Hedy Holocaust Survivor Testimony
Hedy Fladell was born on January 12, 1931, in Sighet, Romania, into a close-knit Orthodox Jewish family.
As antisemitic laws intensified, life shrank — curfews, yellow stars, and finally, a ghetto built on her very street, its doors and windows boarded so no one could step outside.
In 1944, Hedy and her family were forced into the Sighet Ghetto and soon after deported. The journey to Auschwitz-Birkenau was an ordeal: days locked in an airless cattle car with only a bale of hay and a bucket for provisions, as infants and the elderly faded before her eyes.
At Auschwitz, she was assigned to sweep the camp streets — broom and shovel in hand — clearing paths among the dead. Later, she was transferred to the Mühldorf concentration camp in Germany, where she endured more brutality while clinging to the will to live.
In 1945, Hedy was liberated by U.S. forces in Bavaria. Her survival remains a testament to her courage, her endurance, and the quiet strength that carried her through humanity’s darkest hour.
