"And the term 'unworthy life' is still ringing in my ears."

“I’ll start my life story from the end. Basically, I was saved by a nurse who told my mother that I will disappear some day if she does not visit me every Sunday, even if she is not allowed to see me. And that the children who are not visited will disappear and perish somewhere. And really, she visited me every Sunday, and I was not always allowed to see her. Whenever I lost weight, I was not allowed to see her, whenever I didn’t eat anything I was not allowed to see her, whenever I had vomited, I was not allowed to see her. Thereafter, she used to return home to Mödling and the whole trip was for nothing. And this was the end. After huge efforts she managed to get me out in ’44, that is, at the end of ’44, and took me home — basically against the will of the people there. I remember a huge dormitory with iron beds and mattresses without linen sheets, and refectory with a wooden table, with the vomit that had to be eaten until it was gone. And the weighing days, which were always on a Saturday, and the weight loss, and whether I got visitors or I didn’t. This was always decided there, I was always sweating, was vomiting with frustrations, and any weight increase was simply impossible in my case. I am sure I hadn’t survived if she hadn’t got me out of there on time.”

"The children in my class knew, they talked about concentration camps, it seems that all adults at the time must have been deaf"

“And that went on for a while, then they discontinued the stuff, then they did a “wrapping treatment,” that was also cruel. Ambulance bed, 2 days, dry sheets, wet sheets, stark naked, and then the sheets were wrapped around like a mummy, all over you were …, only the head was left out and you were tied down with belts all over, and then you were lying in the cell, they put me on the floor, and I only looked up to the sky, that is, to the ceiling. I was unable to turn left, I was unable to turn right, unable to stretch my legs, to draw in my legs. And one should try this once, how long can you endure without turning, right. And I said already often, I again…,for a time I had stopped praying because I thought nobody helps me anyway, but then I again started, and I even asked for forgiveness for not having done it for so long because I thought I will be helped, but I wasn’t helped. And when they let you out, the sheets were never dry because you were lying in your own urine. And especially atrocious it was when because of that it started itching, and you couldn’t scratch, and you had to endure until it faded by itself, this was brutish what they did. “Immersion cure,” the same, iron tub, ice cold water, down, up, down, up, down, up that you think you suffocate now. Why they did it, I don’t know, but they have fulfilled their duty. The Führer must have been happy.”

"I was just a thing"

“It was horrible. We beat each other, the stronger ones beat the weaker ones, the supervisors wanted it, yes, and they liked that. We took the beds apart so the other guy would fall through, we beat each other, we [plunged] them in the water. Yes, we did all the things to each other that the Nazis liked us to do. There was no solidarity. Doctor, if someone has told you something like that, he was telling the fairytales of aunty Jole, but among the kids, the weaker one was the weakest and the stronger [the strongest]. This was in principle accepted by the kids among themselves, also during meals. Fights were fought for two tenths of a ladle of soup, for the smallest leftovers.”

"And the problem was that we met the same orderlies again [after the war], they were the same as before."

“When I arrived at Spiegelgrund, I was taken to either [Pavilion] 13 or 15. There I had to go to a bathroom, you can call it bathroom, there was a bathtub, I remember it well, and a stool inside, and of course the big iron door. There I had to undress, and my clothes were taken away, and I had to go into the bathtub totally naked. They let the water in, and it was ice cold, and I had to creep into it. That was very hard, but I did not show it, because I thought that I must not do that. Otherwise they would have said: “You are a coward!” With such things they maltreated us permanently.”

"I was being beaten all the time, I couldn't stand it anymore."

“At the next opportunity, when we were allowed to make a stroll with a nurse, I took advantage of it. We were walking through Maroltingergasse down in the Ottakring district, at the final stop of tram number 46, and in those days the trams still had these open trailer cars. So, when we were passing this place, there was the 46 tram. I jumped right on, and gone was I. Well, then I automatically rode down to the Prater, to the 2nd district, which to me was like a magnet. There they caught me 2 days later and took me back to the Spiegelgrund facility, where they threw me into an ice-cold tub, just to make me sober. I don’t know, I wasn’t drunk, so what kind of sobering?”

"Everything barred, everything locked, no contact to the outside world, nothing at all."

“There wasn’t much. It wasn’t “You are Mr. Pauer, and you are this,” that was irrelevant, you were a number, finished. If you didn’t obey, you’d get a punishment. There wasn’t much, not much of a choice. You can’t say: “I want this bed, or I want this or that,” there was no such thing. This is yours, and that’s it. We had to make our bed, straight as a ruler, that precise, otherwise it was torn apart, and you had to do it again. That was the education at the time.”

"There was not a single day without punishment."

“Well, I can tell you, when all of this was found, that is, my things, and I read it through, and it was a disaster for me. For one year, I was unable to say anything. I completely retreated from everything, I was weeping like a child because I couldn’t understand that people could be so mean and send us there, and they knew what was going on there, at Spiegelgrund, the guardians. And all the lies they wrote about me and my family, all this [hurt] me terribly, and I was knocked out. For a year, I was knocked out. It was impossible to talk about Spiegelgrund because it was … I was brought there at the age of 11, yes, I was 11 years old then. So first I was at Lustkandlgasse, 2, 3 weeks for observation, and then they sent me to Spiegelgrund, well it was … I can’t remember a single day without punishment, there was not a single day without punishment. And bestial punishments they were, sadistic punishments. They made us stand for hours, and what was also terrible, we knew precisely that, when a specific nurse was on, we had to stand the whole night from evening to morning in front of our beds, with nothing on but our nightgown. In the summer, the windows were closed and in the winter they were open, can you imagine? That was totally normal.”

"We always watched the black car entering the facility, but we didn't know that there were children."

“But I suffered not only damage from those…, and I emphasize, not only at Spiegelgrund, even though this is the only institution they recognize. But the facilities where I was, like Modeling, which are believed to be mere orphanages, weren’t different, due to the SS people. There were 2 SS members, a woman called Mrs. Weiss, and it was no different. My punishments were harsher than in a prison. [In prison] they don’t say you are not allowed to talk to anyone, or correction and nothing to eat. You see that I didn’t go on a hunger strike for nothing.” 

"The violence was commonplace at the time."

“So I received a medal from the mayor, as contemporary witness, the Golden Merit Cross. I see this rather as a kind of war medal, for having endured these times, and not for Spiegelgrund, right? Or else, more or less, they mollified us, now we want quiet already, let’s put a medal around them, and we’ll have peace and quiet. […] But I find the compensation, well, just that it came too late, much too late! Hundred thousand schillings, had I gotten as a 20-year-old, that would have been something! Then we needed an apartment, etc., that would have been it! Afterward, if I wouldn’t have had it, the other things I would have brought also without it. But that’s how it was, it wasn’t, let’s say in the sense that I’d say, yes…, it was compensation and that’s it. I offend used to say, I should get a compensation from Wimmersdorf as well, there I was beaten for seven years, I should actually receive more from there than from Spiegelgrund.”