Hussein+A

Hussein

//(I am speaking as a women who survived the holocaust with her twin sister. Her name is Lia Huber.)//

Holocaust Speech: Twin Survivors

Hello, my name is Lia Huber. My sister and I are twin sisters and we were taken to a place called Auschwitz in 1944 along with my mother. Upon arrival of the unknown place, we were separated between men and women. Then, after the separation, a German SS officer called out "Zwillinge!” which means “twins.” My mother was nervous and unsure if it was good or bad to be a twin, along with the idea of separation. She decided it was for the better, so she pushed us out to them and that was the last time we saw her. The Germans took us to a building full of many other twins, dwarfs, giants and anyone with a unique hereditary trait. We didn’t know there would be so many. We were only six years old at the time and we felt the loneliness already, but at least we had each other. At first, this man, named Josef Mengele, seemed very nice considering the fact that he would give us candy and chocolates in the morning; and just like everyone else, we were called Mengele’s children. We had numbers stamped on us and each day, they called out a few numbers. The people who had this number on them were taken by trucks to be experimented on. The experiments he performed on us were very painful and we couldn’t stop screaming and crying, but they shouted at us and told us to be quiet. We were forced to be experimented on and we had to get used to it. Many of the people who went never returned, especially if they were weak in the experiments. I remember my mother told us to pinch our cheeks all the time so that we would look rosy and healthy. The miraculous day came where the place we were at was taken over by the Soviets, or the Red Army. They helped us get on a train to be sent off to safety. We were one of the few hundred out of the many thousand twins and differently born people that survived.

Credits: []

__ Interviewing Gunaye Askar (my mom) on surviving Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq __

1. Who was Saddam Hussein? **“He was the uneducated president of Iraq, from the city of Tikrit.”**

2. How did his presidency affect your life? **“I was young during that time, so I wasn’t really affected. I was eleven years old when he started his presidency.”**

3. How did he oppress the Shiites and Kurds in Iraq? **“Whoever he didn’t like, like Shiites and Kurds, he would stop them from going to mosques and they were taken away from their families never to be seen again.”**

4. What did your family tell you about Saddam as a child? **“My parents were too scared to talk about him in front of us. They told us to be careful when going outside and to school, and they told us not to even mention his name in public, like he was Voldemort or something. Until now, I have this strange feeling of paranoia when I mention his name.”**

5. How did your family and friends view Saddam? **“No one liked him, because we didn’t live a good life during his time out of fear of being killed when going outside or even staying at home, since we are Shiites.”**

6. What was the first event that sparked hatred against him? **“At first, he only supported people in his group (called the Ba’athi Party), and he supported people who were Sunni. He didn’t care about Shias (Shiites) or Kurds; and, in fact, he hated us before we hated him.”**

7. As a teenager, what did you think about Saddam? ** “I just heard facts about him and was scared. And, at the same time, I also hated him for being bad, even though I didn’t know too much about him. There was no freedom for us, which I also didn't like.” **

8. Were there family members of yours that were tortured or killed by Saddam's party? **“My uncle stayed in jail for about three years. My father’s uncle also stayed in jail. But most sadly, another one of my uncles was killed during his jail time; they threw him into a pool of acid, and for no reason really. He was just a normal, religious Shia.”**

9. What was the worst thing Saddam did during his regime? **“He went to war with Iran for eight years. Iran is also predominately Shia and is connected to northern Iraq. Northern Iraq is called Kurdistan for its Kurd majority. Since Iran is closely related to both Shias and Kurds, Saddam hated them all.”**

10. How was Saddam able to stay in power for so long (1979-2006)? **“Like Hitler had support, Saddam was supported by his people, made up of Sunnis, not to say Sunnis are bad; in fact, Sunni Islam is a great religious sect, but those specific people gave Islam, in general, a bad name. Saddam was also wealthy and Iraq was a generally wealthy country due to the oil.”**

11. What were some ways he tortured/killed people? ** “Well, his soldiers would: throw people into pools of acid, hang people (mainly women) from a oscillating fan, throw people on a floor of cracked glass, lay people on conveyor belts that led to giant meat flattening wheels, blindfold people and push them off three story buildings until they died, whip the bottom of peoples' feet until they were unconscious, he would also require every man, after finishing, high school to go to war during the Iraq-Iran war and the war against Kuwait, and those who refused to go were killed, if you were a coward in war they cut one of your ears off, generally his army would kill as many Shias and Kurds they could find, etc.” **

12. How old were you when you left Iraq and why did you want to leave? **“When I was 22 years old. Because I had got married and my husband, who was Iraqi had left earlier to America, settled for about 10 years, and came back to get married, and since he had a house in America, we both went there.”**

13. How did you leave Iraq? **“My husband was already an American citizen, so when he came to Iraq, he filled out marriage legality forms and Turkish passport applications for me, and we went to Turkey and lived there for a few months, then we went to America. This was in the early 90’s, right after war, and it wasn’t as hard to enter/leave Iraq, especially if you were American.”**

14. Can you tell me an interesting story that happened during his time? **“Saddam used to go to elementary schools and talk to kids in a sweet manner, seeing if they would admit something about their families. I remember there was one kid who told Saddam, ‘hey, I know you, you’re that guy on TV that my dad hates. He spits and throws his shoe at the TV when he sees you on. hehehe’ Later that day, Saddam’s soldiers took that kid’s father and executed him in front of the child and the rest of the family.”**

15. Now that Saddam is dead, how do you feel he affected your life and Iraq in general? **“It was an experience that frightens me, and until today Iraq has terrorists who leave their cars in the busy streets to explode and kill anyone, not just Shias or Kurds. Because of Saddam, a very tough stain has been left on Iraq, and the situation is not really getting any better, even though I hope it does. For us, visiting family in Iraq is very much possible, yet it is still risky. Hopefully, new presidents to come will help Iraq get back on its feet and drive fear out of the peoples’ minds.”**

My name is Gunaye Askar and I am a survivor of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. media type="file" key="script.mp3"