Tibor Matyas Schmidt, the youngest of six children, was born on May 25, 1925 in Cluj2, Romania (part of Transylvania). Tibor identified patriotically as a Romanian though they did speak both German and Hungarian at home. His father was the president of the Jewish community (like a mayor) for over 20 years. One brother immigrated to America in 1924 and another brother and sister who both lived in Bucharest, escaped the Nazis and later went to Israel.
Tibor describes the effect of anti-Jewish laws which began in 1940 with the Hungarian occupation. Tibor describes seeing people in trains from Poland and Czechoslovakia on their way to concentration camps. The Jewish townspeople attempted to give them food and clothing. He also explains the process of ghettoization in his town which began in 1943 and his personal feelings that the leaders probably knew what was going on. Tibor feels that if they knew and had told them, the youth they would have fled to the mountains and mounted a resistance. He did flee to the mountains for a few months to avoid the ghetto, but returned to help his family. He describes the liquidation of the Cluj Ghetto starting in 1944, when they were told they would be sent to work camps. In reality, Hungarian soldiers, the Kakastoll, put Tibor and his family on cattle cars to Auschwitz.
Tibor describes their arrival in Auschwitz, early 1944, selections by Joseph Mengele while an orchestra played, being taken to showers, shaved, and given a number. He never saw his parents again. He describes being deported to Buchenwald and his work in the furnace of the Buchenwald crematoria. He tells how he escaped that job by jumping into a group of prisoners being sent to Hirschberg labor camp in late 1944 with the help of a Polish SS officer. In Hirschberg he describes his work in a factory making propellers, the typhoid epidemic and how the Germans were so afraid of contracting the disease they stopped entering the camp and would throw the food over the fence. Eventually the approximately 25 who survived from 387 prisoners were sent to another concentration camp, Bad Warmbrunn, Tibor among them. He and a friend escaped, were recaptured, punished and moved to several labor camps. In one camp, Tibor was assigned to give injections to German soldiers since he had already had the disease. He describes how he was able to save a father and son from extermination and sharing his rations with fellow prisoners.
He was liberated by the Russians from Dornhau, on May 5, 1945. Tibor attributes his survival to his youth and athletic nature. He also expresses his loss of faith in God in the camps. Tibor describes his post-war travels back and forth between Cluj, Italy and Greece, his intentions to go to Palestine, volunteering in the 52B Small Rest Camp for the American Army in Italy, and working for Brihah in Greece. In 1945-46 he received a visa to Venezuela in and decided to emigrate there because it was the closest he could get to his brother in California. Later he was able to move to the United States.