Kitty Hart-Moxon
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Kitty Hart-Moxon OBE was born as Kitty Felix in Bielsko, Poland in the late 1920s. But when the Germans invaded Poland on 1 September 1939, her life was changed forever. Slowly being forced to succumb to the harsh Nazi laws against Jews, she was eventually sent to the Auschwitz labour camp in 1943, at the age of 15.
With her mother—who was also sent to the camp—she survived the awful conditions for almost two years, when they were both driven out on the death marches. Experiencing a 300 kilometre trek and a series of concentration camps, Kitty and her mother were finally liberated in April 1945 by American soldiers. After the war, she moved to England with her mother. There, she married and dedicated her life to raising awareness of the Holocaust.
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[edit] Early life
Kitty Hart-Moxon was born Kitty Felix in the late 1920s, in a town in southern Poland called Bielsko. She had one brother, Robert, who was five years older. Both her parents were educated—her father studied to be a lawyer, and her mother was very skilled at languages. She also had a passion for learning, which continued throughout her life.
Kitty led a very active life from the age of two. She learned to skate and ski, went to the local gymnastics club and took piano lessons, among other things. She learned some rudimentary English from her mother in her early schooling. Kitty was also a very good swimmer. She represented Poland as part of the Youth Swimming Team in 1939. She won a bronze medal and was the youngest selected on the squad.
Her parents were always busy with their work. Her father, operating an agricultural supply business, was often out of town and her mother was a teacher. As such, Kitty was often looked after by nannies and maids. This, and a slight jealousy of her brother, “…made [her] something of a terror.” (Hart. 1981. Return to Auschwitz. p26.) She was always pushing the boundaries, bending the rules, so that nannies never lasted long – they gave up trying to control her very quickly. To counter this unruly behaviour, Kitty was sent to a local school run by Catholic nuns. Here, she continued to rebel against authority figures. From a young age, she had a motto of sorts – “never obey” (Hart. 1981. Return to Auschwitz. p20.)—and it was to serve her well during the war.
Then, during a holiday when Kitty was 12, her father decided to leave Bielsko because of its proximity to the German and Czechoslovakian borders. The house was emptied in response to the anti-Semitic mood which had swept the town. Swastikas were everywhere and violence was imminent. There were machine guns set up on top of the houses of German families, ready to attack their neighbours: the Jews.
Kitty’s family moved to Lublin, in central Poland, to escape the obvious danger in their home town. They left on 24 August by train, taking Kitty’s maternal grandmother. On 1 September 1939, Hitler invaded Poland. Within a few weeks, the Nazis occupied Germany, and began imposing their anti-Semitic views on the city.
[edit] Ghettos
Lublin was fast becoming a hard place for Jews to live. They had to bow to passing German soldiers or risk being killed. There were raids of houses daily and food was confiscated by the Einsatzgruppen. All Jews had to wear a band around their arm showing the Star of David, Jewish children were denied schooling, and many adults couldn’t work. Eventually, all the Jews in Lublin were moved into an area of the city, creating the Lublin Ghetto.
Leaving the Ghetto was punishable by death, but it was necessary to do so to survive. Conditions in the ghetto were such that there were epidemics of typhus and cholera. Food rations were low, so Kitty was often sent to barter for food for the family in the outside world, as she was the only one in the family who could fit down the manhole to the sewers which led outside the Ghetto. By this point, Robert, her brother, had separated from the family, joining a group of friends who would fight against the Germans.
Times had become so desperate that Kitty’s father decided to try and escape the ghetto and cross the Russian front to the east. It was the winter of 1940-41, and Kitty, her mother, father and grandmother, were making their way by horse and cart eastward to the River Bug. They made it to the frontier, but found that it had closed 24 hours previously. Their last hope was to cross the river to Russian territory when it froze. Temperatures dropped, and they secured a sleigh to attempt a crossing. They were about three-quarters of the way across when they were sighted and gunfire opened upon them. They all managed to land on the bank they had just left. They had failed, and Kitty’s father decided that they should return to Lublin.
On their return, conditions had become worse. Jews were being taken away from the ghetto and never seen again. Kitty’s mother began sneaking out of the ghetto to give English lessons to Father Krasowski—a Catholic priest—and in return received food. Again, because of the degrading conditions, Kitty’s father decided to leave the ghetto. Now the only choice was to make their way to one of the Jewish communities south of Lublin.
