Aiken man tells his story of struggle

Found on April 15, 1945, weighing 75 pounds and lying among a pile of deceased at Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, Friedel (Fred) Ransenberg survived nearly four years of persecution.

The day 16-year-old Ransenberg arrived at Auschwitz, the prisoners were divided into two groups: Men 18 and older to the right; women, children, elderly and the sick to the left. The group to the left, including his younger brother and aunt, were gassed. Only Auschwitz concentration camp prisoners selected for work received serial number tattoos; prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos. After convincing the guards he was 18, Ransenberg received a tattooed serial number: 105012.

"I just followed my cousin. Not many people got out of there. I got out because I was smart, and I wanted to live. I know a lot of people died because they gave up. I keep telling my wife I am going to be 100 years old," said Ransenberg, who celebrated his 84th birthday on March 20. "I've seen so much in my life you wouldn't believe it."

Childhood

Born in Wenneman, Germany, Ransenberg was the second oldest of six children. His father, Jakob Ransenberg, an Iron Cross recipient and decorated sergeant in the German Army during World War I, supported his family as a butcher. Before the drastic rise of anti-Semitism, Ransenberg and his brothers played soccer on the local team alongside many Catholic Germans. Summers were spent with his grandmother, who lived eight miles away.

He and his siblings (four brothers and one sister) attended the local school until they were kicked out in 1938 for being Jewish. Ransenberg recalls a distinct change in education in the late 1930s when all of the teachers were replaced, and topics became centralized around Hitler.

During this time, lifelong family friends stopped talking to the Ransenberg family. A few of the boys' friends joined the SS or Hitler Youth. Ransenberg remembers trying to hide the Star of David he was required to wear in public by putting his arm over it. He recalls Jewish people weren't allowed to have a radio and his father's business was closed by the Nazis. His family survived on rations that only provided basic essentials.

"No meat, no sugar or eggs for the Jewish people," said Ransenberg. "We had neighbors who were good people who would stop by early in the morning and leave a basket on our door and bring us food because we didn't have enough."

On the run

"On the Crystal Night where the Nazis smashed all the windows, burned all the religious books, the Gestapo arrested all the men and beat them up. They didn't touch us because we were poor people, but they did it to my uncles, aunts and grandmother. They arrested my cousins and sent them to concentration camps. My father was considered a war hero by most people so they didn't touch us," said Ransenberg.

His older brother was sent away on the Kindertransport, a series of rescue efforts which brought thousands of refugee Jewish children to Great Britain from Nazi Germany between 1938 and 1940; eventually, he was sent to the United States.

After closing the butcher shop, the only job permitted for Ransenberg's father was work on the railroad. One of Ransenberg's younger brothers joined his father working on the railroad. One night on his walk home from clearing snow off the tracks, several young girls threw snowballs at Ransenberg's brother, and he threw one back. One of the girl's fathers was Gestapo, and Ransenberg's brother was sent away.

Ransenberg and his father learned of his brother's fate through a radio announcement. He was declared a dangerous war criminal and hanged at the age of 14 by SS Chief Heinrich Himmler. The news of the hanging was kept from Ransenberg's mother, Mathilde Ransenberg; however, she discovered the news posted in the middle of town. Often photos and newspaper stories villainizing the Jewish were posted at central locations. Upon discovering the death of her son, she suffered a heart attack and died. She was buried in the local Catholic cemetery as the Jewish cemeteries had been destroyed.

After being forced to leave school, watching his father's business shut down and discovering the fate of his brother, Ransenberg learned he was marked by the Nazis.

He left home and went to work at a local cattle farm where he labored in the fields to support his family. He eventually worked in the farm's bakery. The owner advised Ransenberg that several Nazis were looking for him and helped him hide out in the farm's root cellar, bringing him food during the day. Under the cover of darkness, he walked three miles to deliver food to his father, brothers and sister.

"There were a few bad Nazis in town who wanted to get rid of me," he said.

In 1942, after being on the run, Ransenberg and one of his younger brothers decided to join their aunt and cousins a few miles away after their father, grandmother, sister and youngest brother were taken to Therienstadt concentration camp, a camp considered to be for the privileged. Despite his father's distinction as a war hero, they were all gassed after several years in the camp.

Life in the camps

Just before being sent to Auschwitz, Ransenberg worked in a factory making gas masks alongside Russian prisoners. In 1943 he and the other Jewish families in town were relocated. They were sent to Dortmund, where 6,000 people were placed inside barracks awaiting transport. They spent one week inside the barracks before being loaded into cattle cars and sent to Auschwitz II (Birkenau extermination camp) and Auschwitz III (Monowitz labor camp for the Buna-Werke factory).

"We spent six or seven days in the cattle car with no facilities to go to the bathroom. It was stinking, smelling and no food except what we brought," said Ransenberg. "No one knew where we were going, just that we were going east. When the doors finally opened, there was a lot of yelling."

