Survivor: Klara Wizel

“Seven, eight, four, five. Write that down,” Dr. Josef Mengele instructed a nearby guard as a naked and painfully thin Klara Wizel — then Iutkovits — stood before the Auschwitz doctor in yet another selection, her drab, gray dress draped over her right arm, her tattooed left arm outstretched. The 17-year-old was immediately whisked away, past her two older sisters who were lined up behind her, and taken to a bathhouse holding 60 or 70 girls destined for the gas chamber. Klara’s sisters Roshie and Hedy soon appeared at the building’s barred window, crying and screaming, “Klara, don’t be afraid. You’re going to be OK.” But Klara sat stone-like, wanting to die. 

“I figured if I’m alive, I’m going to suffer more,” she recalled. But she couldn’t get out the words to tell her sisters, whose screams soon faded as German guards struck them with whips, sending them away. It was December 1944.

Klara was born on Jan. 15, 1927, in Sighet, Transylvania, in northwestern Romania. She was the ninth of Ignatiu and Frida Iutkovits’ 10 children. 

Frida, along with Klara’s oldest brother, Joseph, ran the family business, a wholesale/retail operation that sold dried fruits, cooking oil, flour and nuts. The entire family assisted, although Ignatiu, a Torah scholar and, according to Klara, kindhearted man, mostly studied. 

The business afforded the Modern Orthodox family a luxurious lifestyle, including a five-bedroom house two doors down from Elie Wiesel, who was a childhood friend. “We were a very, very happy family,” Klara said. 

Klara attended public school but learned to read and write Hebrew with a tutor her parents hired. When not in school or spending time with her family, Klara enjoyed bike riding, ice skating, reading and, most of all, going to the movies. 

Life started to change in August 1940, when Germany transferred Northern Transylvania to Hungary as part of the Second Vienna Award. More than 10,000 Jews lived in Sighet at that time, about 39 percent of the population. 

Klara’s father was forced to cut his beard to avoid being physically harmed. And by 1941, Klara was forced to leave school.

Sometime in 1942, a Hungarian judge revoked the family’s franchise to supply the province of Maramures with cooking oil. Soon after, the entire business was confiscated. “Mother was heartbroken. The business was in her blood,” Klara said. 

Meanwhile, Klara’s brother Lazar escaped to Russia, while her brothers Joseph and Haskell were drafted into slave labor. 

Then, on March 19, 1944, the Germans marched into Hungary. “When they came in, everything was going very bad,” Klara said. 

On April 20, Sighet’s Jews, along with Jews from neighboring towns, were forced into a ghetto. Three families moved into the Iutkovits’ house, which was inside the ghetto boundaries, but less than a month later, they were told to pack some clothes and food for resettlement.  

Klara, her parents and five of her siblings were all on the first transport, which departed on May 16. They were crammed 70 people to a car, with no water or toilets. “It was very frightening,” Klara recalled. 

On the third night, the doors slammed open at Birkenau, and the prisoners were ordered to line up in rows of five — men and women separately — where they were surrounded by soldiers with guns and dogs. Klara stood with her mother and sisters Hedy, Roshie and Ancy. Mengele soon approached them. “You look alike. You’re sisters, aren’t you?” he asked. “Yes,” one of them answered. He sent Frida and Ancy to a waiting bus and dispatched the other three to a different line. “You’ll see each other tomorrow,” he assured them. 

Klara, Roshie and Hedy were processed, given gray dresses and taken to a barracks.

The next day, Klara asked the block leader when she would see her parents. The kapo pointed to the chimney. “See that fire there? That’s where your parents are,” she said. Klara thought she was crazy, but soon learned the truth. “We were falling apart, crying, screaming,” she said. 

Klara was taken to work in a field of cut wheat, where she was ordered to gather the grain into 5-pound bundles and knot them. On the first day, a guard noticed her knot wasn’t done correctly. “Versagerin,” he yelled, “failure,” and he began hitting her with a club as guards with dogs circled them. “It was so horrible and frightening,” Klara said.

