I was born in the summer of 1930 as the first daughter and second child to my parents. We lived in the town of Irshava, 30 some kilometers east of Munkacs in the Carpatian Mountains, then Czechoslovakia. At that time, the country enjoyed the liberal democratic rule of its founder and first president Tomas Masaryk. The Jews enjoyed full and equal civil rights. I went to elementary school where I was treated as all other children, fairly and decently. Over the '30s, our family grew to nine children. When my younger brothers reached school age, they too went to school in the mornings and to Cheder in the afternoons.

We were a strictly orthodox family, in the best of Jewish tradition. My mother wore a wig over her shaved head. My father sported a beard and gave a weekly talk on Talmudic issues in our synagogue, on Shabbat. He owned a retail store, which handled mainly housewares. In short, life was modest but pleasant and peaceful. We grew up in a loving and warm Jewish family. All that came to an abrupt end with the arrival of the Hungarian fascists, collaborating with the German Nazi regime, in our area late in 1940 or early 1941. From that moment onward, Jewish life changed dramatically. Trading by Jews was prohibited, their businesses were confiscated and my father faced increasing difficulties in his efforts to provide for the family. Attending school turned into a daily ordeal, with Jewish kids being shamed and discriminated. The situation was going from bad to worse but, at least, we still lived together as a family.

In 1944 Miriam and her family was forced to leave Irshava and take up residence in the Munkacs ghetto.

…then they took us to the ghetto, to Munkacs where we stayed for another 4-5 weeks, in an old brick factory building…They shaved half the beard of my grandfather, who was 85, and he had to walk around like that. My father had to go every morning to get our ration of milk--which was diluted with water. That was our morning drink. He would leave us, carrying a huge pot to bring the milk. One day he took longer than usual. My mother was very worried. I told my mother I would go and see what was keeping him. I saw that the Germans had put the pots over their heads as a hat, and they had them walking like that around the camp: some tripped and fell, some were injured. They returned home half dead. From then on, I told my mother: "Father isn’t going to do that anymore, I will." But, since I was not strong enough to carry the pot, and I was also afraid they would do to me the same they did to my father, I brought the milk in the small individual bowls we had. Since there were 9 children, plus mother and father, I had to go five times to bring the milk.

From Munkacs they were deported to Auschwitz, where Miriam was separated from the rest of her family.

One day, we were gathered and loaded on a train in cattle cars, with tiny windows. There was not much air. Some of the elder men were praying aloud, asking God for mercy.

We were there until July.

Miriam was later sent to a labor camp near Stutthof.

In July we were transported, by trucks, to Stuthoff. It was summer. It was very difficult. They dressed us in furs, boots, hats and gloves and we were supposed to run for hours in the camp… There was a short SS man, cross-eyed and cruel, who inflicted severe punishment. When the colder days came the girls would use their quarter blankets as an extra layer under their thin dress. He did not like it, claiming that the extra burden would impede our progress in the diggings. So, he would come to check, lifting our dresses, and hitting us hard if he found the piece of blanket. The girls would warn one another, saying "the eye, the eye" if we spotted him coming. If we were lucky, we would remove the blanket and hide it in the snow, but more often than not, we were caught. The blows, we received on our skins, because we did not have any underwear.

We did not hear any news from the front.

From Stutthof, Miriam was forced onto a death march.

One day, at roll-call time, we were told to start marching. It was the beginning of the death march. Some 1,000 women left the camp. Only 100 survived. Everyone was watched: if one stopped walking, she got a bullet instantly. I tried to walk in front, because those in the back received worse treatment. We walked from early morning to late night. We passed villages and towns. They tried not to go through populated areas. On the way, a German would throw us sometimes a piece of bread from the window. The women would fight for it. The SS would shoot into the group fighting for bread, killing a few. Sometimes we would see the village women collecting a few potatoes and other food for their pigs: we would attack them and steal the food… and the SS would shoot. I decided I will not fight like that anymore. What saved me were a few pieces of sugar beets that grew in the fields we passed, and also there was a lot of water from the snow. Can you imagine that I weighed 30 kilograms?

The march lasted until the end of April or beginning of May 1945.

Miriam was finally liberated by the Russian Army.

One day, I felt feverish and had diarrhea. We were three friends who decided not to go to the next roll call. The punishment, we knew, was death by shooting. Two of us were ill, one was healthy. We hugged each other and decided not to go out. We heard the whistle that meant for us to go out and the shouts of "Raus, raus." We were in panic, awaiting our end. Suddenly there was silence. They did not come looking for us. It appeared that the Russians were approaching and the Nazis did not have the time to come for us. By then, we had reached the area of Bamberg, in the eastern part of Germany.

The Russians came. Some of them behaved like animals, but we will not talk about it now. One Russian soldier, who was obviously Jewish, asked us if we were Jews. He gave us food and told us to go. We had no clothes, so they gave us uniforms that were too big for our bodies but we managed by tying them here and there. And, like that we started to go. If the war was advancing this way, we went that way… without knowing where.

Of her immediate family of eleven only Miriam and younger brother Baruch survived. Yet their harrowing story did not end with liberation.