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A HOLOCAUST survivor has told how Russian soldiers liberating her Nazi camp picked off Jewish women one by one and raped them.
Agnes Kaposi, 92, was 11 when she was crammed into a pitch-black cattle cart bound for Auschwitz with 86 other terrified Jews before the padlocked door slid shut behind them.
Darren Fletcher
Agnes Kaposi
AlamyOver five days and nights confined in this tiny cabin, a horrified Agnes watched those around her die or become so deranged from dehydration they tore their hair out.
A small slit of window let enough light in to witness the horrors unfolding around her – the glint of the oil barrel they’d been forced to use as a toilet in the corner.
The little girl and her family didn’t know their train from Hungary was taking them to Auschwitz to meet their death – or that by some stroke of luck they had been diverted away to Strasshof labour camp.
It was here that Agnes was forced to work as a slave labourer from before the sun came up and way past sundown with rations consisting of a small piece of bread.
After a year – and after hundreds had died from starvation – Agnes and her family finally began to feel a glimmer of hope when the Nazis fled and the Soviet Union’s army arrived to liberate their camp.
Or so they thought.
Speaking from her home in north London, Agnes told The Sun: “The Russians did absolutely nothing, they gave us nothing.
“They were not interested about people dying from starvation whereas the British and American liberation forces had given food and medical supplies to victims at other camps.
“The Russians were not the least bit interested in us in the daytime.”
But at night everything changed, Agnes explained.
Her hands clasped together, Agnes said: “At night, they came. They raided our camps and pulled out any young women and took them away.
“I was 12 years old by then and I didn’t understand what had happened to these women, but it became obvious in the end.
“When they came back, some of them were bruised, some of them bloodied – all of them in a terrible state when stumbled back in at dawn.”
Sexual violence has been used against women and men for centuries during war – and World War Two was no different.
It wasn’t only at Agnes’ labour camp that Jewish women – after years of living through horror after horror under Nazi rule – were raped by the liberating Soviet Army.
Hundreds of women at Ravensbruck, Adolf Hitler’s concentration camp exclusively for women, were raped and sexually abused by Russian soldiers as they arrived to “liberate” the camp in April 1945.
The women had prepared a red banner to hand across the camp gates, ready to embrace their saviours – but they soon faced a fresh horror.
Agnes pictured in Budapest in 1939 in a photo taken by her uncleDarren Fletcher
Agnes pictured with her parents in 1943Darren Fletcher
Agnes Kaposi
AP:Associated Press
GettyThe advancing Red Army continued across Germany and Austria, raping starving concentration inmates and two million German women during their occupation of the country’s east.
Agnes said as soon as the Russian soldiers arrived at their camp and began raping the women trapped there, her family knew they had to leave immediately.
They fled the camp on foot and started to trek the gruelling 160 miles back to their home in Budapest, Hungary – hoping to be reunited with the men in their family.
Agnes said: “It took us a month to get there.
“There was no public transportation and we were staggering everywhere because we were so weak.”
She said at night, her grandmother would find them all hiding places – fearing that Russian soldiers might find them and rape them.
Agnes explained: “My grandmother was a country girl and we were going through empty villages where Austrians had fled the Russian advance.
“There were beautiful houses, but you never slept inside them because that’s where Russian soldiers came raiding, looking for women.
“We slept in a chicken coop or we slept inside a haystack – and it was always my grandmother who found us hiding places.”
Eventually, the starving family arrived in Budapest after trekking through war-torn Austria, Slovakia and Hungary – but she was met with yet more heartbreak.
Agnes found out that 27 men in her family had been killed after being forced to fight for the Hungarian army and their home had been confiscated.
And on their return, Hungarian soldiers told them: “Couldn’t you have stayed where you were?
“Hitler should have finished the job instead of you spoiling the air here.”
Agnes said she only survived the Holocaust because her train was the only train bound for Auschwitz that was diverted.
She added: “My train was the only one that was heading to Auschwitz – it was 12 miles away from there when it was turned around and sent away.
“I was 11 years old at the time. I wouldn’t be here to tell you this story had the train had finished its 12 miles of it’s journey.
“As a Holocaust historian told me, it was a quirk of history.”
With a small smile, she said: “Well I am here because of a quirk of history and my family as well.”
An estimated 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz concentration camp – 1.1 million of whom were murdered in the gas chambers.
Over Hitler’s brutal reign, six million men, women and children were killed – the vast majority being Jews.
Agnes was one of the very few who survived Hitler’s rule – and later Hungary’s tyrannical regime under Stalin.
Reuters
AlamyThe horrors of Holocaust
ONE of the greatest atrocities in world history, the Holocaust cost the lives of millions of Jews across Europe.
The genocide was carried out largely during World War 2, with the rise of Nazi Germany as victims were persecuted, tortured and killed on an industrial scale.
But not only Jews were targeted under Hitler’s regime – Romanis, homosexuals and Jehovah’s Witnesses were also on Hitler’s list.
It is estimated around 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust.
The targets were either killed on the spot, drafted to forced labour camps, or sent to concentration camps.
The camps saw millions of innocent men, women and children murdered in gas chambers.
Or they died of starvation or illnesses.
The notorious Auschwitz camp would become the grave of at least 1.1 million people.
The horrors started when Adolf Hitler rose to power in 1933 and passed antisemitic laws in a bid to force German Jews to emigrate.
And things became even more hellish after the occupation of Poland in 1939.
The nightmare came to an end after the UK, US and the rest of the Allies won the war and liberated the survivors from the remaining death camps in 1945.
Senior Nazi members were prosecuted during the Nuremberg trials with the first tribunal trying 23 political and military leaders.
Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler and Joseph Goebbels, were excluded as they had committed suicide several months before.
January 27 marks Holocaust Memorial Day – which is the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
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