REMEMBERING THE AGONY HIGHLAND HIGH STUDENTS LISTEN TO SURVIVOR OF NAZI DEATH CAMP.

Byline: Peggy Hager Staff Writer

PALMDALE - When Zoltan Friedmann was 20 years old, his parents, his sister and he were herded onto a train at gunpoint and shipped to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.

They were shoved into a cattle wagon with 100 other Jews, all sharing one bucket of water, which was gone in the first hour.

``It was a horrendous smell of human excrement. Everybody was scrambling for every inch of space,'' remembered Friedmann. ``A lot of the hours during this trip are blocked out of my mind. Otherwise I would not be able to talk about it.''

Friedmann survived eight months in the infamous death camp. His parents, his sister and other relatives perished.

Friedmann, 76, told his story Tuesday to students at Highland High School as part of the school's observance of Tolerance Day.

``Today we are a better country than in the '40s and '50s because we recognize that acts against a person on the basis of their race are criminal acts,'' said Friedmann, speaking in the school library under a paper ``peace chain'' signed by 1,700 students and staff members.

Friedmann said he is not angry at Germans and does not regard that country as the only one that has persecuted Jews. He said Jews have been dehumanized throughout history and accused of misdeeds ranging from killing Jesus Christ to drinking the blood of children at Passover to trying to rule the world.

``The Holocaust and the gas chamber are gone, but dehumanizing and demonizing is still with us,'' he said.

Born in Hungary in 1924, Friedmann belonged to a typical Jewish family in Satoraljaujhely, where there were 4,000 Jews among the 18,000 inhabitants.

As a teen-ager, Friedmann said he was lucky enough to be one of the three Jewish students allowed in the local Catholic high school. He described his relationships with his classmates as very harmonious, but said racism against the Jews was evident even before they were rounded up for concentration camps.

A German ally, Hungary copied every anti-Jewish law adopted by Germany. While in high school, Friedmann and the other Jewish students were segregated and put to work as laborers.

One day while he was out working, he saw 30 or 40 Jewish youngsters about 12 years old running around the school. An instructor whom Friedmann had admired was following them and beating them.

On March 19, 1944, while he was riding his bike to go tutor a student, he saw German soldiers marching into his town.

``From that point on, it wasn't safe for a Jew to be on the street,'' said Friedmann.

Neighbors and former friends turned in the names and addresses of the Jews, required to wear yellow stars and armbands. They also had to turn in all valuables under threat of death.

At 6 a.m. one day, troopers with machine guns came into his home and told the Friedmanns they must leave within an hour. His family was sent to a ghetto of about 13,000 Jews. They were not in the ghetto long. The ghetto residents were moved away in four caravans over a period of six weeks. Friedmann was in the last convoy out - headed to Auschwitz- Birkenau.

When the convoy reached Birkenau, the families had to leave behind all of their belongings. The skies were dark for miles with smoke from the crematoriums, and the air was filled with a sickly sweet smell from the burning bodies.

The old, the weak and those too young for heavy labor were separated from the able-bodied and sent to the gas chambers. That's what happened to Friedmann's parents and his sister, who was pregnant.

Stripped of their clothes and shoes, Friedmann and other survivors of the selection process were each given a metal bowl, a spoon and striped clothes without underwear or socks. Prisoners were then given a cold shower, and all the hair was shaved from the bodies of women as well as men.

At this point in his story, Friedmann - speaking on behalf of the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles - paused to roll up his sleeve and display the identification number that was tattooed onto his arm.

During Friedmann's eight months in Auschwitz-Birkenau, he had to pull wagons of rocks and bricks. Many of the Jews' guards were hardened criminals released from prison.

Friedmann also worked briefly in a warehouse sorting personal possessions taken from the prisoners. Then he was a slave farm laborer, beaten repeatedly by a sadistic guard who smiled as he did it.

``There was no escape from any of those camps,'' Friedmann said. ``The only escape was to punch the (electrified) fence.'' Many prisoners, in despair, did just that.

The starved and beaten Friedmann went from 165 pounds to 85 during his captivity.

On Jan. 17, 1945, Friedmann and the other prisoners were awakened in the middle of the night for roll call.

The Germans were getting ready to evacuate the camp because the Russian army was approaching, but the prisoners were not told why they were leaving.

Guards told prisoners to step to the side if they felt too weak to run. Friedmann was in a group of 14 who stepped aside, although they feared they were going to be killed. They did not know the gas chambers and crematoriums had been destroyed.

The 14 were taken to a hospital at a larger camp at Birkenau and left to die. Friedman dragged himself into a warehouse, searching for clothing and food.

Within days, Russian troops arrived, liberating Friedmann and 4,000 others. Friedmann spent eight months in three different Russian camps before being returned to Hungary.

CAPTION(S):

3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) Zoltan Friedmann, imprisoned in the Nazis' Auschwitz- Birkenau death camp in World War II, speaks at Highland High School's Tolerance Day program.

(2) World War II death camp survivor Zoltan Friedmann sits with students Monday during a program.

(3) Highland High students listen solemnly to an account of how bigotry mushroomed into the Nazi plan to anilhilate the Jews.

Jeff Goldwater/Staff Photographer