AI Website CreatorWe commemorate the 703 women who were forced to perform slave labor for the German arms industry in Penig from January 1945 to April 1945 under inhumane conditions.
Here you will find numerous audio and video recordings with interviews with former female prisoners and their descendants, recorded readings of testimonies by former prisoners, film footage of the liberation of the camp, and much more.
In addition to the original language, some of the videos also include subtitles in German and/or English.
Anyone interested in supporting us with translation into one of the three languages is welcome to contact us by email at gesichtzeigen@gmx.de
To the YouTube channel
We are restoring the faces and individuality of these former forced labourers. In doing so, we are countering the Nazis’ attempt to reduce these women to nameless, dehumanised slaves — mere numbers.
We thank the descendants of these women, who generously provided us with photographs of their mothers or grandmothers.
To the video
The Penig subcamp gained grim notoriety when, during the trial of the major German war criminals of the Second World War, the one-hour film entitled Nazi Concentration Camps was screened in the Nuremberg Palace of Justice on 29 November 1945. The courtroom was darkened and spotlights were directed at the dock so that the emotions of the 24 defendants could be observed. What followed was an hour of footage from twelve sites of Nazi crimes described as “concentration camps”. The rescue of the women from the Penig concentration camp subcamp appears as the second “concentration camp”, from about the fifth minute onwards, showing US doctors, soldiers and medical orderlies caring for the sick and utterly exhausted women and taking them to a military hospital near Altenburg.
To the video
In addition to the commented short version of the film showing the discovery of the Penig subcamp, which was presented as evidence during the Nuremberg trial on 29 November 1945, there is also an uncommented, silent recording which, at just over six minutes, is roughly twice as long.
Zum Video
The approximately 70 women who had been left behind in the Penig concentration camp subcamp were discovered on 15 April 1945 by soldiers of the 6th Armored Division of the Third US Army and were cared for by the 76th Medical Battalion.
Dorothy Pecora, then a nurse in the United States Army Nurse Corps, described the scene that confronted the US soldiers when they discovered the camp site as follows:
“One morning, two officers came to our unit. We did not know them. They said they needed two nurses to accompany them because, some distance away, they had found some sick people who needed help. So I took another nurse, and we got into the jeep. Suddenly, I saw barbed wire in the most beautiful farming countryside imaginable. We drove into the site and opened the doors of the barracks. What I saw, I will never be able to forget. A beautiful young girl was sitting there in great pain. She had drawn up her legs and was rocking backwards and forwards the whole time. She no longer had any hair and had a rag wrapped round her head. The army people — they knew all about it, but no one had told us, or me, anything about these dreadful atrocities. One of the doctors feared that they all had tuberculosis.”
To the video
Veronika Katz was the daughter of Regina and Mayer Katz and was born in Budapest on 9 November 1926. When the Penig concentration camp subcamp was dissolved, she was sent on the death march on 13 April 1945. She was liberated by Allied forces in Johanngeorgenstadt and returned to Budapest, where she found her mother Regina and her brother Miklós. Her father had died in Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
She married Herman Fülöp, studied, and became a microbiologist and geneticist. Following the Hungarian Uprising in 1956, she too emigrated with her husband, settling in London. There, she worked at Brunel University. In Great Britain, the couple adopted the family name Phillips.
In 1976, they eventually moved to Johannesburg, South Africa, where Veronika worked for twenty years as a lecturer in microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. She died at a great age on 24 February 2021 in Johannesburg.
Her life was portrayed in 2018 in the documentary film "The Secret Survivor" by Johnathan Andrews.
To the video
On 22 September 2017, Holocaust survivor Edith Vidos and Army nurse Dorothy Pecora spoke at the US Army Heritage and Education Center about their experiences as witnesses to the Holocaust.
Source: Local 21 CBS News, WHP Harrisburg
To the video
George Szirtes (born 29 November 1948 in Budapest) is a Hungarian-British poet, writer and translator.
George Szirtes’s mother, Magda Nussbächer, was deported from Hungary as a Jew in 1944 and survived imprisonment in Ravensbrück concentration camp and forced labour in the Penig concentration camp subcamp. His family fled to Great Britain in 1956 after the suppression of the Hungarian Uprising. Szirtes studied in London and Leeds.
