‘She went through hell’: Child of Holocaust survivor reflects on Auschwitz anniversary

The mother of a Saskatoon woman is sharing her survival story to mark the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet soldiers.

Dagmar Lieblova is alive today by an unbelievable stroke of luck. While in the Auschwitz death camp with her family, Lieblova’s date of birth was incorrectly marked as 1925 instead of 1929 which made her old enough to be added to a list of people transferred to a work camp.

Shortly after she reluctantly left the camp, her entire family was killed in a gas chamber, including her little sister Rita whom Lieblova named her first daughter after.

On Tuesday, Lieblova is telling her story to the European Commission.

Growing up, Rita McLeod gathered that her mother was a Holocaust survivor but she never felt comfortable enough to ask questions about it. She noticed the number 70788 tattooed on her mother’s forearm and often overheard stories when her mother would talk with her best friend Dasha, who survived the Holocaust alongside her.

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“I kind of knew we were different because other kids, friends, went to visit aunts and uncles, grandparents and the other grandparents, and cousins and I never had any of those,” McLeod recalled, touching photos of her relatives at her kitchen table in Saskatoon. 

Dasha became known as her aunt and McLeod, along with her two siblings, considered her family.

Lieblova’s family was Jewish and  living in Kutna Hora, which is now part of the Czech Republic. The summer of 1942 they were deported to the Terezin ghetto. In December 1942, they were taken away in cattle cars to Auschwitz. It was there that Lieblova received her tattoo. 

In 1944, women fit for work between the ages of 16-40 and men aged 16-50 were added to a list of people to be transferred to a work camp. Lieblova and her sister were too young for the list and their parents were too old. 

In hindsight, it was by some incredible chance that Lieblova’s paperwork incorrectly stated her birth year, sending her away to a concentration camp in Hamburg. The conditions were better than Auschwitz. For the first time in two years, Lieblova was eating more than just soup.  In March 1945, she was transferred to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with horrific hygienic conditions and dead bodies everywhere. The camp was eventually liberated by the British army, unlike Auschwitz which was freed by the Soviets. 

McLeod first started to learn details of her mom’s unbelievable life story when Lieblova started talking about it after the Czech Republic regime change in the 80s. 
 
“I remember as a child I was never comfortable in asking her. I knew, I don’t know somehow by osmosis, that we just knew what happened but I think I always felt it was too horrific and it was too painful that it would have to come from her,” McLeod said.

After the regime change, Lieblova and a few other Czech survivors founded the Terezin Initiative. They aim to care for Holocaust survivors, provide education to a younger generation and keep the memory of those who were killed alive.

Lieblova has since published a book of her story and speaks all over the world about her experiences, including to schools in Saskatchewan.

Learning of those details has been overwhelming for McLeod.

“It’s hard when on one level you listen to things on the radio, you read books, I watch films. It’s horrific in its own right to see the inmates and hear about everything but then to think, ‘Oh my god, this is my mother. My grandmother was dead by the age that I was 42,” McLeod said as she blinked away tears.

McLeod always thought she was different than other children. Her understanding of why didn’t come until recently reading Children of the Holocaust by Helen Epstein.

“All of a sudden I realized I wasn’t the only one,” McLeod said. Lieblova was never McLeod’s best friend, she was more of an idol and role model.

“I never felt comfortable asking or telling her or my parents about my worries or my problems because it felt like they were totally insignificant compared to what my mother went through.”

McLeod said she doesn’t know if she’ll ever have the strength to visit Auschwitz. Her mother did once and said she could never go back. Despite how painful the family history is, both mother and daughter feel it is their duty to share the atrocities of the Holocaust to educate and prevent similar situations in the future.

“I have such respect for my mom because I think she went through hell and she is so normal. She is one of the most normal people I know,” McLeod said, adding she talks to her mom every day.

“She’s amazing.”

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