Mary Bauer: A calling to heal and protect

Mary Bauer, a Holocaust survivor, recalls chilling stories of being apprehended from her native Hungary when she was only 16 years old, piled into a boxcar for three days, and sent off to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where her entire family, save herself and her mother, would be murdered, after her talk titled A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor, an event organized by Associated Students in conjunction with the Jewish Affinity Group, in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main Santa Monica College campus, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. "Imagine the people – who are normal people from normal lives – entering the boxcar," said Bauer to a small group of people after her talk. "Now the doors open up and you hope you can breathe some fresh air; and what do you breathe? Burning Jews!" (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

Mary Bauer, a Holocaust survivor, displays the tattoo that she received while imprisoned at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, the largest camp in all of the Nazi-occupied territories during World War II, after her talk titled A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor, an event organized by Associated Students in conjunction with the Jewish Affinity Group, in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main Santa Monica College campus, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. Auschwitz-Birkenau is estimated to have exterminated over 1.1 million people, mostly Jews, during its roughly four and a half years of existence. (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

Mary Bauer, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, hugs Kathryn Jefferey, the Superintendent and President of Santa Monica College (SMC), after her talk titled A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor, an event organized by Associated Students in conjunction with the Jewish Affinity Group, in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main SMC campus, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

Mary Bauer, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, speaks during her talk titled A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor, an event organized by Associated Students in conjunction with the Jewish Affinity Group in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main Santa Monica College campus, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. A photo of Bauer is projected on a screen behind her, showing herself displaying the tattoo that she received while being a prisoner in Auschwitz at the Holocaust Museum LA, a museum located in Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles. (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

Naama Engel, a student at Santa Monica College (SMC), asks a question about how Mary Bauer, a Holocaust survivor, felt about the public’s response in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main SMC campus in Santa Monica, Calif. Engel, whose grandparents were also Holocaust survivors, was in Israel on Oct. 7. (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

Mary Bauer, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, center, speaks with members of the audience after her talk titled A Conversation with a Holocaust Survivor, an event organized by Associated Students in conjunction with the Jewish Affinity Group, in the Humanities and Social Science building on the main Santa Monica College campus, Thursday, April 24, 2025, in Santa Monica, Calif. (Nathan Hanson | The Corsair)

On April 24, the Associated Students held “A Conversation with Holocaust Survivor Mary Bauer” in  the Health and Social Science (HSS) building at Santa Monica College (SMC). Bauer, a 97-year-old survivor of the Holocaust, returned to SMC for her annual visit to speak on her experiences at Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp and during the Nazi death marches.

In 1933, the Nazi regime rose to power in Germany. Shortly after Adolf Hitler was elected Chancellor, he began cementing his power by revoking civil liberties and allowing imprisonment without trial. Laws were put in place defining what jobs Jews could have and revoking their German citizenship.

In 1935, Hitler enacted policies making Jews second-class citizens. At this time, persecution of other minorities like gay men, Black people, Catholics, and others began. Within a few years, antisemitic propaganda was prevalent throughout the country, blaming many of the country's problems on Jews. 

It was in 1937 that the first concentration camps were opened to punish repeat law offenders and political opponents. In November 1938, attacks on Jews and synagogues left hundreds of innocent Jews dead and 267 synagogues destroyed. 

As the 1940s began, Jews were relocated into ghettos, and in 1941, the Final Solution was agreed upon. When space in concentration camps for prisoners ran out, camps dedicated to extermination were opened. As the Nazis spread throughout Europe, entire communities of Jews were executed by firing squad, their bodies burned or discarded in mass graves. More Jews died in 1942 than any other year in history. 

Bauer was an only child living with her family in Budapest, Hungary when Hitler rose to power. She was only 16 years old in 1944 when she and her family were forced from their home by German soldiers. 

Bauer said, “There was a knock at our door early in the morning, and we were told to pack one bag, because we were going on a trip. We were instructed to write our name and the city we live in on the top.”

Like many others, Bauer and her family spent the next few days inside a boxcar until finally arriving at what would become known as the deadliest prison in history, Auschwitz. Bauer said that as they left the boxcar, the soldiers began separating prisoners whom they considered fit to work from those who were not. 

She said, “I remember the young German man that decided our fate as we stepped off the train, because he was whistling the song I loved to ice skate to in the winter. And those bags we packed, we never saw those bags again. We were told to get naked. I had never been naked in front of anyone before. I was only a teenager.”

Bauer said, “They divided us to the left and to the right. If you looked old or sick they didn't want you. One of my best girlfriends, her mother had premature grey hair. She wasn’t old, but they separated her from us. This was also the last time I saw my father.” 

Eventually Bauer and her mother were sent on a death march. She said, “It was wintertime. We didn't have coats or boots. Many of us fell down and we were either shot or left to freeze to death. You can't even imagine the red color of blood against the white snow as we marched.”

Bauer described the moment she saved her mother’s life on this march. “We were exhausted and freezing. My mother fell. The Nazi soldiers came and pointed a gun in her face. I don’t know what got into me, but I knew the language so I said to them, ‘Don't waste your bullet, she’s going to die anyways,’” she said.

When Europe was liberated from the Nazi regime in 1945, Bauer and her mother were the only two members of her family still alive. She studied in Berlin for five years after the war before moving to New Orleans.

She said, “I was so excited to move to America. Everyone is free in America. I want to be free. But then I arrived in New Orleans and segregation. Whites and Blacks couldn't be together. This wasn’t freedom. I had been in prison, and this was not freedom.”

Bauer took questions from the audience, including Naama Engel, a member of the Jewish community and an SMC student. Engel explained how she was in Israel during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks and feels that she is constantly forced to defend her experience. 

Bauer offered her story about meeting 14-year-old Oct. 7 survivor Ela Shani. “I went to a lecture. I was in the audience when she (Ela) was describing what she went through that day and I couldn't help myself. I stood up, walked down to the front, and I hugged her,” she said.  

Bauer said, “We have to be there for each other. We have to support each other. We have to accept each other, particularly in America. There is nowhere as multicultural as America.”

Bauer went on to get married and have two sons, as well as live out her childhood dream of becoming a nurse. She now volunteers at Holocaust Museum Los Angeles (HMLA), speaking with visitors and sharing her story. 

Nechama Grossman, Israel's oldest Holocaust survivor, died at the age of 109 on April 24, 2025, coinciding with Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. There are an estimated 220,000 Holocaust survivors still alive in the world with the youngest, Samuel R. Harris, being 88 years old. 

As a time approaches when the survivors are no longer around to tell their stories, historians and advocates are urging the importance of safeguarding their stories for future generations. HMLA CEO Beth Kean affirmed the museum's dedication to survivors' legacies during their annual Yom HaShoah commemoration ceremony on April 27, which Bauer attended.

Kean said, “We come together as a community to remember. We come together to reflect on the lessons of the Holocaust. We come together to hope for peace. We come together to renew our commitment to ensure the preservation of survivor voices, and so that never again that becomes a reality.”

Bauer noted the importance of continuing to tell her story to new generations. She said, “I feel when they know it from the horse's mouth, which is me. It’s not a book, it’s not a film, it's a living person who went through it.”

She said, “It makes more of an impression to believe, and if they do, then my legacy and my calling is to let them know that if you know what can happen, prevent it before it grows, or before it becomes as dangerous as it had become for me. It should not become for anybody else. That’s the reason I talk.”