At this time, the women, children, elderly and sickly were separated from the men. "I went to the right because I knew I could do as much work as my cousins; I was strong," said Ransenberg. "I found out later all the other people, including my brother and aunt, were gassed."

He and the other men were loaded onto trucks and driven an hour away to the barracks at the work camp. They were given striped uniforms and a cold shower and were shaved and tattooed. Bunks made of boards were assigned, first with one person per bunk and eventually two to three per bunk.

The men worked 12 hours a day loading freight cars with cement, digging trenches and other labor intensive jobs. They were fed a bowl of soup at lunch time and a piece of bread at night.

"A Communist told me, 'Friedel, do not work with your hands, work with your eyes. Use your brain. Work when they are watching you.' I took his advice," said Ransenberg.

He recalls being beaten, watching daily hangings, witnessing people who had given up throwing themselves against the electric fence, seeing the smoke from Birkenau and many other atrocities.

"You weren't human; you did anything just to survive," said Ransenberg. "I just didn't look for tomorrow, just to stay alive for today. I always ate my rations; I didn't save them. People would kill for a piece of bread."

Once people went to the sick bay, they never returned. Although he was often sick, Ransenberg never went to the sick bay. Another trick he learned was to clean himself in the snow to prevent lice and fleas since once you had the vermin you also disappeared.

"I wanted to live. You need a lot of willpower to stay alive; I wasn't thinking of anything but staying alive," said Ransenberg. "The work camps were meant to work you to death. I was a very determined person. I was not afraid for nothing; I never was and I'm still not. There was never a time I thought I wouldn't make it."

Liberation

A few days before his departure from Auschwitz, Ransenberg remembers a raid led by American planes.

"It was the first thing we knew about how the war was going. A couple of days later everyone left," he said.

They walked from the work camp to the main camp at Auschwitz, which was deserted. Next, the entire camp walked at least seven days without food or water through deep snow. He recalls people falling to the side as they walked.

"I ate whatever I could get my hands on and used the snow for water," said Ransenberg. "I ate birch tree bark, grass, anything I could put in my mouth."

After walking for a week, the approximately 150 remaining men were loaded into open freight cars for another week. The only stopping along the journey was to throw the dead bodies over the side. Ransenberg said when they unloaded the freight car at Bergen-Belsen, only seven of the 150 men were alive.

The camp was full, and the prisoners slept outside without food or water. Ransenberg became very ill at this time and was bleeding internally; he weighed 75 pounds and was nothing more than a skeleton. On April 15, 1945, Bergen-Belsen was liberated.

Going home

The same day he was found barely alive, Ransenberg and another survivor left on foot for Wenneman.

"I wasn't sticking around," he said.

They walked to the nearest town where they received food and clothing and sought shelter. They asked several English soldiers for help but were treated poorly. Eventually a group of Russian soldiers commandeered bicycles from several German citizens and gave them to Ransenberg and his friend. It took more than 10 days to return home. When Ransenberg arrived at his boyhood home, it was occupied by a Nazi family.

"Our house was never sold, so when I got home and found Nazis living there, I was mad and kicked them out," said Ransenberg.

Ransenberg, then 20, lived for one year in the family's home. During that time, he discovered the only living member of his immediate family was his brother in the United States. At the same time, he became ill.

"I almost died," said Ransenberg. "The food I ate in the concentration camps poisoned my brain."

After spending a year recovering in his hometown, Ransenberg joined other survivors at Bergen-Belsen in a displaced persons camp established by the Allied Forces. He frequently drove back and forth between the camp and his hometown of Wenneman, bringing food and supplies back to the camp.

Departing Europe

He left Germany on Feb. 28, 1948. He and several others went to Tel-Aviv, Israel, where he joined the Israeli Army. He spent four years in Israel and was there when it became a country. In 1953, Ransenberg decided to join his brother in the United States.

"I only had $10 and the clothes on my back when I came to the U.S. That was all I was allowed to take out of Israel," said Ransenberg. "I spoke no English. I learned it myself."

He went to work on a dairy farm making $38 a week. After three years he purchased his first home and started raising chickens. Years later he opened and operated a construction and excavating business. Ransenberg lived in Massachusetts until 12 years ago when he and his wife Beverly moved to Aiken.

While in Massachusetts, he became active in show horses, winning numerous awards and finding a life partner who shared the common interest. The pair decided Aiken offered everything they dreamed of and purchased a farm on which to spend their retired years.

"I worked like hell, but I have had an enjoyable life," said Ransenberg. "We moved here for our last hoorah. This is our little piece of heaven."

Some of the information gathered for this story was obtained from a videotaped interview provided by Friedel Ransenberg and conducted by Beth Cohen for "Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation."

Contact Rachel Johnson at rjohnson@aikenstandard.com.