Fritzie Weiss Fritzshall (1929?–2021) was born in the village of Kluĉárky, Czechoslovakia (today Kliucharky, Ukraine). In 1938, when Fritzie was still a child, Hungary annexed part of Czechoslovakia, including Fritzie's village. The Jewish community was subjected to Hungary's antisemitic policies and laws, but remained relatively safe until March 1944. That month, Nazi Germany invaded Hungary. German and Hungarian authorities quickly isolated, ghettoized, and deported Jews from Hungary. In April 1944, Fritzie, her mother, and two brothers were forced to move into a ghetto. From there, they were sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and brothers were murdered in the gas chambers. Fritzie was selected for forced labor after lying about her age to appear older. Eventually, she was assigned to forced labor in a factory. Fritzie was liberated from a death march in spring 1945. After the war she immigrated to the United States.
We needed to show that we still had strength left, to, whether it was to work or to live another day. I recall some women, um, were beginning as their hair grows back, they were beginning to get gray hair, and they would go and take a little piece of coal from one of the pot-bellied stoves that was in a barrack. And they would use this coal to color their hair with so that they would look a, a little younger. I mean one grayed at the age of maybe eighteen or nineteen under those conditions. And they would run...we would run in front of whoever it was that was doing the selections to show that we could survive one other day. If one had a scar, a pimple, if one didn't run fast enough, if one didn't look right for whatever reason to the particular person that was doing the selection--they would stand there with a stick, to the right or to the left, as you ran by them. One never knew if they were in the good line or the bad line. One line would go to the gas chambers, the other line would go back to the camp and to the barracks to live another day.
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