So, one dawn, they removed their Stars of David and made their way out of the ghetto. They survived off berries and fruits from the forests through which they were travelling. Eventually, they reached a village which still had some Jewish families. Zabia Wolf was 15 miles (25 km) from Lublin and they found themselves welcomed for Kitty’s mother’s offer to teach English to various noblemen. However, the German troops in Zabia Wolf constantly demanded things from the Jews, who had to provide them or risk being transported to an unknown location.
At one point the Germans demanded money. A time came when there was a large sum of money that could not be organised. With the implied threat of death or transportation, Kitty’s father decided that they had to keep moving south. However, Kitty’s grandmother refused to go any further, she’d had enough. So, Kitty, her mother and her father left her grandmother at the mercy of German forces. They made their way back to Lublin again, but this time to Father Krasowski’s vicarage, where he provided them with fake documents—passports, birth certificates and identity cards.
Kitty and her mother were to go to Germany with Polish workers to avoid being caught by the Germans. Her father would meet up with them later. They boarded the train with no difficulty. They arrived at I.G. Farben in Bitterfeld two days later and commenced working at a rubber factory. On 13 March 1943, Kitty and 12 other Jews at the factory, including her mother, were betrayed. The Gestapo took them away, to headquarters in Bitterfeld.
They were each interrogated in turn, and were charged at trial three days later with entering the German Reich illegally, being in the possession of false documents and being Jewish. The punishment was to be an execution, to take place the next day. They were led out into a courtyard and told to face a wall. The order was given to fire. There were gunshots, but all of them missed. It was a mock execution.
Their sentences had been commuted to hard labour, and the Gestapo still wanted to know where they had obtained their false documents. They were transported to various prisons, and then in specialised train carriages with cages, to Auschwitz for further “interrogation”.
[edit] In Auschwitz II (Birkenau)
[edit] Organisation
Kitty Felix arrived in Auschwitz on 2 April 1943, at the age of fifteen, with her mother. On the morning of her arrival, Kitty, her mother, and the group of female Jews were taken to be decontaminated. They left their luggage at the train station, with the intention of collecting it later. This was decided based on the S.S. officer’s false information. There was never any hope of their belongings being returned.
Decontamination consisted of clothes being removed, and all hair being shaven off with a more-often-than-not blunt blade. Then, clothes were provided to all the prisoners – each with a red crucifix on the back, so they were recognised as prisoners. All these measures were used to prevent the spreading of diseases and lice, but these conditions were very prominent among the prisoners, as a result of malnutrition.
The food provided was a tea-like soup that if consumed in excess caused diarrhoea, and has been found now to have been poisoned. Bread was also handed out to the prisoners, but there was not enough food. Kitty had to constantly organise food for survival. The same was true for clothing. Auschwitz was extremely cold, and the winters of 1944 and 1945 were particularly harsh. Any jacket or other garment that was available had to be obtained by whatever means merely to survive in the freezing nights. In Auschwitz, Kitty organised such things by two methods: trading what little she had, and by taking from the dead. Kitty, and her mother, refused to take from the living, because by doing so they felt they were condemning them to death. The dead had no use for anything anymore, and if it was not taken by prisoners, it would be taken by the S.S. for personal use or for the German Army.
[edit] Work
There were various jobs in Auschwitz that either kept the camp running or helped the German war efforts. Kitty Hart, in her 20 months there, maintained a variety of jobs, constantly changing to suit her and her mother’s needs.
Due to the bad conditions, however, Kitty eventually came down with typhus. She was taken to the hospital at the camp, to be treated. Her mother had worked there as a nurse on and off since they arrived, and saved Kitty’s life on various occasions by hiding her during selections. She would surely have been chosen for the gas chambers because of her bad health had it not been for her mother’s initiative.
After Kitty recovered, she managed to get a job in the hospital block too. She helped nurse people back to good health, and hide her friends during selections. However, on one fateful day, two of her friends were discovered after she hid them, and Kitty was forced to throw them onto the collection truck to be taken to the gas chambers. She nearly jumped on after them out of shame at what she had done, but her mother stopped her, again saving her life.
