Linda Breder

Linda Breder (née Reich; 24 February 1924 – 19 September 2010) was a Slovak Holocaust survivor. During World War II, Breder was among the nearly 1,000 teenage girls and unmarried young women deported on the first official transport of Jews to Auschwitz. Very few of the girls on this first transport – or any of the other early transports – survived the more than three years until the end of the war. In Auschwitz, Breder worked as part of the Kanada Kommando, responsible for collecting the stolen belongings of prisoners, mostly Jews who had been murdered in the gas chambers on arrival.

Early life Breder grew up in a middle-class Orthodox Jewish home. Her father, a leather merchant and a Hebrew teacher, owned a store in Stropkov and the family lived on the main street of the town. Breder had four siblings: two older brothers, a twin brother, and a younger sister. Following her mother's death during childbirth in 1926, the siblings were raised by their grandparents and maternal aunt, except for Linda and her twin brother, who stayed with their father. Later, after her father remarried, Linda was raised without knowing that her stepmother was not her biological mother. Their first tasks included spreading manure on frozen fields without any tools, using their bare hands. As the weather grew warmer and the fields thawed, the work had to be done barefoot since the wooden shoes would get stuck in the muddy fields, and all tasks had to be performed while running.

Breder served as a witness in several Nazi war crime trials. She participated, for example, in the trial of Gottfried Weise in the 1980s. Weise worked as a guard in the Kanada warehouses in Auschwitz. Breder remembered Weise because of his cruelty and distinctive glass eye. None of the prisoners knew Weise's name, as he was most often called by his nickname "Ślepy", meaning blind in Slavic languages. Breder was able to identify Weise based on photographs and she testified against him in court. During the trial, Breder described how Weiss wanted to place cans, especially on the heads and shoulders of young boys, to use them as targets for shooting. Breder also recounted how the women working in Kanada attempted to help a thirsty young boy who was on his way to the gas chamber by throwing water to him over the electric fence. When Weiss noticed this, he threw the child into the air and impaled him with his bayonet. When the child didn't die, he struck his head against the wall. Following this, Weise punished the women working in Kanada by lining them up and shooting every tenth woman to death.

In her later years, Breder became an outspoken Holocaust survivor, and shared her experiences through various mediums. In 1997, Breder was the main speaker at the North Peninsula's yearly Yom HaShoah observance. In 2005, her words were quoted by Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz in the opening statement delivered on the 60th commemoration of Auschwitz's liberation. Breder was interviewed for the BBC documentary series Auschwitz: The Nazis and 'The Final Solution' that was first televised on BBC Two on 11 January 2005. She returned to Auschwitz several times for educational purposes.