to die, even taking away the “dirty water soup,” their only meal.
In fact it was planned for the Gestapo to shoot the prisoners of the concentration camp at 3 p.m. on April 15. This plan would never come to fruition as Canadian and British troops liberated them at 11 a.m. that morning. The soldiers had travelled from Holland.
“I was very sick, but I knew I was free,” Olsson said. “Fourteen thousand died after being liberated; the doctors couldn’t help them. But, they died free.”
Following the war Olsson went to Sweden where she met her husband. They were from different countries, believed in different religions, and had many other differences, but they loved each other a great deal.
“You have to love each other unconditionally,” Olsson said. “And that’s what I give to you, unconditional love, the acceptance of another person, wholly. It doesn’t matter what they look like, what they believe, but that you accept them for who they are.”
