Anna Bergman, 87, was raised in Prague, Czechoslovakia, before World War Two and, like millions of other Jews, was sent first to a ghetto and then to Auschwitz. She survived and gave birth to her daughter Eva at a different concentration camp.
Many members of her family including her husband, parents and sister died at Auschwitz.
Mrs Bergman has lived in Cardiff for more than 50 years.
Before October 1944, when she was sent to Auschwitz, Anna Bergman lived in a Jewish ghetto near Prague where she had been moved from her home in 1941.  |  There were very high chimneys spouting fire and smoke and a smell which I had never smelled before  |
Several members of her family, including her parents and sister, had been transported to Auschwitz before she was selected to make the journey to Poland.
In the months before she was sent to Auschwitz, Mrs Bergman had given birth to a baby, which later died, but was in the early stages of a second pregnancy.
She said "We didn't have a clue where they went, but the word Auschwitz started getting known, but what was going on there - no idea.
'Saved my life'
"Meanwhile, I became pregnant. My little boy was born in February 1944, but he got pneumonia and died when he was two months old.
"It saved my life and my daughter's life because if I had arrived in Auschwitz with a baby in my arms, there was only one way to go."
Mrs Bergman's husband was sent to Auschwitz several days before her - she never saw him again.
She arrived at the camp not knowing it was the scene of the mass executions of hundreds of thousands of new arrivals like herself.
 Anna Bergman and her husband were sent to Auschwitz separately |
"I was sent there in October 1944 - I was only two months pregnant, so it didn't show," she said.
"We arrived at the place...There was an awful noise of shouting and screaming.
"There were very high chimneys spouting fire and smoke and a smell which I had never smelled before - I couldn't possibly guess what it could be.
"We were frightened out of our wits and not knowing what of.
"They took us to barracks where we were supposed to stay.
"A friend who came with her parents said 'where are my parents now?' and the people who were already in the barracks started screaming 'they are already in the chimney'.
"We thought those people were mad and they thought we were mad but we soon started believing them.
 Thousands of Jews were transported to Auschwitz |
"The food was dirty water with peelings of potatoes.
"The roll calls were just awful at four in the morning in the rain, we were being counted and counted.
"By then my pregnancy didn't show, which was lucky because I would have ended on the other side.
"I fainted but my friends propped me up and I got through that.
"We went through them selecting people five times a day."
Mrs Bergman stayed at Auschwitz for 10 days, before being moved to Germany as forced labour and then to Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria.
She said: "We stuck it out and we were sent to a different place - we didn't know where.
"I started being really afraid because it was the unknown and anything unknown in Auschwitz was dangerous.
"We went to a hut and I thought 'this is it' but it wasn't.
"They gave us clothes and food and sent to a siding where the train was waiting.
"We were sent away from Auschwitz and we were so happy because we thought, rightly, that nothing could be worse - we knew that nothing could be worse."
As she arrived at Mauthausen, Mrs Bergman gave birth to her daughter Eva, days before the camp was liberated by the Americans.
One-Minute World News 
News services
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
