By: Ilana Siyance

Zoltan Matyash, now 89, has witnessed “the worst of human agony” at Auschwitz and Buchenwald Nazi concentration camps. Now he and his wife, Mera, are trying to get by living on a fixed income in Brooklyn’s Borough Park.

“I was raised to be very proud of my family, our traditions and our religion,” Mr. Matyash told the NY Times, speaking in Russian in the apartment where he lives with Mera, his wife of 61 years.  Mr. Matyash, who grew up in Czechoslovakia, had just turned 13 in 1944 when the Nazis occupied their town of Mukachevo, which had a large Jewish population and is now considered Western Ukraine.  Their extended family of 20 people, were sent to live in a ghetto.  Only he and one other would ultimately live to tell of the horrors they witnessed.

The ghetto was only a start to the terrors they would face in the holocaust, the deliberate mass murder of Jewish communities around Europe.  His family was sent to several Nazi concentration camps, the first being Auschwitz.  His mother and all his four sisters were immediately sent to the crematory, as they were not deemed fit for work by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele, who surveyed prisoners.  “My father and I did not even see them leave,” recalls Mr. Matyash. “We were next in line, so we did not even realize they were gone. We just thought they were going to a different part of the camp.”

Being the oldest son, he and his father were selected for work in the death camp, thanks to his decision to say he was 18.  A-6307 was the number stamped on his arm till this day.   A-6308 was his father.  Even they were separated shortly after, when he was transferred to a subcamp at Janinagrube and his father remained in Auschwitz.   He was given back-breaking labor carrying 11-pound sacks of cement on his shoulders and handling coal with no gloves. Shortly after, he was led on a nearly two-month death march through Poland and Germany in the freezing winter temperatures until finally reaching the Buchenwald concentration camp.

“This is where I saw the worst of human agony,” Mr. Matyash said. “I came to recognize the look in people before death. They would lie on the ground with their pale eyes already growing dim and take balls of snow and put it in their mouths, just to feel as if they had something to eat before they died.”

By virtue of miracles and unfathomable strength Mr.Matyash was liberated from Buchenwald on April 11, 1945 by American soldiers.  Displaced, alone and sickly he moved to Budapest alone.  It was another miracle that he found his father.  “I was walking down the street and heard, ‘Hey! Matyash, Zoltan? Is that you?’” Mr. Matyash said. It was his father’s friend. “He told me that my father was alive and back home. I ran to the train station and went straight home.”  He returned to Mukachevo and was reunited with his only surviving family member.

Mr. Matyash, having lost his chance for an education, started to work as a furniture upholsterer.  He was married in 1957, and soon had two sons.  In 1990, the Matyashes moved to the United States.  A distant in-law of his father was the superintendent of an apartment building in New York, and that is where they moved a year after coming to NYC.

As reported by the NY Times, poor health does not allow the Matyashes to work. A proud beloved Kohan who bestows the priestly blessings on the community, he has arthritis and a pacemaker.  His wife has high blood pressure and severe asthma.  The couple relies on $1,157 in Supplemental Security Income and $184 in food stamps monthly. Mr. Matyash gets a meager $180 a month in German Social Security payments for Holocaust survivors, and once in three months receives a reimbursement  through the Article 2 Fund, set up by the German government for Jewish victims of Nazi camps.  The couple is barely able to pay the monthly rent on their humble subsidized apartment.

In 2014, at a local library event, Mr. Matyash was exposed to the Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty, a beneficiary agency of UJA-Federation of New York.  The fund is one of the seven organizations supported by The New York Times Neediest Cases Fund.  The couple has since been attending the Met Council’s events for Holocaust survivors and has benefited from using its kosher food delivery service.  In October, the Met Council paid two months of the Matyashes’ rent from The Fund.  Mr. Matyash says he is grateful for the Neediest cases fund.  He also said in his NY Times interview that he was keen to share his story with the next generations and fill them in on “the reality of what happened.”

He says the memories of the nightmares he survived still frequent his dreams at nights.  “Just ask my wife, who has to deal with this when I have nightmares,” said Mr. Matyash. “I have nightmares that they’re beating me, that dogs are barking, that they have a dog on a leash specifically trained to bite me. I can’t seem to get rid of this.”