Albert Bela Eger was born in 1919 in Presov, Slovakia. In 1940, when the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, Albert was expelled from the University of Prague and drafted into the Slovakian Army. As a Jew, he was put into a labor brigade but was exempted from the early deportations to the concentration camps because he was needed by the Nazis for his education and language skills.

In 1941, he was sent to a labor camp in Eastern Slovakia, where he did office work and translated for the commandant who liked and respected him. When the deportations to Auschwitz began, Albert was warned by the commandant to escape. Albert forged his own false papers and had them signed by the commandant. He became a freedom fighter with the Russian Underground in 1943, and for the next two years lived in the Slovakian Alps, both hunting Germans and being hunted by them. While serving in the resistance, Albert was shot and soon after became very sick with tuberculosis. He and his group were liberated in April 1945 by the Soviet Army, and Albert was hospitalized.

After the war, Albert returned home and regained his health. He married Edith and had his first child. He found life under the new Soviet regime intolerable and resisted intense pressure put on him to join the Communist Party. He escaped with his family to Vienna, Austria in May 1949 and later that year came to the United States. Albert joined his brother in Baltimore and continued his education, later becoming a CPA. Albert and Edith had two more children and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1955. Albert died in 1993.

Connecting Stories:   Edith Eger

Edith Eva Eger was born on September 29, 1927 in Kosice, Slovakia, which came under the rule of Hungary in 1938. Her upbringing included early training in ballet and gymnastics. She was being groomed for the Olympics but was barred from the team in 1942 when new anti-Jewish laws were enacted by the Hungarian government. Her eldest sister, Clara, was accepted into the Music Conservatory of Budapest, which put her in relative safety for the duration of the war.

By March 1944, Edith’s father had been arrested and sent to a labor camp. Edith was forced into the Kosice Ghetto with her mother and older sister, Magda. In May 1944, they were taken by train to Auschwitz. Edith recalled an orchestra playing at their arrival. She was confused during the “selection” and clung to her mother. Dr. Mengele pulled her back into the line of younger people allowed to live. She never saw her mother again. Mengele came back later that evening to find Edith in her barracks and took her to his quarters for his personal use and entertainment.

In November 1944, Edith was assigned to ride on top of the German trains carrying weapons and ammunition. The Nazis hoped that the striped uniforms would deter British bombers. For the next six months, she was moved around to various sub-camps of Mauthausen, in Austria, and was finally liberated by the American Army at Gunskirchen in May 1945, just as other prisoners were resorting to cannibalism to stay alive. Edith and Magda recovered in American field hospitals and later found Clara, who had been saved and hidden by her music professor in Budapest. Once Edith made it to the United States with her husband, Albert, and their daughter, she was able to continue her education and eventually became a clinical psychologist. Albert and Edith had two more children and moved to El Paso, Texas in 1955.

Connecting Stories:  Albert Eger

Neftali Frankel was born on December 26, 1921 in Tarnow, Poland, the eldest of four children. Neftali was 18 years old when World War II began. Soon after the Nazi occupation, restrictions were enforced on the Jews. They were banned from public places, such as parks and movie theaters. Restrictions escalated to violence, and, in 1942, the Jews of Tarnow were forced into a ghetto. Soon after, the deportations to concentration and extermination camps began. Neftali’s mother and two sisters were rounded up to be sent on one of these transports. Neftali’s father begged the commandant in charge of the transport to let them go. The commandant agreed to release his wife but forced him to choose one daughter to go free. Faced with an impossible decision, but believing the oldest would have a better chance of survival, he chose to save his youngest daughter, along with his wife. Neftali’s sister was sent with the others on the transport to Auschwitz, where she was killed in a gas chamber.

On October 23, 1943, the Nazis liquidated the ghetto and sent the Frankel family, along with hundreds of others, to concentration camps for a short time until they were forced onto cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Neftali’s mother and sister were killed in the gas chambers upon arrival. Neftali and his father were tattooed and put to work carrying large rocks and cleaning rifles. As the war drew to a close, they were forced on a death march to Dora concentration camp. They were then moved to Bergen-Belsen, where they were finally liberated on April 15, 1945.

Neftali recuperated after the war in the United States and later moved to Mexico City, where he had relatives. In 1947, he married Edith, a distant cousin, and together they worked for relatives in the hotel business. During the early years of their marriage, they ran a hotel for elderly people and later opened a store that sold school supplies which evolved many years later into a paper packing company. Neftali and Edith joined their daughter, Felicia Rubin, in El Paso in 2003. Neftali died on November 14, 2005.

Guy Hauptman was born on April 20, 1939 in Brussels, Belgium to Sara and Nathan Hauptman. When he was four months old, Sara took him to Paris to join Nathan who had received a draft notice from the Polish government in exile. In 1941, the German army invaded France. Believing their son would be safer with Catholics, the Hauptmans entrusted him to a farmer’s wife, Janette, with the understanding they would return for him. If they did not return, Janette agreed to take him to his grandmother, Chana Rosen, in Brussels. That year, the Nazis arrested and imprisoned Sara for eight months.

Guy’s father, Nathan, immediately took Guy to his grandmother in Belgium, where he lived until she was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Sara’s nanny hid Guy and helped care for him near Brussels. After her release from prison, Sara gave birth to a daughter, Monique, and began working for the Belgian resistance. She was eventually captured and sent to Auschwitz concentration camp. Guy stayed with the nanny until 1944. Afraid of the danger of discovery, she placed him in a Christian orphanage where he remained until the end of the war. Guy was reunited with his mother, father, and sister, and together they immigrated to the United States in 1951. Guy went on to serve in the U.S. military and settled in El Paso with his wife and children.

Connecting Stories:   Monique Hauptman, Nathan Hauptman, Sara Hauptman

Twins Ferenc and Otto Klein were born in 1932 in Hajdúböszörmény, Hungary. The Klein family owned a lumberyard and a cement factory which were established in the 1800s.

In April 1944, their father was arrested and taken away. Two months later, when Hungarian state police rounded up all of the Jews in Hungary, except for those living in Budapest, the young boys were taken, with their mother and sister, Agnes, to Auschwitz. Their mother was killed in the gas chambers immediately upon arrival. Otto and Ferenc were selected for special experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele, who targeted twins for his medical experiments. Otto contracted tuberculosis at this time as well. Otto and Ferenc never discussed what they went through during this time under Mengele’s imprisonment. The boys were liberated in January 1945 by the Soviet Army. After liberation, they returned to Hungary to look for their parents or any surviving family. They discovered that their father had died shortly before liberation on a death march. They were reunited with their sister, Agnes, who had also survived Auschwitz.

In 1947, they were declared orphans by the State, and their uncle Adolph Schwartz was appointed their guardian. In 1948, Ferenc and Agnes immigrated to the United States, coming to El Paso, Texas to be with their relatives, the Schwartz family. Otto had to stay in Europe, as he was not able to secure a visa due to his tuberculosis. His family sent him to Switzerland to a sanatorium, where he was cured. Otto became a Swiss citizen and a successful businessman. He resided in Switzerland until his death in 2014.

Ferenc lived in El Paso until his death in 1986, which was the result of an unsuccessful kidney transplant.

Connecting Stories:   Agnes Schaechner