Blanka Pudler

Blanka Pudler (born 1929 in Solotwyno , then Czechoslovakia , now Ukraine ; died in September 2017 in Budapest , Hungary ) was a Hungarian survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and a contemporary witness of the Holocaust . In 2012 she was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for her commitment .

Life

Childhood and early adolescence

Blanka Pudler was born the fourth of six children to a practicing Jewish family. The father was a men's tailor . Due to the inadequate earning potential in Solotvyno, a small town in Carpathian Ukraine , the family moved to Kežmarok in Slovakia in 1930 . There Blanka Pudler grew up speaking German , Slovak and Yiddish and attended a Slovak school. Kežmarok, in German Käsmark, had an active Jewish community until 1940 , which made up about 14% of the population. The father, who had a beautiful voice, strove for the office of cantor there, which he could not achieve. The family moved to Levice , which was part of Hungary by the First Vienna Arbitration . Pudler learned Hungarian as an additional language at school , and the family took on Hungarian citizenship. Blanka was a good student and due to the persistent poverty of the family, she contributed to the school fees through activities during the holidays. With the invasion of the German Wehrmacht in 1944, her school days ended prematurely. The school building was converted into a barracks, the Jewish population first ghettoized , then deported to various locations .

Time of the holocaust

In April 1944, Blanka Pudler and part of her family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau . The older sister Roszi was able to survive in Budapest, her brother Deszö was obliged to do labor. In Auschwitz-Birkenau she experienced the selection at the ramp and saw her mother there for the last time. By chance, after the degrading procedure of depilation and disinfection, she found her previously missing sister. For seven weeks in Birkenau B III, Blanka experienced the horrors and humiliations of the camp and the recurring selections. At the end of July 1944, she was assigned to a group of around a thousand Hungarian Jewish women between the ages of 16 and 50 who were taken to Hessisch Lichtenau in a five-day journey .

The women were used there for forced labor in the explosives factory in Hessisch Lichtenau . German workers also worked in the factory, which was hidden in a forest. In contrast to these, the Jewish workers had no protective clothing whatsoever and were exposed to the dangerous toxins with which they had to deal with for the manufacture of the explosives trinitrotoluene (TNT) and picric acid (TNP). The outer signs were yellow skin and hair, which is why they were called "canaries". Again and again they were exposed to the danger of uncontrolled explosions. In addition, they suffered from completely inadequate nutrition, from the cold in winter, from poor clothing and injurious footwear, as well as frequent humiliation and beatings by the guards. The Jewish workers were housed in the Vereinshaus camp on the outskirts of Hessisch Lichtenau . Work was initially carried out in three and later in two shifts. Those who could not withstand the exhausting working conditions were brought back to Auschwitz and murdered there. The forced labor was administered by the Buchenwald concentration camp . The factory itself was operated by Dynamit Nobel .

liberation

Blanka and her sister Aranka saw the war front approaching , and the camp was finally evacuated on March 29, 1945 . Guards and prisoners were brought to the Leipzig-Schönau camp by train. After it was bombed, she was transferred to the Leipzig Thekla camp. On April 13th they were sent on a march eastward, which was fatal for many . The Jewish women were liberated in Wurzen by soldiers of the US armed forces , then they were handed over to the Red Army . In order to regain strength, the weakest women, including Blanka and her sister Aranka, were brought to Sagan / Poland. After six weeks they get to Bratislava by bus . Since there were no transport possibilities for the onward journey to the hometown, there were again long walks, during which Blanka Pudler's feet were severely damaged. Together with her sister, she waited for her father to return in the care of the Jewish community in Leva, but then learned that he had died in 1944 at the age of 47 due to hard labor in a cement works. Her siblings Roszi and Deszö had survived. The siblings met in Budapest , where they started a new life.

Blanka Pudler in 2010 in front of the memorial stone erected in 1986 on the former camp site in Hessisch Lichtenau

After 1945

Blanka Pudler was unable to implement her wish to continue her school education, but instead completed an apprenticeship as a dental technician. However, due to an arm injury, she was unable to pursue this job for long and instead worked in a pharmacy. She married in 1950 and their daughter Agnes was born in 1952.

From 1962 to 1965 she followed her husband, who was professionally transferred to Accra in Ghana , and worked there in the Hungarian embassy . Upon her return, she found employment in a foreign trade company. In 1984 she partially retired and only works part-time. Like many Holocaust survivors, she was only able to talk about her experiences after a long period of time. At the invitation of the Hessisch-Lichtenau / Hirschhagen history workshop, she went to a meeting of the former forced laborers from Hessisch Lichtenau in 1986 and then began to accept invitations from school classes and associations to report on her personal experiences as a contemporary witness and to keep memories of the Holocaust alive. Blanka Pudler has been active in the Hungarian group “Dialogue for Tolerance” (Ariadne Group) since 2002 and has also attended numerous schools in Germany.

