Children of Saul

Zsuzsanna Wiener

Budapest, 11 September 1929 – KL Stutthof-complex, 29 November 1944

Zsuzsa was transferred from Cered to the ghetto in Kisterenye in May 1944. The 400 inhabitants of the ghetto, together with the Jews of Salgótarján, were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau on 13 June 1944. The Wiener family was also on the train. During the selection process, the 15-year-old girl told the SS doctor that she was older than she actually was, thus avoiding the gas chamber. Two months later, she was put on a transport of 2,800 forced laborers and transferred to the Stutthof concentration camp on the Baltic coast. We do not know to which subcamp Zsuzsa was sent from there to work as a slave laborer. In these camps, Hungarian women built bunkers, dug trenches for tanks or worked in the fields. They lived in tents, barns and summer houses made of plywood. Women were decimated by typhus and other epidemics, and brutally treated by the SS guards. What is certain is that, according to the entry on her prisoner card, Zsuzsa died on 29 November 1944. The place and cause of death are unknown.