A Thousand Miracles 

As told to Riki Goldstein by Mrs. Mindu Hornick

Mindu was 13 years old when she was deported to Auschwitz. Ultimately, she survived a ghetto, a concentration camp, a slave labor camp, a Death March, and a train bombing, and rebuilt her life in England after the war. She attributes her unlikely survival to, in her words, “Miracles, only miracles”

I attribute my survival of the Holocaust to a thousand miracles. How else is it possible that a slim, sheltered 13-year-old Jewish girl lived through the torture of life in Auschwitz and survived as a slave laborer under demonic overseers? Miracles, only miracles. And I attribute what I have managed in the rest of my life to the strength I gained in the concentration camps. When you have been through that as a youngster, you learn to do whatever you need to do to survive.

Before the War Began

Iwas born in a very small Jewish community called Vermeziv, in Czechoslovakia. It was very Orthodox, very frum. We baked challos at home on Friday, and since we had an oven, all the neighbors would put their cholent there and come collect it on Shabbos morning after shul.

Until World War I, Vermeziv was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Post World War I, we were absorbed into Czechoslovakia, and in 1939, once invaded by Germany, the Germans gave our area back to Hungarian Regent Miklos Horthy.