Szirtes writes poetry in English, which has been published in journals since 1973. His first poetry collection, The Slant Door, appeared in 1979 and received the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize in 1980. For his poetry, he received, among other distinctions, the Cholmondeley Award in 1984 and the T. S. Eliot Prize in 2004. He also wrote children’s books.
Szirtes translates Hungarian literature into English, including works by authors such as Imre Madách, Dezső Kosztolányi, Gyula Krúdy, Ágnes Nemes Nagy, Sándor Márai, Ferenc Karinthy and Magda Szabó. In 2013, he received the American Best Translated Book Award for his translation of László Krasznahorkai’s novel "Satantango"; in 2015, Krasznahorkai was awarded the Man Booker International Prize, and his translators Ottilie Mulzet and George Szirtes were honoured at the same time with an award for their translations of Krasznahorkai’s works. In 2020, Szirtes was awarded the Biography Award of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for "The Photographer at Sixteen: The Death and Life of a Fighter" — the biography of his mother.
Szirtes is the editor of several poetry anthologies, an honorary doctor of the University of East Anglia, and an honorary fellow at Goldsmiths, University of London. In addition, he serves on the distinguished panel responsible for awarding the Hawthornden Prize, the oldest literary prize in Great Britain. Together with his wife, Clarissa Upchurch, he edited the journal "Starwheel Press".
To the video
Edit Ernst (Kovach), born in 1923 in Budapest, Hungary, on her experiences in Budapest, in the “Yellow Star house”, and in Ravensbrück, Penig, Chemnitz and Mittelbach.
Daughter of a non-Jewish mother and a Jewish father; her grandfather owns a factory and menswear shops; her father is a retired captain in the Hungarian Army; she is abandoned by her mother and grows up in her grandfather’s household; attends private schools; trains in cosmetology.
German occupation, March 1944; receives a certificate of indispensability for a tile factory; the family moves into a marked house; her aunt is deported to Auschwitz; life in the Budapest ghetto; attempted rescue with the help of her mother, who lives in Germany; deportation to Ravensbrück, December 1944; everyday camp life, including contracting typhus; transfer to Penig; everyday camp life, including work in the SS kitchen; distribution of extra food in the barracks; she gives cosmetic treatments to SS women and receives clothing in return; death march, April 1945; escape to Chemnitz; help from a German woman; liberation by the US Army in Mittelbach.
Return to Budapest; news of her father’s death in Bergen-Belsen; marriage and aliyah to Israel, 1949.
Source: Item Id: 6211383, Language: Hebrew, Record Group: O.3 - Testimonies Department of the Yad Vashem Archives, Date of Creation: 5 December 2006
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
Erzsébet Farkas (Nahmani), born in 1926 in Nyirbeltek, Hungary, on her experiences in Nyirbeltek and in the camps of Ravensbrück, Penig and Chemnitz.
Life before the war; traditional family; learns sewing.
German occupation, March 1944; interruption of her training and work; imposition of anti-Semitic restrictions, including travel restrictions; wears a yellow star; life in a “Yellow Star house”; deportation to forced labour in a weaving mill; work making uniforms for the German Army; deportation to Ravensbrück, December 1944; everyday camp life; work levelling ground for construction; selection while naked; transfer to Penig; everyday camp life; forced labour in a factory producing aircraft parts; approach of the front line; transfer on a march; escape; capture by Wehrmacht soldiers; Allied air raids on the area; approach of the Red Army; further march to Chemnitz; life in Chemnitz; finds a hiding place during a deportation; liberation by the Red Army and the US Army.
Return to Budapest; membership in the Dror Habonim movement; move to Ansbach; illegal attempt at aliyah to Eretz Israel, July 1946; internment in Cyprus; aliyah to Eretz Israel, December 1946; life in the Atlit camp, January 1947.
Source: Item Id: 7290935, Language: Hebrew, Record Group: O.3 - Testimonies Department of the Yad Vashem Archives, Date of Creation: 23 June 2008
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
Interview, part 3
Katalin Somogyi (Reisfeld), born in 1925 in Budapest, Hungary, on her experiences in Budapest, Austria, Ravensbrück and Penig.
From a wealthy Neolog Jewish family; attends a Jewish school.
German occupation, 19 March 1944; closure of the family business; work in a Hungarian factory producing work clothing for the German Army; relocation to a “Yellow Star house”; deportation of her father to a labour camp; her father escapes and returns home; deportation on foot to Austria; transport back to Budapest, November 1944; attempt at conversion with the help of a Catholic priest; deportation to Ravensbrück by train; everyday camp life; transfer to Penig; everyday camp life, including work in a factory producing aircraft parts; retreat of the German Army, April 1945; liberation by the US Army.
