11
Magda Schaloum
Magda Altman Schaloum was born in 1922
in Gyor, Hungary. Following the German
occupation of Hungary on March 19, 1944,
the Nazis began systematically depriving
Jews of their rights and forcing them into
ghettos. They forced Magda and her family
to leave their home and deported her, her
brother, and her mother to Auschwitz.
Through the window of the cattle car,
Magda saw her father desperately trying to
give them a package filled with food and
essentials. The guards treated him brutally,
but took the package and told him they
would give it to his family. Instead, they
kept it for themselves. Magda's father was
held for forced labor in the coal mines, and
the Nazis eventually transported him to the
Buchenwald slave labor camp in Germany.
Magda's sister avoided deportation thanks to
one of the protective papers from the
Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, later
declared a Righteous Among the Nations.
After riding for days in the fetid cattle car, Magda arrived in Auschwitz, only to be separated from her
brother, 15, and her mother, 56. The Nazis forced Magda to processing where they tattooed a number on
her arm.
At the end of June, 1944, Magda was sent to the infamous slave-labor camp Plaszow, near Krakow. At
the end of August, she was sent to Augsburg, Germany, to work as a slave laborer in a factory. She and
other workers looked out a window and saw the first snow beginning to fall. In a chain reaction, one
worker began crying, then another, until everyone was in tears and wondering what was happening to
their families and loved ones. Were they out in the snow without any protection? Were they even alive?
In April of 1945, Magda was transported b cattle car to Mühldorf, a sub-camp of Dachau in Germany. As
Allied bombs fell, prisoners were trapped in the cattle cars for days. A German officer defied orders to
deliver the prisoners to a mass execution site. He also redirected the train to avoid bombings by Allied
forces. After days of waiting and listening to gun shots, on May 1, 1945, the Americans liberated the
cattle cars.
“When we heard about groups that denied the Holocaust, we decided that we had to speak out,” Magda
says. “If you hear somebody deny the Holocaust, you can say, ‘I have seen and heard a survivor.’”
Magda Schaloum was born in Hungary, lived in Budapest, was deported to
Auschwitz, Plaszow, Ausburg, and finally Muhldorf.