In 2012, Federal President Joachim Gauck presented Blanka Pudler and three other Holocaust survivors with the Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon for their commitment to commemorating the Shoah .

Blanka Pudler died in Budapest in September 2017 at the age of 88.

Award

• 2012: Federal Cross of Merit on ribbon

literature

• Blanka Pudler, Dieter Vaupel: On a strange, uninhabitable planet. How a 15-year-old girl survived Auschwitz and forced labor. Dietz-Verlag, Bonn 2018, ISBN 978-3-8012-0530-0 .
• Elke Mark: Canary. Book and film about the life and persecution of Blanka Pudler. Prima Print GmbH, Cologne 2008.
• Dieter Vaupel : The Hessisch Lichtenau external command of the Buchenwald concentration camp 1944/1945. 2nd edition, Kassel 1984 ISBN 978-3-88122-211-2
• Dieter Vaupel: Traces that don't go away. A Study of Forced Labor and Compensation. Writings on regional contemporary history. Kassel, ed. from the Department of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Kassel, Volume 12, Verlag Gesamtthochschul-Bibliothek, 2nd edition. Kassel 2001, ISBN 978-3-88122-592-2 online .
• Jürgen Jessen (Ed.): How it was. Contemporary witnesses of the Holocaust in schools and in public. History workshop Hessisch Lichtenau. Publications of the University of Kassel on the history of National Socialism in North Hesse, Kassel 1994.
• Dieter Vaupel: On a strange, uninhabitable planet. Handouts, master copies and assignments for classes in grades 7-13 . Dietz-Verlag, Bonn 2019, ISBN 978-3-8012-7012-4 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Blanka Pudler died at the age of 88. In: Lokalo24.de. Lokalo24, September 27, 2017, accessed October 17, 2017 . 
2. ↑ ^{a b c d} Blanka Pudler in contemporary witness projects , accessed on May 27, 2016.
3. ↑ ^{a b c d} Karl Fischer: Personal report on the evening with the Auschwitz contemporary witness Blanka Pudler at the Breitenau Memorial on January 26, 2009. In: gedenkstaette-breitenau.de ( PDF ).
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Pudler Blanka and Vaupel, Dieter: On a strange, uninhabitable planet: how a 15-year-old girl survived Auschwitz and forced labor . JHW Dietz, Bonn 2018, ISBN 978-3-8012-0530-0 , p. 116-129, 46-47, 49-62 .
5. ↑ Vaupel, Dieter: Traces that do not pass: a study on forced labor and compensation . 1st edition. Publishers University Library Kassel, Kassel 1990, ISBN 3-88122-592-7 .
6. ^ Gregor Espelage, Dieter Vaupel : 700 years Hessisch Lichtenau. A complementary contribution to local history. Arms production in "Friedland". The factory Hessisch Lichtenau for the utilization of chemical products GmbH Published by the Hessisch Lichtenau history workshop, Hirschhagen. Ekopan, Witzenhausen 1989, p. 22 ISBN 3-927080-06-3
7. ^ Hessisch Lichtenau. History of an explosives factory ( Memento from March 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ Project group Hirschhagen (Ed.): Hirschhagen, explosives production in the "Third Reich". A guide to exploring the grounds of a former explosives factory. 2nd Edition. Comprehensive University of Kassel, Faculty 1 - Project Group Hirschhagen and others, Kassel and others 1991, p. 33 ISBN 3-88327-194-2
9. ↑ Dieter Vaupel: Traces that do not pass. A Study of Forced Labor and Compensation. Writings on regional contemporary history. Kassel, ed. from the Department of Education and Human Sciences at the University of Kassel, Volume 12, Verlag Gesamtthochschul-Bibliothek, 2nd edition Kassel 2001.
10. ^ ^{A b} Vaupel, Dieter .: The Hessisch Lichtenau external command of the Buchenwald concentration camp 1944/1945: a documentation . University Library, Kassel 1984, ISBN 3-88122-211-1 , p. 97-107 .
11. ↑ The forgotten canaries. In: Die Welt , August 4, 2014.
12. ↑ Award of the Federal Cross of Merit to Blanka Pudler, who survived forced labor in a munitions factory in Hessisch-Lichtenau. In: Against Forgetting - For Democracy .
13. ↑ Four Holocaust survivors received the Federal Cross of Merit. ( Memento of the original from May 26, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: German Embassy Budapest .