Magda Bader: " It is important to treat others as we wish to be treated ourselves and to respect different backgrounds and beliefs. Otherwise, what happens is what Hitler has done. Children should be sensitive to other people and not make ethnic jokes because it hurts. We hope that it will make a difference to show care and consideration". I was born in a small town in Czechoslovakia, which later became Hungary. I was the youngest of ten children. My father was a businessman. Life was good until I was fourteen when my parents, my niece, and four of my sisters and I were taken to Auschwitz. My parents, one of my sisters and her baby, and my niece were immediately gassed there. Another sister, married and living in Prague, died in Terezienstadt. One of my brothers escaped to Cambridge. The other three brothers were sent to a labor camp, but they survived. My three remaining sisters and I were sent to a labor camp in Germany run by the SS. We escaped the camp thanks to a Dutch cook who told us of an opportunity to get away. We later wrote a letter for him, hoping that at the end of the war he could be saved. A few days after escaping we met American and British soldiers who became the liberators. These men provided us with food and shelter. Because we were not in the camp when the liberation came, we were not placed in a displaced person’s camp but worked to sustain ourselves. One sister worked as a medic for the United Nations Refugee Agency, one as a nurse, one as a social worker and I worked as an interpreter for the British Red Cross. One sister and I went to England where I attended art school in London. I won a foreign student scholarship to Denver University. There I received my Bachelor of Fine Arts and got a job in Long Beach, California, where I taught fourth grade. From there I went to Columbia University to get my master's degree in fine arts and fine arts education and then settled in New York where I taught art to high school students. We moved to Dade County thirty-six years ago, and for twenty years I taught art. I was awarded the best teacher three times. I was also a museum art educator. Eleven years ago, I retired. Magda now teaches art as an adjunct at the Academy for Lifelong Learning at Florida International University. She also speaks to children about Holocaust education.
