Helene Bouton was born in Irshava, Czechoslovakia [Annotator's Note: now Irshava, Ukraine] in December 1925. Her father had a printing and bookbinding business. She had two brothers and two sisters. The Great Depression did affect them. Czechoslovakia was a democratic country and life was normal. They had a house. The law was against anti-Semitism and there were a lot of Jewish people. They were totally frightened when the Germans invaded [Annotator's Note: in March 1939]. Her father was a well-recognized person in their town for his business. They were very happy until they came in. Then everything changed. They were chased out of their home and sent them to the temple. The Germans always came with something in their hands. If you did not run fast enough, you were hit, children and adults. They went to their temple backyard and they could take nothing. The township decided to make a ghetto. Her house was actually in the first ghetto. Twenty people lived there after that. They could not work or go shopping for food. It was horrible. Everything came from the black market. They were there for eight weeks. They bartered everything they had for food. The Germans enforced the rules. There were two Germans, the rest were Hungarians. They wore the yellow stars [Annotator's Note: Jewish badges, Judenstern, worn on the clothes of Jews in Nazi occupied territories]. They were punished constantly for no reason. The men usually hid because the men with beards were hit the most. They were brutal. They screamed always. The first ghetto was not guarded well, but there was no place to go.

[Annotator's Note: Helene Bouton and her family were placed in a small ghetto in their neighborhood in Irshava, Czechoslovakia (now Ukraine) in March 1939.] The neighborhood people were gathered and sent to Munkacs Ghetto [Annotator's Note: in Munkacs, Hungary] which was a brick factory. They went on trains. From there, people were transported to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. They were there two weeks [Annotator's Note: in Munkacs]. Trains would come in and transport another thousand in. Whatever they brought from home was all they had to eat. There was a little water available for the brickmaking and that is what they had. They scavenged for food. Nobody ever escaped because there was no place to go. The Germans were all over Europe. Her whole family was to taken Auschwitz. Bouton went to Lager A. Her mother had small children. Those people, old people, sick people, all went straight to the crematorium. Bouton was the only the one of her family who did not go. She was there six weeks. They had to undress upon arrival and were marched in front of Mengele [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, Dr. Josef Mengele] who selected who were healthy to be let go. After that, her head was shaved, and she was given one gray dress with no underwear. Then she went into Lager A, which measured ten feet by ten feet. Fifteen people were put in there. The Germans needed help and took some of them to Essen [Annotator's Note: Essen, Germany; site of 350 forced labor camps].

[Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks Helene Bouton to talk about life in a concentration camp.] There was only one kind of food, cabbage with sand in it. Once a day they gave them a drink each in Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. She was only there four to six weeks. Every day they had to get up and stand in rows of five, to be counted. If there was only a row of four, they were hit very hard. They [Annotator's Note: the guards at Auschwitz] were very brutal. They were allowed to use the latrine once a day. Nobody survived Auschwitz very long unless they left. [Annotator's Note: Bouton gets emotional.] Bouton was working in a factory, Krupp [Annotator's Note: Friedrich Krupp AG] ammunition factory. Bouton was trained to operate a crane. The factories were above and underground. This was in Essen [Annotator's Note: Essen, Germany]. The English bombed the town at night and the Americans bombed in the daylight. They came over low and she could see the bombs coming out. The Germans took cover in bunkers, but the prisoners were left outside. She lived in a bombed-out basement and slept on the floor. After work they would get a cup of soup with cabbage and sand. Her teeth were nearly ruined. The Germans were the overseers, but they had no contact. There were French and Italian prisoners of war working there. They would pass notes to each other, but they were not allowed to speak to anyone. The Allied prisoners were in different camps and knew more than the concentration camp prisoners. [Annotator's Note: Bouton gets emotional.] A French sergeant gave her a piece of bread. Bouton worked there until the end of March [Annotator's Note: March 1945]. Then she had to walk to Bergen-Belsen [Annotator's Note: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Bergen, Germany], which took about four weeks.

[Annotator's Note: Helene Bouton was forced to walk to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Bergen, Germany, from the Auschwitz concentration camp in Oswiecim, Poland in March 1945.] Many people did not survive the walk. If anyone fell down tired, they were shot on the spot. People held each other up. Hell cannot be as bad as Bergen-Belsen. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer backs her up to the bombing of the camp by the Allies.] A lot of prisoners were killed in the bombings. The Germans had some big concrete pipes and the prisoners tried to hide in them. She remembers 18 Russian prisoners were killed during a night bombing. They were scared when the bombs fell. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if anyone tried to sabotage the ammunition.] That was straight death. Bouton painted and packed pipes. She would put her name on a piece of paper when she packed them. [Annotator's Note: Bouton gets emotional.] She hoped somebody in her family might see it. She did know what had happened to her family while at Auschwitz. Some men were working outside when they had arrived, and they said for the arrivals to remember the date as it was the day their families died. She always thought once she was free, she would meet everybody. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks more about the march.] They marched all day long. They were allowed to lie down on the side of the road at night. She does not recall getting any food at all. When working, they would get a piece of bread that she thought was made of sawdust. Some people saved it, but not Bouton. People stole from each other. She saw bodies being stacked in pyramids. Some bodies had flesh missing. People were not the same. Hunger is a horrible thing. The march took more than a week.

