Gena Turgel, Survivor of The Nazi Gas Chambers

The most horrific example of World War II that the Germans left behind was the death of thousands of Jews in the gas chambers. For those of them who made it back alive, the experience was a great wound and a stinging wound.

Among the Holocaust survivors, Gena Turgel’s extraordinary story is notable for her ability to survive the horrors of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp against all odds. Despite being completely naked, she endured unimaginable cruelty and miraculously lived to tell her story. Not only did she survive the horrific gas chamber ordeal, but she also overcame the challenges of navigating through three different Nazi concentration camps.

On September 1, 1939, the war began. She was 16 years old and living in Krakow, Poland when the Luftwaffe bombed her hometown. Although her family had relatives in Chicago, they postponed plans to relocate there as the Germans quickly took control of Poland.

Gena suffered the loss of her two brothers courageously fought against the Nazi forces in the Krakow Jewish Ghetto.After this tragedy, Her resilience helped her survive the inhumane conditions at Plaszow concentration camp for two and a half years before being transferred to Auschwitz. While held captive in Auschwitz, Gena was mistreated to various experiments by Josef Mengele, the notorious Nazi “Angel of Death.” She recounted how she only learned she was in a gas chamber when a fellow prisoner revealed the terrifying truth, a truly astonishing aspect of her ordeal. Recalling the shocking realization, Gena stated, “I had no idea I was in a gas chamber. It couldn’t have succeeded.”

She described his path to the gas chamber as follows:

“We entered a room with a stone floor and holes in the ceiling. We were shivering in the cold, waiting and waiting.”
In Auschwitz, she noted that “the undrinkable water meant we mostly survived on beet soup.” She also mentioned that “the terrible stench of the crematoria followed us everywhere we went.”
The time spent at Auschwitz had enduring effects. Ever since, Gena has worn her perfume to mask the smell of the camp.

She spent two months in Auschwitz when the Red Army neared the extermination camp.Later, she was ordered to participate in a march, commonly known as the “death march,” to Belsen. In Belsen, she lived in a barrack with Anne Frank and offered her help as a nurse, using her fluency in German. After the British liberated Belsen, she gave a tour of the hospital where she had worked to the young army commander, Norman Turgel.

In October 1945, she and Sergeant Turgel were married in Lübeck, Germany, in a synagogue that the Germans had repurposed as a stable during the war. She was 21 years old at the time. Mr. Turgel passed away in 1995. Mrs. Turgel survived by her three children, eight grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. Gena Turgel died on June 7, 2018, at her home in England at age of 95.