Zach Eaton - David Abrams

         David Abrams, originally David Abraham, was born in Dej, Romania on December 8, 1928. He had two older sisters and three younger brothers. Abrams attended secular school and yeshiva. His family lived within the Gentile community, so on his way home from school or study; he would sometimes get beaten up or bullied. At the age of 15, Abrams and his family was sent to the “Ghetto.” This was a 10’ x 12’ piece of land staked off for their whole family to live in for a month. They were then shipped by train to Auschwitz where he was separated from his family and told that he would get to see them every Sunday. Abrams was stripped down to nothing and searched before being thrown in the barracks. Within the next few days he learned the fate of his family, one mam told him that his family had either been burned or gassed in the gas chambers. Abrams was then shipped to Mauthausen where they immediately put him in labor camps and shipped to Gusen. There he worked picking rocks and digging tunnels, which at that time he had no idea what for. At Gusen, they were regularly bombed. As the Allied forces got closer, they were shipped to a barracks near a forest called Gunskirchen. Abrams recalls that people slept on the rafters and beams because there was no other room. People would urinate on the people sleeping below. Right before Abrams was supposed to be exterminated, he was sent to  a sick hall to heal his leg. After returning to Gunskirchen, he found out that anyone under 15 was beaten to death. American soldiers liberated Gunskirchen while Abrams was there. He was then set out on his own to survive and live on his own. After a few weeks he returned home to find out that his whole family except two of his sisters had been murdered. Between the span of 1945 and 1949, Abrams traveled to six different countries and five different languages before arriving in America. On October 18, 1949 David Abrams had finally made it to the “promised land.” He has now been married for 42 years and has two children. He is retired and lives with his wife in Brooklyn, New York.  

1. “We would have jobs; we’d be together with our own family. That’s what we were told.”

2. “This was May 8, when all of a sudden, the guards disappeared, and we knew it was over.”