Livia Bitton-Jackson's Holotale - Arrived at Auschwitz at 13, not "sent to the gas" because Mengele liked her blonde hair

Livia and her family were taken to the gates of hell, Auschwitz. When Eva arrived at the gates of hell she was greeted by the angel of death himself, Dr. Mengele.

The story goes that the Germans immediately gassed everyone under 16 years old at Auschwitz, but Mengele spared her because she "looked Aryan", and told her to pretend she was 16.

Livia, her mother, and her brother Bubi all survived the "death factory" of Auschwitz. [1] It was a miracle!

Veteran: Livia Bitton-Jackson - From Germany to Netanya

Jun 25, 2009
Jerusalem Post
By GLORIA DEUTSCH

"Do you have any lipstick?" was the first thing Livia Bitton-Jackson said to me when we met for our interview. She wanted to look good for the photo, she explained.

It wasn't just vanity. Once, long ago, her looks saved her life.

"I was 13 when I arrived in Auschwitz. I had long blonde braids and looked Aryan. Mengele beckoned me aside and asked, 'Are you a Jew?' I answered yes. 'How old are you?' he said and I said 13. 'From now on you are 16,' he said and he sent me to the side where those who could live a little longer were sent. Thirteen-year-olds were immediately sent to the gas."

The hideous memories have not faded although 65 years have passed. "My friends went with their mothers to the gas and looked back at me who had not been sent. You don't forget those looks," she says.

Today Bitton-Jackson is professor of Judaic studies and Jewish history in the History Department of Lehman College in New York and the award-winning author of several books. Her latest book, Saving What Remains, tells the story of how she, together with her second husband, Dr. Leonard Jackson, and her mother, who also survived Auschwitz, brought the remains of her grandparents to Israel.

"In 1980 we heard that a new dam was going to be built on the Danube and the whole area, including the Jewish cemetery where my grandparents were buried, would be flooded. My mother, who was 90 at the time, was devastated. She said, 'My whole family wound up like smoke in Auschwitz, my parents should be swept away by the waters of the Danube?' She begged us to exhume the bodies and bring them to Jerusalem for burial, and my new book is about that experience."

From 1945 to 1948 Bitton-Jackson was in a displaced persons camp in Germany, working for the Bricha helping to get immigrants to Palestine. In 1951 she came to the United States, married her first husband who turned out to be abusive, had two children and divorced in 1967.

[...]

Livia has a Holocaust Memoir of her own, titled "I Have Lived A Thousand Years: Growing Up In The Holocaust"















Quote from book:

At the moment of her liberation, Elli is approached by a local German woman:

'We didn't know anything. We had no idea. You must believe me. Did you have to work hard also?'
'Yes' I whisper.
'At your age, it must've been difficult.'
At my age. What does she mean? 'We didn't get enough to eat. Because of starvation. Not because of my age.'
'I meant, it must have been harder for the older people.'
For older people? 'How old do you think I am?'
She looks at me uncertainly. 'Sixty? Sixty-two?'
'Sixty? I am fourteen. Fourteen years old.'
She gives a little shriek and makes the sign of the cross. In horror and disbelief she walks away, and joins the crowd of German civilians near the station house.
So this is liberation . It's come. I am fourteen years old, and I have lived a thousand years.

[2]