![94-year-old Yitty Schwartz photo undated. [VIN News]](http://www.vinnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/01/bumbas.jpg "bumbas")
Kiryas Joel, NY – Among the stories emerging about a 94-year-old Kiryas Joel woman who died this week, leaving an estimated 2,500 or more descendants, is about a lucky break that saved her and her family from possible death at Auschwitz during World War II.
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Yitty Schwartz, a Hungarian who previously had been held at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp with her husband, Yosef, and their children, was on a cargo train headed for the notorious Auschwitz camp when American planes bombed the train tracks and forced the train to reverse course, according to a daughter who now lives near Kiryas Joel.
The Schwartz family was later released, and made its way to the United States in 1953 when the daughter was 17 years old.
Recalling that track bombing, Eva Kraus recalled, “How we wished, if only the Americans had done this sooner so we could have had so many more survivors proudly today like us — happy, healthy families.”
Probably not due to bombing. If she was deported from the Debrecen area (more particularly hajduszentgyorgy) in late June of 1944, then that train was turned around because of a bureaucratric mess-up. All Jews from that area were to be deported to Auschwitz and the Jews from some of the western provinces were to be “put on ice” in Austria due to the Eichmann-Kastner dealings. By mistake, a train from Gyor (earmarked for Austria) was sent to Auschwitz. To correct this mistake, Eichmann ordered that the train from the Debrecen zone, already en route to Auschwitz, be turned around and re-directed to Austria. Many of these Jews ended up in Bergen Belsen, Mathhaussen, and Theresienstadt.
my grandmother was also from debrecin and on train to auschwitz that was stopped they were finally unloaded into some type of ski lodge where they ended up staying a few weeks until war was over
give credit for those who deserve it, the Americans liberated thousands of jews and with god’s help saved the world.
and history should always remember the good ones.
My mother’s family was on that train.
My father and almost his entire family from Hajdunanas were herded into the Debrecen Ghetto for transportation to Auschwitz.
Two train loads of Jews were diverted to Austria. My father always believed that it had to do with the bombing of the rails and so the Germans diverted these 2 trains to Austria.
I did exhaustive research on this subject; and I concluded as follows;
With German ‘pintlichkeit’, no amount of bombing of rail lines or other facilities ever caused the diversion of a transport from its detined destination, even if it meant keeping the poor souls stranded for days in the fields untill the way was cleared.
The story of these 2 transports are, that the Germans needed to fill up a “show lager” in Austria with Hungarian Jews for the Red Cross inspection, in order to belie the rumors that the Hungarian Jews were being led to slaughter.
This trick bought the Germans a few more weeks to continue the transports out of Hungary upimpeeded by world condemnations and warnings.