Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old Auschwitz-Birkenau survivor, has become one of France's most prominent voices against antisemitism, crediting Steven Spielberg for prompting her to break decades of silence. In her memoir 'Return to Birkenau', she describes how Spielberg's foundation, launched after 'Schindler's List' in 1993, convinced her to share her testimony in 1997 after she initially refused.
Kolinka now spends much of her time visiting schools, recounting the horrors of her deportation from Paris in March 1944. She tells pupils how she and 1,499 others were crammed into animal wagons and arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau three days later, where most were killed immediately. She was among the few selected for forced labour, spared the gas chambers.
During a recent visit to Marcelin Berthelot high school east of Paris, Kolinka described the humiliation of being forced to strip naked and showed the tattooed number 78599 on her arm. 'The Nazis' hatred of Jews was such that they hunted for every detail that could make us suffer, humiliate us,' she said. Pupils listened in silence, and many stayed afterwards to ask more questions.
Kolinka says she hopes her talks ensure that no one can claim ignorance about the Holocaust. 'If I had a child, I would prefer to strangle them with my own hands than make them go through what I went through,' she tells those who question her. Her testimony is part of Spielberg's foundation, which has collected over 60,000 survivor accounts.
France deported 76,000 Jews during World War II; only 2,500 survived. It took until 1995 for President Jacques Chirac to officially acknowledge French complicity. Today, fewer than 30 French Auschwitz survivors remain alive.
