When Angela Orosz-Richt was seven, she was instructed at school to write down her name and where she was born. When she realized how hard it was to spell Auschwitz, she begged her mother that night to change the place of her birth but her mother refused, telling her that one day she’ll understand what being born at Auschwitz means.

Orosz-Richt, a resident of Montreal, was born to her mother, Vera Bein, 24, on the top bunk of a barrack in Auschwitz-Birkenau in December 1944, weighing only 1 kg and too weak to cry, which may have saved her life.

Orosz-Richt’s parents arrived in Auschwitz from their native Hungary on May 25, 1944, when her mother was three months pregnant. Her mother was selected for forced labor but later was chosen for experimentation by the infamously cruel Dr. Mengele.  Miraculously both Bein and the baby survived Mengele’s experiments but Bein was never able to bear more children.

Bein’s pregnancy never became apparent since the fetus was so tiny and when she went into labor, a barrack orderly who was a doctor’s daughter helped Bein to give birth on the top bunk. Two hours later, Bein had to leave tiny Orosz-Richt on the bed and stand in the freezing cold for roll call in nothing but rags.

Five weeks later, when Auschwitz was liberated and Bein and her tiny baby were still clinging to life, Bein found out that her husband had been murdered. She returned to her native city of Budapest and eventually remarried a fellow survivor and native of Budapest who lost his own wife and daughter in Auschwitz.

Orosz-Richt continued to cling life but barely – weighing only 6.6 pounds, less than some typical newborns, when she was one year old.

“Most doctors refused to treat me, believing I would die, Orosz-Richt told The Guardian in 2016. “Even my grandmother said to her daughter: ‘Let her die, Verushka (her nickname for her), she will never be a proper child.’ But one doctor held me upside down like a chicken and when I raised my head, he said: ‘This child will live.'”

Orosz-Richt, who grew up in Hungary, was so weak she couldn’t walk until she was seven. “All my socks were thick knitted things to cover up my stick legs. All my dresses were full of lace and gathered together to make me look fatter.”

Even today Orosz-Richt stands less than five feet tall but is full of energy. In 1973, Orosz-Richt immigrated to Canada and today is a resident of Montreal and has two children, eight grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

In 2015, Orosz-Richt also testified at the war crimes trial of former Auschwitz SS guard Oskar Groening in Germany. “In memory of my father, who I never knew, and in memory of my mother, who had given birth to me in those indescribable conditions, beaten by SS men, surviving on less than 400 calories a day, for that and for everyone you helped murder, I cannot forgive you, Herr Groening,” she stated.

“I have a mission … to stand and point an accusing finger at those responsible for the inhumanity into which I was born.”

In 2016, Orosz-Richt testified against Reinhold Hanning, a 94-year-old former SS guard, in a German courtroom, telling The Guardian that she wanted to give testimony, she said, “on behalf of the six million Jews who cannot be here because they were murdered”.

“In fact, it was far more than six million that were murdered. Just think of all those children that didn’t grow up and have children, not to mention the many women who survived Auschwitz but were never able to have children.

“And, as we know now, their children who in turn suffer from hormonal imbalances as a result of the chemicals their mothers were given. I’m not a mathematician but you don’t need to be to know that six million is actually a very misleading number.”