The inspiration for the story of Stigmata of Auschwitz
Richard, Janet, Jen, and I were just retuning from our holiday in Hungary in the summer of 2001.
Driving through Slovakia heading to Zakopane where we stayed overnight in the heart of the town. It wasn't busy so we found a hotel on the main street.
Checking out the following morning I suggested to go through Auschwitz towards Cracow just for our friends to see the terrible crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazis to so many millions of innocent people during WW2.
After we parked our car in the camps carpark, we walked through the horrible entrance of the death camp where a sinister sign is written over the gate: “Arbeit Macht Frey”. At the first main Barracks which has been turned into a museum to display how the Jewish people have been tattooed on their arrival with a numbers like cattle on the inside of their left lower arms.
At the block “Numbered 4” is the camps museum. On the ground floor all the suitcases have been piled in a heap with chalk marks on them. The next room was full piled up with reading glasses and as we got onto the next floor all the confiscated children’s toys, dolls and teddy bears have been piled up too. I felt a very strong emotion that gripped me, and I couldn't stay in the room any longer.
I have never experienced that emotion before in my life it was like an iron hand was gripping my throat. So, I went out of the building and stood in front of it with tears running from my eyes. A young couple who was entering into the museum looked at me with sympathy without saying a word they have understood my emotions. A little later Janet, Richard and Jen came out of the building with very sad faces, but they didn't ask me why I had left so early from the museum.
All four of us walked along the buildings and at the end, Block number 10 building, which was Mengele’ s medical laboratory and the "Wall of Death" so we all entered the evilest place in the concentration camp where the “butcher of Auschwitz” was experimenting on Jewish inmates mainly on children and twins then at the end of his experiment these inmates has been shot at the wall.
Jen and I went upstairs to the Hungarian/museum (Block 18). When you walk through the door you find yourself in a dark room where the light switch is activated by a push button to switch on the light which gives a short time to light up the room.
There are pictures of 1940’s Budapest that I recognized while I was looking at the photos of people being marched to the railway station and forced into cattle wagons. There were several walls in the middle of the room which was displaying over four hundred thousand Hungarian Jewish names who were killed. I was looking for the name among these names of my Godfather (whom I’ve never met) at the letter S, for Slézinger.
Jen brought it to my attention at the first wall of the nameboard showing the letter B where there are fourteen names of my family name Bartos printed on the list.
As I have just touched those fourteen names with a trembling finger and in that same minute the automatic pushbutton light switched off. The room was turned into pitch darkness, and I have passed out as if I was dead. Jen in panic shouted for help, Janet and Richard rushed to the room to help me. They have helped me downstairs into the fresh air.
This terrible experience has enlightened my origins and never left me. Finally, I felt that I must write this story that my protecting Angel has inspired and urged me to tell the truth to you all of what has really happened to millions of innocent children, women and men in Auschwitz.
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