Stay in hospital in a sanatorium; return to Budapest; marriage; emigration to Colombia; aliyah to Israel, 1962.
Source: Item Id: 6378462, Signature: 12923, Language: Hebrew, Record Group: O.3 - Testimonies Department of the Yad Vashem Archives, Date of Creation: 29 January 2007
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
The USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah). It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 50244, Language: Hungarian, Date: 13 July 1999, Video length: 02:12:18 h, Place of interview: Budapest, Hungary, Interviewer: Judit Bürg
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
Interview, part 3
Interview, part 4
Interview, part 5
The USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah). It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 16751, Language: Hungarian, Date: 24 June 1996, Video length: 2:20:49 h, Place of interview: Bellevue Hill, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, Interviewer: Susie Phillips
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
Interview, part 3
Interview, part 4
Interview, part 5
The USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah). It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 34877, Language: English, Date: 10 November 1997, Video length: 2:25:18 h, Place of interview: Acton, Massachusetts, USA, Interviewer: Mark David
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
Interview, part 3
Interview, part 4
Interview, part 5
The USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education, formerly Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, is a nonprofit organization dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust (which in Hebrew is called the Shoah). It was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994, one year after completing his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. In January 2006, the foundation partnered with and relocated to the University of Southern California (USC) and was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education. In March 2019, the institute opened their new global headquarters on USC's campus.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 10128, Language: English, Date: 15 December 1995, Video length: 2:02:00 h, Place of interview: Skokie, Illinois, USA, Interviewer: Judy M. Shiffman
Interview, part 1
Interview, part 2
The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was founded by director Steven Spielberg in 1994 after the release of his critically-acclaimed film Schindler's List the previous year. Spielberg's goal was to collect 50,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors while meeting the standards of rigorous scholarship. The foundation consulted with Holocaust scholars and oral histories in order to ground its work in historical scholarship.
The Shoah Foundation followed the work of the Fortunoff Archive, founded in 1979 partly in response to the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust. In 2006, the foundation, moved from its home in a set of trailers at Universal Studios to the libraries of the University of Southern California. It was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education.
In 2014, the Shoah Foundation established the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research to expand its documentation efforts to other genocides, such as the Rwandan genocide, Armenian genocide, and Cambodian genocide.
By 2016, the foundation's archive included nearly 52,000 recordings and was the largest collection of audiovisual testimonies of any kind.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 17066, Language: Hungarian, Date: 8 July 1996, Video length: 01:53:05 h, Place of interview: Elizabeth, New Jersey, USA, Interviewer: Kathy Katona
Short interview excerpt
The Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was founded by director Steven Spielberg in 1994 after the release of his critically-acclaimed film Schindler's List the previous year. Spielberg's goal was to collect 50,000 testimonies of Holocaust survivors while meeting the standards of rigorous scholarship. The foundation consulted with Holocaust scholars and oral histories in order to ground its work in historical scholarship.
The Shoah Foundation followed the work of the Fortunoff Archive, founded in 1979 partly in response to the 1978 television miniseries Holocaust. In 2006, the foundation, moved from its home in a set of trailers at Universal Studios to the libraries of the University of Southern California. It was renamed the USC Shoah Foundation - The Institute for Visual History and Education.
In 2014, the Shoah Foundation established the USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research to expand its documentation efforts to other genocides, such as the Rwandan genocide, Armenian genocide, and Cambodian genocide.
By 2016, the foundation's archive included nearly 52,000 recordings and was the largest collection of audiovisual testimonies of any kind.
Source: USC Shoah Foundation, Interview Code: 51615, Language: Hungarian, Date: 27 March 2001, Video length: 01:56:42 h, Place of interview: Budapest, Ungarn, Interviewer: Sara Köszeg
Short interview excerpt
Son of Adrienne Pajor (her name at the time in the Penig subcamp)
To the video
Daughter of Adrienne Pajor (her name at the time in the Penig subcamp)
To the video
Son of Nóra Stark (her name at the time in the Penig subcamp)
To the video
Son of Ibolya Spíró (her name at the time in the Penig subcamp)
To The video
Son of Ilona Schwarcz (her name at the time in the Penig subcamp)
To the video
AI Website Creator