Istvanka “Istvan” Reiner, born 06-07-1940 in Miskolc, Miskolci járás, Borsod-Abaúj-Zemplén, Hungary, 
With 150,695 inhabitants (2021), it is the fourth largest city in the country and the core of the second largest agglomeration. Istvan the son of Jewish parents Livia Vermes and Bela Reiner. Bela converted to protestantism and their son Istvan was never circumcised per the Jewish custom since she was no longer Jewish. Regardless, Istvan and his parents were deemed to be Jews and were eventually placed in the Miskolc ghetto (Hungary). 
It wasn’t long until they were sent to the concentration camps at Auschwitz. 
It was easier to evade the Nazis in the big, cosmopolitan Budapest than in the small Miskolc where people tended to know each other better. It turns out, the Jews of Miskolc had no chance of evading the ruthlessly methodological way the Nazis rounded them up as part of their zealous mission for the ‘Final Solution.’ Of the some 60,0000 people of Miskolc, 11,000 were Jewish in 1944. Just about all Jews were transported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps. Of them, 2350 survived such camps, mainly because the German camp keepers ran away in January 1945 from the advancing Allied troops.
Death and burial ground of Reiner, Istvanka “Istvan”.
The trip to Auschwitz took two days. The survivors had to line up before Mr Death, Dr Josef Rudolf Mengele. 
With a casual waving of his hand to the left, he sent the children. Once there in Auschwitz, Istvan and his mother were also separated and he ended up in the care of his grandmother. The boy smiles at the camera in his striped camp suit. He was executed two weeks later. He wasn’t there long when he and his grandmother met the same fate in the gas chamber. 11,000 people from Miskolc were killed in the concentration camps along with Istan. Amazingly, his mother and brother survived the war and migrated to the United States in 1947.
Many researchers endorse the 1994 estimates of the Polish historian Franciszek Piper. According to his estimates, about 1.3 million people were deported to Auschwitz , including about 1.1 million Jews, 140,000 Poles, 23,000 Gypsies, 15,000 Russian prisoners of war and over 25,000 victims of other ethnicities. From May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian gendarmerie officials, under the guidance of German SS officials, deported around 440,000 Jews from Hungary. 
Most were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where, upon arrival and after selection, SS functionaries killed the majority of them in gas chambers.
Of the 1.3 million deportees, about 1.1 million did not survive to Auschwitz. The victims included approximately one million Jews, 70,000 Poles, 21,000 Gypsies, 440,000 Jews from Hungary. virtually all Russian prisoners of war and over 10,000 victims of other ethnicities.
The number of survivors of Auschwitz is estimated at 200,000. This does include prisoners who were deported from Auschwitz to other camps, even if they died in or on the way to those camps.
57 000 people transported from the Netherlands arrived in Auschwitz. 38 000 of them were gassed directly, the remaining 19 000 were first registered as prisoners. Of those 19 000, 900 would survive the war.
The Dutch were deported to Auschwitz by 68 trains: 
65 from Camp Westerbork, 
where also Anne Frank 
and her family were prisoners. One train from Apeldoorn (departure on 22-01-1943, with mainly patients and some of the staff of the Jewish Insane asylum Het Apeldoornsche Bosch) and two from Kamp Vught (departure on 15-11-1943 and June 03-06-1944). Sporadically, people fled during the journey; numbers and identity of deportees were known on departure, but were not checked on arrival. 
The first Auschwitz trial 
took place from November 24 to December 22, 1947 in Kraków. Even before the start of this trial, camp commander Rudolf Höss had been sentenced to the death penalty and hanged in Auschwitz.
The most famous convicts were Arthur Liebehenschel, 
former commander, Maria Mandel, head of the women’s camps, and SS doctor Johann Kremer. Thirty-eight other SS officers who had served as guards or doctors in the camp, including four women, were also convicted. SS-Obersturmbannführer Liebehenschel, age 46, was sentenced to death on 22-12-1947 by the Najwyższy Trybunał Narodowy in Kraków – the tribunal charged with crimes committed in Poland by Nazi Germany – where he was hanged a month later.
Liebehenschel, camp guard Maria Mandel 
and Dr. Johan Kremer 
were sentenced to death. Kremer was later commuted to life imprisonment. He was released in 1958 and died old age 81, on 08-01-1965 in Münster, West Germany. The same happened with Hans Aumeier, age 41 
SS Scharfuhrer age 57, August Bogusch, 
Theresa Brandl, 
Arthur Breitwiser, Fritz Buntrock, Wilhelm Gehring, age 47 
, Paul Götze, SS Untersturmführer , age 44, 
Max Grabner, Heinrich Josten, Hermann Kirschner, Josef Kollmer, Franz Kraus, Herbert Ludwig, Karl Möckel, Kurt Müller, Erich Mühsfeldt , Ludwig Plagge, Hans Schumacher and Paul Szczurek.
Luise Helene Elisabeth Danz, old age 91 
SS-Unterscharführer Hans Koch, age 42, 
Anton Lechner, Adolf Medefind, SS-Hauptscharführer Detlef Nebbe, age 56 
and Karl Seufert 
were sentenced to life imprisonment. Oswald Kaduk, “Papa Kaduk” age 90 
was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Alexander Bülow, Hans Hofmann, Hildegard Lächert, 
Eduard Lorenz, Alice Orlowski, 
Franz Romeikat and Johannes Weber were each sentenced to 15 years. Richard Schröder was imprisoned for 10 years, Erich Dinges five years and Karl Jeschke three years. Hans Münch was the only one to be acquitted during this trial.[54]
All executions were carried out in the Kraków Prison on 18-01-1948.
Ivanka “Istvan” Reiner was burned on the Auschwitz ground and the ashes scattered in a big pond with many other.
Leave a Reply