Book tells story of Cilka's survival

There is a book called "Cilka's Journey".

At just 16 years old, Cilka was taken from Belgium to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by the Nazis in 1942.

They were packed into cattle cars, should to shoulder. They couldn't move and had to urinate down their legs, as being packed with women, they couldn't make it to the 5-gallon bucket for that purpose; it was quickly filled up anyway.

At Auschwitz, the commandant, Schwarzhuber immediately noticed her long beautiful hair. The she was forcibly separated from the other women prisoners and was continually raped as were many of the women.

Finally she was put in charge of a building and treated a little better. The bad thing was that the building was for those to be exterminated the next day.

After liberation, the Russians didn't send her home, they charged her as a collaborator with the enemy, even though she wasn't. She was then sentenced to 15 years in a Siberian prison camp. There she also attracted the unwanted attention of the guards.

But she was finally assigned to the hospital where she met a kind female doctor who took Cilka under her wing and then Cilka began to tend the ill of the camp. Daily, she confronted death and terror as the exterminations continued daily. The weak, old, and youngsters were gassed then went to the crematorium where their bodies were burned up. But if you were healthy, you were used as a worker. Finally after about 10 years in the camp, they began to release prisoners and Cilka had survived — 3 years in Auschwitz and another 10 or so in the Siberian prison camp where hundreds died every day. Can you imagine?

Roger Gregory is a Vietnam veteran and business owner in Priest River.