Getting into Bergen-Belsen [Annotator's Note: Bergen-Belsen concentration camp near Bergen, Germany] was the worst thing ever for Helene Bouton. Everybody had typhus [Annotator's Note: also known as typhus fever, a group of infectious diseases]. She cannot believe she survived it. They had marched there and anyone sick or falling behind was shot. Sometimes they would shoot people who were being helped. Only a few Germans among thousands paid the price at the Nuremberg Trials [Annotator's Note: Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, military tribunals held in Nuremberg, Germany from 20 November 1945 until 1 October 1946]. Bouton was so anxious to see justice done that she wanted to live. She hates to call it revenge. There were times she would have given up, but she did not. You do not just lose and accept it quietly. She wanted to see a lot more people punished than were. She did not know what happened to the Lagerfurher [Annotator's Note: head SS or Schutzstaffel officer commanding the camp] in Essen [Annotator's Note: Essen, Germany] who hit them as hard as he could in their heads. "What happened to the rest of them? Mengele [Annotator's Note: SS-Hauptsturmführer, or Captain, Dr. Josef Mengele] got away and a lot of them did. How did they get free?" She could hear the cannons when they were taken away from Essen. The war was closing in. The Russians must have been pretty close. They never knew what was going on in the world. She was at Bergen-Belsen for two weeks. She was sick, tired, and hungry. The water was contaminated with typhus. Thirst can be worse than hunger. Bouton was barely conscious when the British came in [Annotator's Note: the British 11th Armoured Division liberated Bergen-Belsen on 15 April 1945]. She could not realize they were free. The British did what they could. She remembers a little bit. The British were not equipped for giving medicine. They gave out their rations which also killed people. They started giving condensed milk instead and that helped. They brought in clean water. The Germans had left already because of the typhus. Bouton was put on a Swedish minesweeper ship. She could hear the mines exploding as they entered harbors. She recuperated in Sweden and stayed for four years. It took a long time for them to look like human beings.

[Annotator's Note: After being liberated from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Helene Boulton was taken to Sweden to recuperate.] They were placed for work. She went to a paper factory where she worked for about two years. She applied for a visa to America and it took four years to get it. She was questioned if she was a Communist or a prostitute. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks about what happened to her father.] She does not know. He was strong and probably in a work camp. She never found anyone who had worked with him. The Red Cross worked to bring people together. Some people knew him and knew of him. He did not survive. Bouton came to the United States in 1950 to New York [Annotator's Note: New York, New York]. She got married there after going to high school. They never talked about their experiences. She did not want her children to be different from American kids. They knew because of their family associations. The conversation always goes to what happened. Her husband had been much luckier than her. He had friends in Paris [Annotator's Note: Paris, France] who took him to the Pyrenees [Annotator's Note: Pyrenees Mountains]. He was caught on the street and sent to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland]. His parents lived in the Pyrenees through the war. Her husband told the Germans he was an electrician, which they needed badly. He spoke perfect German, French, Spanish, and English. He was made an apprentice and befriended a German man who helped him send a letter out [Annotator’s Note: Boulton gets emotional] to his mother. She kissed the letter so much you can still see the lipstick [Annotator's Note: the letter is in the Esther Raab Holocaust Museum, Cherry Hill, New Jersey].

[Annotator's Note: Helene Bouton still dreams of her Holocaust experiences every night.] She dreams now that it is her children who are there. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks if faith had any part in her time in the camps.] When she thought she was dying; her friend was next to her. One morning, her friend was dead. They had said they would live together after liberation. She had asked Bouton if she thought there really is a heaven. [Annotator's Note: Bouton gets emotional.] That is a big question. She always thought God was there. Besides that, she does not know how much. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks what lessons she wants to pass along.] She wants to emphasize that you do not tolerate discrimination. Do not look away, voice your opinion. The Jews were discriminated against. The Gypsies too. The Germans killed the Black people right away. She tells these things to children. Put yourself in the same place as them. Discrimination is the worst thing and nothing else is worth talking about. [Annotator's Note: The interviewer asks about the significance of museums like the Esther Raab Holocaust Museum in Cherry Hill, New Jersey; the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; and The National WWII Museum in New Orleans, Louisiana.] People forget so quickly. People have already forgotten about the bombings in New York [Annotator's Note: 11 September 2001 attacks on the United States]. She missed her family the most in the camps. The ghettoes were horrible, but they were there together. She knew they were the last good times they would have together. When the ship landed in the United States [Annotator's Note: MS Saint Louis, German ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees that was turned away from United States in June 1939], and the people were not allowed to get off, that was a bad thing for the United States. She loves the United States and nothing else is as good and beautiful, but they let those people go back to Auschwitz [Annotator's Note: Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp complex in German occupied Oswiecim, Poland] on the Saint Louis. The United States could have done more. She heard about Roosevelt [Annotator's Note: Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 32nd President of the United States] saying the concentration camps had to be dealt with after the war ends [Annotator's Note: Roosevelt issued Executive Order establishing the War Refugee Board on 22 January 1944]. She thinks something could have been done. She hopes somebody will listen [Annotator's Note: to this interview].