I was invited by my Distance Education Christian Ethics 30 teacher to attend a presentation held at the Swift Current Comprehensive School on March 17th.

By Emily Morvik
Eastend School

I was invited to listen to Dr. Eva Olsson, who is an 86 year old holocaust survivor.  She spoke for over an hour and during that time the 500 students in the cafeteria listened in absolute silence.

Dr. Olsson started her presentation talking about bullies and hatred.  She said that Hitler was a bully.  Hitler had the power but the bystanders, (German soldiers) did all those terrible things out of fear of the bully.  From there she started speaking about what happened to her when she was 19 years old. 
In May, 1944 a man came into the square beating a drum and told everyone to pack their bags, they had two hours and to leave their personal belongings behind.  They were going to go and work at a Brick Factory in Germany.  They believed him.  She along with her family walked 7 kilometres to the train station and were loaded into a boxcar.  These boxcars contained 1 pail of drinking water and 1 pail for a toilet, for 110 people, for four days.
When they arrived, it wasn’t a Brick Factory, it was Auschwitz Concentration Camp.  They were unloaded from the boxcar and then separated women from men, healthy, weak, old, young, pregnant woman, children and babies.  At this point one German solider told her to let go of her niece’s hand and she said “no”.  He begged her again to let go and to give the child’s hand to her mother.  She did.  She said that German solider saved her life because women with children were executed immediately.
These were her words:  “We came to the gate where the angel of death was standing, Dr. Josef Mengele.  He didn’t speak to us, he just pointed in the direction he wanted us to go, left or right.  That was how he decided who shall live and who shall die.  Beside me were my younger sister, aged 17, and other young females.  We were ordered to the right, all the others were ordered to the left.”  “By the time I turned my head to the left, I couldn’t see my mom, and the moment I couldn’t see my mom, how I wished I could have put my arms around her and tell her how much I loved her, but it was too late.  For me it was too late.  I hope in my heart that for you it is not too late.  Do it while you can.”
Eva was selected as a worker and lived in a barracks, sleeping sitting up in a small bunk with 8 others, listening at night as trucks moved around the camp collecting 2,000 prisoners per night for the gas chambers.  She talked about the gas chambers, the screaming and the silences that came twenty minutes later, and the sickening smell of the black smoke that came from the crematorium smokestacks.  She said “how awful it would have been for her mother as she watched her grandchildren die in front of her and knowing she would die next.”  The hair from the dead Jewish people were shaved off and used to make boot liners for the German soldiers. 
Eva was given one piece of bread to eat a day which consisted of 70% saw dust, then the rations went down to a bowl of soup made out of the potato peelings and they did not clean the potatoes first.  The worst soup she ate was “surprise soup”.  She talked about the experiments they did on children, especially twins. 
Eva’s Dad was sent to Buchenwald, where he died 7 months later from starvation.
After the camp was burned to the ground in a bombing Eva and the other workers were sent to live in a root cellar with a dirt floor.  As the Russians began to close in on the camp, they were moved by train in February to Bergen-Belsen.  “Bergen-Belsen” is where Anne Frank died.  It was a worse place she said, as there were no bunks and no chairs.  All the prisoners had to lie on the floor, a floor that was covered with mud, diarrhea and lice.  They had no food, no water and they were sick.  Eva became sick with typhoid fever and talked about how she wished her Mom was there.  Her Mom always put a cold cloth on her head to bring down the fever.  At this point, the Nazis had shut off the water completely and took away all food rations in order to speed up the deaths of the workers.  They did not want to be caught with all these Jewish people.  Eva talked about urinating on the cloth to bring her temperature down and how she drank her own urine to stay alive.  She said she had to survive because she was responsible for her younger sister.  Never give up.  Never.  If she would have died, then the Nazis would have won.
On April 15, 1945 at 11 a.m. the British and Canadians liberated Bergen-Belsen.  They found Eva lying on the floor amongst the dead, and marked her forehead with a red cross.   She had survived but lost 40% of her hearing.  Eva relocated to Sweden after her recovery and fell in love and married her best friend, Rude Olsson.  They moved to Montreal.  Unfortunately, her husband died at the age of 37, the victim of a drunk driver.  She has one son and lives in Richmond Hill.
Her final words:  Rude showed me unconditional acceptance of another human being.  It’s not religion or education or colour or culture that makes us different.  What makes us different is our attitude.  Unconditional acceptance and love.  Pass this on.  It’s the only thing worth having.  The things that you can buy depreciate in value very quickly… the way we treat other human beings, with respect and dignity, will never, ever depreciate in value. 
Along with her presentation she also shared pictures of her family and lots of disturbing photos of Auschwitz with us.  
Eva is a very strong woman with an interesting life.  I will never forget this presentation.  I am blessed and fortunate to have been able to meet her.