Survivor Profiles: Bela Korn
When I came to Chicago I was called a DP, then a refugee, then a greenhorn, then a mother, then a grandmother, then I became a teacher, and now finally, I’m a survivor.
Bela Korn
Bela Korn (nee Wurtzel) was born in 1923 in Lodz, Poland. Bela grew up with her parents and her younger sister, Lola. Her father ran an orphanage for Jewish boys and her mother was a dressmaker, who ran a shop when Bela was very young. Bela spent her childhood surrounded by family in Lodz, visiting grandparents, great-grandparents, and playing with cousins. She also made puzzles and wrote a column for a local Polish children’s newspaper under the pseudonym “A Singing Butterfly.”
When the war started in 1939, Bela and her sister had to stop attending school, and her whole family was forced to move into the Lodz ghetto. In the ghetto, Bela became sick with dysentery but was able to recover. Later, when her grandmother fell ill with the same disease, Bela cared for her and held her in her arms as she died in 1942. That same year, Bela’s mother died of starvation. Bela was the one who identified her body.
In 1944, the Germans told Bela, her father, and her sister to go to work in Germany, where they promised that all families would be kept together. Instead, they boarded a tightly packed cattle train that took them to Auschwitz. Bella and her sister were immediately separated from her father when they arrived. They never saw him again.
During her time in Auschwitz, Bela experienced what she called her “first miracle.” The Germans were calling names to take people to work at Langenbielau. Bela and Lola’s names were not called, but Bela rushed them over to the other line anyway. If the soldiers had been checking names, they may never have made it out of Auschwitz.
The sisters worked in a factory at Langenbielau until Bela’s “second miracle” occurred. One day, they were told not to go to the factory, because it was going to be inspected. That very day, the factory was bombed.
Next, Bela and Lola were transferred to Parschnitz in Czechoslovakia. At first, Bela tried to get Lola on the transport since she was injured, but Bela realized that those taking transport would not survive. She begged their block leader to take them off the list – and she complied. A third miracle.
While Bela was at Parschnitz, Josef Mengele arrived at the camp. The girls were forced to undress and go for an inspection. Bela noticed that anyone who had a wound was being sent to another line. Instead of letting Lola take the inspection when her name was called, Bela went through a second time. No one noticed, and once again, Bela and Lola were saved. This was Bela’s final miracle.
A few months later, Bela and Lola were forced to march again, this time to Sankt Georgenthal in Czechoslovakia. Because Lola was still injured, Bela and her friend, Luba, who was pregnant, supported Lola between them the entire walk.
They were finally liberated on May 8, 1945, but they had nowhere to go. A local family took in Bela and Lola and cared for them until they were healthy enough to be smuggled out of the Soviet zone to a DP camp in Neu Freimann (Munich). Bela took Lola to a hospital in hopes of getting her sister treatment for her injury and tuberculosis, but she never recovered. She died only a year after Liberation at 16 years old. Bela buried Lola in Munich under the epitaph: “She fell as a victim of Hitler’s Nazism.” Decades later, in 1995, Bela said that her relationship with Lola never changed through all their hardships. “That was my sister. She was all I had.”
Bela married her first husband, Marcus Korn, also from Lodz, in Germany in 1947. They later immigrated to the United States, where they settled in Chicago and had three children together. After Marcus’ death, Bela married Joe Weichselbaum, another Survivor.
In Illinois, Bela became one of the charter members of the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois (HMFI), and for a time, served as its secretary. She was a member of the HMFI Speakers Bureau at the museum’s Main Street location and spoke many times about her experiences at high schools and universities, so that no one would be able to deny what had happened. Bela passed away in 2009.
Learn More:
Memoirs of Bela Korn
Bela Korn in a DP camp in Neu Freimann (Munich) after the war, 1947/1948. The photo was used in Speakers Bureau teaching materials.
Regina Lipman (left) and Bela Korn (right) at the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois (HMFI) First Founders’ Meeting in 1983.
Bela Korn (left) and her husband Joe Weichselbaum (right) at the HMFI 2001 Humanitarian Awards Dinner.
Bela Korn shows some historical photos at the HMFI Board of Directors meeting in 2003.
Bela Korn poses in her kitchen in front of a fridge covered in pictures of her children and grandchildren in 2004.