Then, in April 1944, a job was offered—a rare occurrence in Auschwitz, anything being offered—to become part of a night shift at the Effektenkommando, called Kanada Kommando by the prisoners because of Canada’s association with wealth and prosperity. This was where all of the luxuries in Auschwitz came from—the new clothes, everything was rumoured to have come from those who worked in the Kanada Kommando.
Kitty took the job, with encouragement from her mother, thinking that she would be able to smuggle riches back into the camp for the good of all the prisoners. Unfortunately, this was not to be so. The volunteers were marched back to the entrance of Birkenau, where they were to remain for the duration of their work. They were not to return to the main camp, but had to stay and sort through the masses of possessions arriving by train, which belonged to the Jews arriving at the camp. Additionally, the Kommando witnessed all of the trains arriving, and all of the prisoners disembarking and being marched straight into the gas chambers. Then, there was the constant smell of burning flesh as those who were gassed, or those who were still alive, were cremated.
[edit] The death marches
Rumours began, in August 1944, that Auschwitz was to be evacuated. Gassing, however, was set to continue, still in full view of the Kanada Kommando, of which Kitty was still a part, but not for long.
Kitty’s mother was selected as one of the hundred privileged prisoners to be removed from the camp. She requested that her daughter be allowed to leave the Kommando. The commandant, either by compassion or out of respect for the age of Kitty’s mother, obliged. So, in November 1944, Kitty joined the hundred prisoners on the train out of Auschwitz.
The train pulled up at Gross Rosen, a small camp near to the town of Reichenbach. Conditions were better at this camp—there were real toilets and only two to a bunk, but most importantly, no one in the camp had heard of gas chambers. Everything else was the same, but there was no obvious way of organising things like in Auschwitz—size did matter. Every day, the camp occupants would be marched to the nearby town to work in a factory, where social contact was strictly prohibited and monitored diligently; but the factory was warm. Also, a German worker sympathised with the extreme treatment of Jews and set aside a sandwich each day for Kitty, which she shared with her mother.
Four months later, on 18 February 1945, her mother’s birthday, in response to advances by the allied forces, Gross Rosen was evacuated, all 10,000 prisoners, and driven over the Eulengebirge mountain range. The prisoners were forced to hold the guard’s belongings on empty stomachs and tired, weak legs. Anyone who fell behind was shot or clubbed to death. When some people in the group began to fall behind, others would help carry them for short periods. Food rations on the march were irregular, and there was little to go around. But, when the group came upon passing groups of Germans, they would take advantage of their numbers and take as much food as they could manage. By the time they reached the train over the range, about 2,500 people were left, but remarkably all 100 from Auschwitz survived.
They were in the train for days. People died from lack of food and their bodies were thrown out of the train. Finally, after 5 days and nights, the train stopped at Porta Westfalica. Only 200 were left from the original 10,000, 100 were still from Auschwitz. There Kitty, was sent to work in an underground factory. There were constant air-raids, so, when it all got too much, the Porta Westfalica camp was evacuated to the station of Fallersleben. There were only 14 Auschwitz girls left, the others had been gunned down in the forest before departure.
At Fallersleben, there was an airtight bunker, which the Auschwitz girls feared was actually a gas chamber, and thus refused to go in. The S.S. guards, surprisingly, allowed them to remain on ground level. They could easily have escaped, but the conditions at Fallersleben were such that they decided being in a group was in fact safer than being alone. Again, Kitty and the group was transported away as the allies drew nearer. This time to Bergen-Belsen, but it was too crowded, so they were herded into another train by the dogs. They were left there to die, until, by chance, three S.S. guards were passing and unbolted the doors at the sound coming from within – stunned at what they found inside. At this point, the only survivors were begging to be admitted to another concentration camp, anything that could at least hint at survival. So, it was arranged for them to be transferred to Salzwedel.
[edit] Liberation
The newcomers to the Salzwedel concentration camp did not have enough nourishment, only the camp soup. But food was very near. The old prisoners worked in a sugar refinery and stole sugar from there, and through the S.S. kitchen window could be seen loaves of bread and various tinned foods.
In the second week of April, 1945, the S.S. guards disappeared from the camp. There were no more rations. On Friday the thirteenth of the same month, a bomb exploded in the camp. That same night, freed-French prisoners told them that mines were laid out around the camp, intending to blow everyone up.
