In March 1939, when Hana Müller (later Bruml) was 16 years old, Nazi Germany occupied her hometown of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Like other Czech Jews, Hana experienced persecution and discrimination under Nazi rule. In August 1942, she was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she worked as a nurse. More than two years later, in October 1944, German authorities deported Hana to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, she was selected for forced labor. After a few weeks, she was sent to Sackisch, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. At Sackisch, Hana was forced to work in a German factory making airplane parts for the Nazi German war effort. She was liberated in May 1945.
First they took...took us to a classroom and taught us how to use a micrometer. I knew how to use a micrometer but we had to do that, and they wanted to know if we know, uh, fractions and things like that. Uh, the man who taught us was a German meister, you know, a...a foreman, and, um, we were in...we were, like, in school benches, and I...you know, we were curious. I looked at the school bench and in one of the school benches I found a core of an apple. Somebody ate an apple and left the core. I didn't care who ate the apple. I ate the core. I mean, my goodness, that was fruit. One day--we were there only a few days--but one day the master said to five of us, "Look, if you would like to take a bath, I will let you take a shower." Now that was very dangerous, too, for him to do that. And he took five of us and he took [us] into the shower room and let us shower. Now, mind you, we didn't have a towel. We didn't have a soap. We had to put the clothes on we had. But just to be under water and to be able to shower was such a relief, so we went there. It took years and years before I finally allowed myself to remember why he did it. He stood in the corner and watched five young women naked taking a shower.
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