In October 1944, 24-year-old Zipporah Gross and her 21-year-old sister, Miriam were among a group of Jews sent from Budapest to a labor camp in the area. They were forced to dig anti-tank trenches, and two weeks later they were deported to the Ravensbrück camp.
In January 1945, the sisters were transferred to the Venusberg camp, where they worked in an aircraft factory. Even after the factory was bombed by the Allies, it continued to operate until mid-April when the prisoners, among them Zipporah and Miriam, were transferred to the Mauthausen camp. The train journey took two weeks under unspeakable conditions with no food or water and very few breaks in the journey. Three days after they arrived at Mauthausen they were liberated by the US Army.
Zipporah was in extremely poor condition and was taken to a hospital near Mauthausen where she stayed for three months. During this time, she made a shirt and shorts out of a white sheet.
After she was released from hospital, she returned to Mauthausen to look for her sister, Miriam. In her testimony, she relates:
"I met some girls who had been with us. I was happy to see someone I remembered, and I asked them, 'When did my sister go home?' They said: 'They all contracted typhus'… and my sister had also died."
Zipporah returned to Hungary to see if her parents or any of her eight brothers and sisters had survived. She found two siblings. She joined a Bnei Akiva Hachshara (Zionist pioneer training) group and in 1948 she immigrated to Israel.
Yad Vashem Artifacts Collection
Courtesy of Tzippora Jungreis, Moshav Hazorim, Israel
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