Eva Hava Stern Pepish

MAIL: mailto: ofrili30@walla.com
Survivor: Code: RelatioNet EV ST 27 BE CZ
Family Name: Pepish
Previous Family Name: Stern
First Name: Eva, Hava

Date of birth: 3.9.1927

Country of birth: The Czech Republic

City of Birth: Berehove, Beregsas

Father Name:Israel,  Ignaz
Mother Name: July, Yehudit


Brother Name: Andor, Andrei

Brother Name: Mickey



The Interview with Hava

I was born in the Carpathian Mountains in the Czech Republic. When I grew up, the republic had changed to the Hungarian Republic. I lived in Berehove, Berexas.  I don’t remember the name of my school, but I do remember my school experience. We had a really fat teacher and we all hated her, especially the boys. One rainy day, she looked out the window while one of the boys spilled ink on her from his fountain pen. She didn’t know it was ink, so she spread it all over her face and we all laughed. She was really angry and called the principle, but we never told who did it. I didn’t like studying, but I had a good memory that helped me keep on average grades. 

My family wasn’t very religious, we were traditional. My grandmother, Hani Klein, who lived across the street, wore a wig. My father went to synagogue every morning, and we ate kosher food. On Saturdays (Sabbaths), we couldn’t turn on lights or use electricity so there were gentile people who came and turned on the necessary tools for us. The whole family celebrated all the Jewish holidays and the atmosphere was very warm. I remember how we set the table at home. My part was to put the table cloth. Everyone was prepared for the coming of father from the synagogue. My mother had two sisters and a brother. Every Saturday my mother made a cholent and if it was good, I was sent to give some of it to her sisters and brothers. Most of our family lived in the same town. I had one aunt that lived out of town, in Ushhorot. Every summer my grandmother and I went to this aunt. She had four boys.

Since she didn’t have any girls, I was given special treatment. Our house was full of greenery. When I was twenty years old I went to a youth movement "Hanoar Haoved",  the youth Zionist movement. It was a Jewish group. All my aunts died during the war. In 1944 we were taken by the Hungarians to a Ghetto in Berehove to work in a factory for building bricks. A month later, the Germans started taking people out of the ghetto. We didn’t know what was going on and my mother told me that we were going to work. My brothers weren’t in the Ghetto, only my parents, my young sister, and I. My grandmother passed away a week before we were taken to the ghetto. My two brothers were taken to a labor camp. My older brother, Andor (Andrei), was 28 years old and he was in Budapest. He probably ran out of the labor camp and hid from the Germans. My young brother, Miki, was in a labor camp in Dachau. I  and my young sister, Rebecca stayed with our parents. I was 14-15 years old when the war started. We were taken to a train station and the ride was very long.  That night, my father cried so much because we were closed in a place with no air and lots of people. Then we got to Auschwitz and we didn’t understand anything. On Auschwitz's gate there was a sign that said: "work makes the person free" in German. When we came out of the train, people with striped suits took everything from us. Then, we stood in a line and the S.S made a selection. They told me to go right and my father, mother and sister were told to go left. We didn’t know what right or left meant but I was alone and the rest of my family was on the other side, so when the soldier turned around, I ran out to my mother. I thought the soldier didn’t see me, but he did. He caught me, took his gun and started hitting me with it, while shouting "right right!" . The only thing my mother could do was to scream at me: "Take care of yourself, Eva!", and that was the last thing I heard from her. After that, the left side turned out to represent the people who were meant to go to the crematorium. I had been taken to Zeilager, Birkenau. There, I was only with girls and we slept in two level beds. My friend, who slept a bed above me, told me that every night I was stretching my arm out of the bed and crying: "please, just one peace of bread". In the camp we only got one piece of bread and one plate of soup full of worms. Sometimes we switched our bread for a piece of soap, because we had nothing to shower with.

There were no sanitary conditions and some girls had diarrhea. There wasn't any bathroom, only a hole to do your needs in. We wore only a dress with no underwear. I had a number on my dress: 12977. When we got to do our needs, the Ukrainians stood above us and whipped us with a plastic whip. Even if we struggled to do our needs faster, they hit us and didn't let us finish. The soap that we got from switching our bread turned out to be made of people's fats. Margo, my close friend, was by my side from the beginning of the war. Every morning at 5 o'clock we woke up and had to stand in lines so that the S.S soldiers would come, count us. When they saw something suspicious, if someone felt bad, they got them out, probably to get killed. In that place, there was one woman who was a mother and she was very lucky. We took care of her and we didn't let the S.S take her. Half a year later, we were taken out of Auschwitz to another labor camp. The women who had been there for three years became insensitive and cruel. They told us: "You see that chimney? This is where your parents are being burned!". This is how they accepted us. We didn't want to believe them.

