Auschwitz to Aotearoa: Survival in Nazi Concentration Camps

From 27 January until 6 March the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand will present the exhibition "From Auschwitz to Aotearoa" at Parliament's Exhibition Space at Bowen House on Lambton Quay. The exhibition is about nine Jewish women who, after experiencing incarceration in Auschwitz, managed to make new lives for themselves and their families in New Zealand. The exhibition can be viewed Wednesdays to Fridays from 10am to 3pm.

The nine women featured are: Hanka Pressburg; Rosa Svehla; Lotte Weiss; Sophie Galler; Hansi Keating; Olga Romer; Helen Ilona Erdos; Clare Galambos-Winter; and Katherine Bleier.

The lives and experiences of the nine women featured in the exhibition are an insight into the experiences of Holocaust survivors based in New Zealand and their war-time lives.

Auschwitz was the largest concentration camp complex built by the Nazi regime. It was the heart of the system of degradation, torture and extermination as the SS and their auxiliary forces carried out the Final Solution and systematic genocide. Between 1941 and 1944, over 1.1 million people were killed in Auschwitz.

The women's shared experience at Auschwitz II-Birkenau make up the foundation of the exhibition, as it attempts to tackle the question: "How did they survive?"