Children of Saul

Klára Sonnenschein

Székesfehérvár, 1939 – Auschwitz-Birkenau, 7-8 July 1944

Klára lived with her parents in Fonyód. Her father was drafted into the labor service. In the spring of 1944, Klára and her mother, Margit Friedmann, were deported from Fonyód, together with 19 other local Jews, first to the Tab ghetto and then to the concentration camp in the Kaposvár artillery barracks. Here, the wealthier Jews were tortured by gendarme detectives, and the women’s orifices were searched by midwives looking for valuables. One mother even had her baby’s talcum powder taken away. On 5 July they were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The train journey lasted three days, and people recall being half mad with heat and thirst. This is how her aunt remembered the Klára’s sufferings: “My brother’s little girl and I made her drink her own pee, because she was so thirsty, she was 6 years old, I never told my brother, she was a beautiful little girl…” Klára and her mother were killed in the gas chamber of a crematorium in the hours after their arrival. Her father survived the war.