I had a friend named Fridma Lily. She and some girls were taken  to Sweden and they were all saved, but I have not seen her since. She lived in Berehove too; she had two sisters, one named Ilana. We were taken to some place near Jezenkirchen. There was a big factory that was exploded and we were taken to clean it. We had a cabin and the Germans had a bunker. We worked there with rocks and we met a Vermacht guard. He was punished and dissatisfied with his job. So he used to give us  pieces of bread . The war was getting closer to us and we were taken on foot to Turingia, somewhere near Buchunveld, to work in big weapon factory. There was a long assembly line with explosive materials. My job was to weigh it, and it passed very fast. If I had been wrong in weighing, I would have got killed. Some people could not take the pressure and they had been killed. A few months later, we heard alarms and bombs. Aircrafts started flying in the air and we started running. I ran with my friend Margo and I fell into a hole, and I yelled my grandmother's nickname who I loved very much "Babi". I believed that this is what helped me survive. When the alarm shut off, I got out of the hole and saw my friend laying outside it, injured from a shard. In the field, where I ran, a hundred girls got killed and the S.S gave us an order to pick up all the bodies into a pile. Then they burned the pile in front of our eyes. Later the Germans took us to the Death Marches. We walked from city to city in freezing weather. Whoever could not walk got shot. Our heads were shaved, we wore thin dresses and it was very hard for us to keep walking. During the nights of the Death Marches, the Germans stopped and slept in a bunker and we slept in a dairy barn. One morning we woke up early and saw tanks, we heard noise; we saw the clothes of the S.S soldiers thrown on the floor. That was somewhere unknown, in the middle of the Death Marches, and then we were told that the war was over (1945). I guess this place was close to Prague, because this was where the Russians took us. We were the first Jews to get to Prague. I was too thin and couldn't walk, so two nuns held me and took care of me.

After Prague, I moved to America to my cousin's house, and then to Budapest, to my aunts. We sailed on the Exodus to Haifa. The Israeli- British men caught us on our way and there was a fight between them and the American Jewish Volunteers who were with us. After the fight, we sailed for a few months and then we were taken back to Germany. A few months later, people from the Israeli Protection Organization came to Germany and looked for Volunteers for the Israeli Protection Organization. I volunteered. All the volunteers were taken to France, somewhere near Mercy, where we got trained and in the end of 1948 I got to Israel with "Alia B" from France on Providans ship. My name was Eva but in the harbor they told me it's not Hebrew and they changed it to Hava.  

              

In Israel, I met Haim Pepish and we married in 1951 in Kfar Malal. We lived in Kfar Malal. After my husband passed away, I moved to "Bait Ba'Kfar", where I have been living  for 16 years. I have 3 girls: Yehudit, named after my mother, Ophira and Ricky,  named after my sister Rebecca. In addition, I have 10 grandchildren, and 10 great grandchildren. My house is full of greenery, just like my house in Berehove.  
        

Berehove

Berehove is a city located in zakarpattia oblast, in the western Ukraine, near the border with Hungary.

Serving as the administrative center of the Berehove raion, the city itself is also designated as a separate raion within the oblast. It was the capital of the kingdom of Hungary's Bereg County up until 1919 and between 1938-1944.

The Jewish community In Berehove

The Jewish community In Berehove became into it's top in 1867 with the beginning of the Equality rights law for the Jews. Since then until world war two Jews formed the backbone of commerce and economic life of the city 

In Berehove there were Jewish educational institutions and schools. Almost all the Zionist youth movements were in borohove.

The Holocaust 

 The fate of the Jews in Borohove was the same as that of the other citizens in Hungary in general and in particular Zkrftih. In 1938, after an agreement of Vienna, the city passed from the rule of the Czechoslovak Republic to the Hungary government. In 1941hundreds of local residents who could not bring proof that they are citizens of Hungary were deported to Poland.
In 1942 almost all the Jews men were recruited for forced labor in the Hungarian army, who fought alongside the Germans on the Eastern Front. Most of the recruits died during their torture, cold and hungry. In March 1944 German troops occupied Hungary. The rest of the congregation left, women, elderly and children, together with Jews in the area, were driven to the brick factory near the train station. In May 1944, 12,000 Jews were taken in three transports to Auschwitz concentration camp, where most of them were perished. About a thousand people of the town survived the Holocaust.

Hava with her husband

Hava after the war