The next day, Salzwedel was liberated by the American army. Kitty immediately gained entry into the S.S. food stores and ate. Then, Kitty went off, with a small group of five, into the nearby village of Salzwedel and began looting. They filled a bathtub with food from the houses, put on new outfits, and went back to camp.
Three days were spent in the town, remembering the experience of how life used to be, until laws were enacted to end the violence. In a final act of defiance, the prisoners bore witness to the burning of the camp.
[edit] Post-liberation
After liberation, Kitty and her mother both helped with translation of various documents for the British. These were mostly concerned with trials of S.S. men and liberated Poles. Then, the two moved to help with the Quaker Relief Team, outside Brunswick—helping bring families back together.
Kitty and her mother tried to locate their family members very soon after they were liberated. Kitty hiked across various sectors. They discovered they were the only two left. Kitty’s father had been discovered by the Gestapo and shot through the head. Robert, her brother, was killed by a sniper’s bullet in battle. Her grandmother was taken to Belzec concentration camp and selected for the gas chambers. The large family from Bielsko was reduced to two survivors.
[edit] After the war
[edit] Moving on
In 1946, Kitty emigrated with her mother, to England, where her uncle had already taken up residence in the years prior to World War II. Her uncle, when meeting them at Dover to welcome them to the country and to take them to his home, said:
“‘Before we go off to Birmingham there’s one thing I must make quite clear. On no account are you to talk about any of the things that have happened to you. Not in my house. I don’t want my girls upset. And I don’t want to know.’” (Hart. 1981. Return to Auschwitz. pp11-12).
This, unfortunately, was true of many, almost all, people in England at the time. Kitty Hart, like other survivors, realised that talking about her experiences during the war was considered rude—those not involved in war efforts seemed uninterested.
This inspired Kitty Hart’s interest in educating people about the Holocaust. Primarily, she has done this by telling her story, her life, to the public. This began with her first novel I Am Alive (1961), which was a fairly short account of her life in Auschwitz. Then, in 1978, she persuaded Yorkshire Television to make a documentary on her return to Auschwitz. The production pioneered the way for other stories in its genre. The publication inspired her second novel, titled Return To Auschwitz, which was published in 1981.
Kitty Hart is now involved in various organisations which promote knowledge of the Holocaust out of fear that the event, and all the individual people who were victims of it, will merely pass into history. As such, she is involved in the Holocaust Day Memorial and supports the work of the Aegis Trust—an organisation working against genocide.
[edit] A normal life
Apart from Kitty Hart-Moxon’s work for Holocaust survivors and victims, after the war she found a job, a husband and started a family. She moved out of her uncle’s home at 19, and began a nurse training course at the same hospital her aunt had worked. She felt she wasn’t suited to the job, so she quit, and decided to study radiology at the Birmingham Royal Orthopaedic Hospital. With no complete schooling, her entrance to the hospital relied on the utilisation of a loophole which admitted some trained nurses to such courses. Also, she approached distinguished doctor, Dr Brailsford, to help her in her plight. She was allowed entry to the school through Dr Brailford’s generosity.
In 1949, she married Rudi Hart, an upholsterer. He understood to some degree what she had been through, having lost family members in the Holocaust, but he had managed to escape to England before it caught him. When they were married, Kitty was still going through her training and the upholstery trade was in a recession of sorts in the area. Money was scarce, and Kitty had to support her mother, by then suffering from high blood pressure. Dr Brailsford helped again. He gave Kitty some money to help her and her husband get by. She then found herself a job in a private radiology firm.
In 1953, her first son, David, was born, and soon thereafter, her second son, Peter. Kitty and her mother were paid compensation for their wartime experiences by the Germans in the late 1950s. She then helped her husband set up his own upholstery business. As her sons were going through school, she followed their courses and bought extra copies of their textbooks so she could make up for the years she missed during the war. Her mother died in 1974, leaving Kitty the last Holocaust survivor in the family.
In the 2003 Birthday honors, an Order of the British Empire was conferred on Mrs Hart-Moxon for services relating to Holocaust education.
Kitty Hart-Moxon now lives in Harpenden, England.
[edit] See also
[edit] Sources
Hart, Kitty. (1981.) Return to Auschwitz: The remarkable story of a girl who survived the Holocaust. London: Sidgwick & Jackson.
