Holocaust survivor shares story at Glenbard East

Holocaust survivor Joyce Wagner still has the number “5779” tattooed on her arm — a permanent reminder of her experiences at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi death camp during World War II.

She got the tattoo after arriving at the camp in 1943, following a two-day trip in a “cattle train” with thousands of other Jews.

“From that moment on, that was my number and that was my name,” Wagner said. “We weren’t human anymore.”

After almost two years at Auschwitz, Wagner made it out, and has been telling her story ever since. She’s also written a book, “A Promise Kept To Bear Witness.” It’s her responsibility, she says, to the 6 million people who perished during the Holocaust, to make sure they’re not forgotten.

On Tuesday, Wagner, now 88, spoke before about 1,000 students at Glenbard East High School in Lombard. Her daughter, Gilda Ross, is Glenbard’s student and community projects coordinator, and has brought her mother to the district’s high schools throughout the years.

“She has a mission, and her mission is for you to go forward,” Ross told the students. “She charges you to show compassion in the lives of others.”

Wagner recalled growing up as part of a close-knit family in Radziejow, Poland. In 1939, life changed when Hitler invaded Poland and his Gestapo took over their town. They closed schools and synagogues, and sent Jews like Wagner to hard labor work camps.

After a year, Wagner returned to Radziejow, where Jews were put into a ghetto and identified by the yellow stars they were forced to wear.

It was only a matter of time before Hitler declared his “final solution” — the termination of Jews throughout Europe.

Wagner remembers well the orders of Nazi officers pounding on doors: “Jews, out of your houses now!”

She hid in the attic of a neighbor’s house with her sister. A member of the Gestapo found them, but he “sympathized with us,” she said, and let them stay.

“It was a miracle,” she said.

Later, she spent time at another work camp, before the Nazis shipped her away to Auschwitz. She remembers seeing infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele separate people once they arrived. Some, like Wagner’s brother, headed directly to the gas chambers.

Wagner said she worked morning and night building railroad tracks. Her breakfast and lunch was “colored water” that was supposed to be coffee and soup, and bread in the evening.

She recalls seeing the piles of dead bodies, and smelling the smoke coming from crematorium chimneys.

“We never thought any of us would survive,” she said.

By 1945, the Germans were losing the war. The Nazis led Wagner and those who remained at Auschwitz on a “death march” to another work camp. Wearing only her prison dress and wooden shoes, Wagner made it through the snow, ice and cold.

When the war ended in May after the Russians came in, Wagner returned to her hometown in Poland, but no one was there.

She was the only one of 11 in her family to survive.

In 1949, she emigrated to Milwaukee, where an uncle had come before.

“This is a tragic story,” she said, “but it must be told.”