Next, she was transferred to a textile factory, where she braided strips of leather. She was treated less poorly, though she continued to lose weight.

By December 1944, the gas chambers and crematoria were working day and night. Klara and the other girls selected by Mengele were moved from the bathhouse to a small brick building to wait their turn. The girls eventually cried themselves to sleep, but Klara, who was prepared to die, remained awake. She was worried about her sisters and began to look for an escape. Noticing that the building was constructed of adobe bricks, she pushed on a few to see if any were loose. Then she noticed a chiseled area under a window. She pulled at a brick until she pried it out and chipped away at others. Soon, she created a narrow passageway and slid her body outside.

Klara made her way to a block that housed prisoners being relocated. Finding an open window, she climbed inside and discovered a group of girls showering. She removed her dress and joined them. Afterward, she and each of the other girls were given a dress, a piece of salami and a loaf of bread. 

In the morning, the girls, all more robust-looking than Klara, were loaded into cattle cars. “What is this muselmann [a survivor on the verge of death] doing here?” Klara heard one girl ask. She didn’t answer. She was sick and couldn’t eat. Later, she managed to trade her bread and salami for some sugar, which she savored. 

Three days and nights later, they arrived at the Weisswasser concentration camp, a private munitions factory in Czechoslovakia. When they’d disembarked and were waiting to be counted, Klara fainted, awakening in the infirmary where a Jewish female doctor took a liking to her. Six weeks later, she was cured. “The doctor gave me life,” Klara said.

At the doctor’s request, Klara was given a good job, burning the rubber tips off pieces of wire. She was also well fed and slept in a single bunk bed with a pillow and blanket. 

But one day in early May 1945, as the girls stood at roll call, no guards appeared. Finally, the block leader went to the Germans’ office. “I guess we are free. Nobody’s here,” she reported. 

“I couldn’t believe it. Am I free?” Klara recalled thinking. “I was turning around. Nobody’s following us.” 

Klara made her way to Sighet, where she went to Wiesel’s house, which had become a gathering place for returning survivors. When Baya, Elie’s sister, came back several months later, Klara learned that her own sisters Roshie and Hedy were alive. They made plans to seek her sisters out. 

In Prague, Klara went to the train station daily in hopes of intercepting Roshie and Hedy. But the one day Klara skipped was the day they passed through Prague. Later, however, the sisters learned that Klara had survived and wrote to her. 

Klara traveled to Cluj, where her sisters were visiting a cousin. “It was an unbelievable happiness. We were crying and screaming,” she said. A month later, they returned to Sighet.

Meanwhile, Klara had been given a letter in Satu Mare to deliver to Ezra Wizel, a second cousin of Elie Wiesel, for Ezra’s brother. She tracked Ezra down and they began dating, marrying on Dec. 10, 1947.

Klara and Ezra remained in Sighet but wanted to escape the communist regime. Finally, in early 1951, they were able to immigrate to Israel, then to Montreal later that year. Their daughter Fraya was born in November 1954, and daughter Judy in October 1956. In 1967, the family relocated to Los Angeles to be near Roshie.

While in California, Klara learned that her brother Lazar had survived the war and was living in Russia. She and her sisters helped him immigrate to Canada, where Hedy lived.

Klara, now 88, has four grandchildren. She continues to work in real estate investments. 

A documentary about her life, “Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story,” created by Danny Naten, was released in 2009, and a biography, “Auschwitz Escape – The Klara Wizel Story,” was published in 2014.  

Klara credits Roshie and Hedy with her survival. 

“I think God wanted me to live, but, believe me, I didn’t want to live. But I felt bad for my sisters, because they were crying for me. I’m alive because of them,” she said.

CORRECTION [12/31/15]: The original article had incorrect titles for Danny Naten's documentary and biography.