A Story of Survival

A Story of Survival:

Freida Offman Szlachther

by akiva gersh

I grew up as part of a large extended family on my mother's side with cousins of all ages, from infants to elders, some who I had more intimate connections with and would call "Aunt" or "Uncle". We got together somewhat regularly, whether for a simcha (festive gathering) or for a family meeting, though not nearly as often as the previous generation had; they would congregate every weekend at a different relative's house. Though almost entirely secular, there was a warm tangible Jewish feel to my family, expressed mostly through the Yiddish that was spoken and the comically stereotypical Jewish ways of being. However, due to a Jewish education that was unfortunately less than inspiring, I moved away from any affiliations with Judaism as I entered my later high school and early college years. I was unable to find inspiration or meaning in my Jewish tradition and had decided to look elsewhere for spiritual nourishment. (Thank G-d, my searching brought me to the true face of Judaism and today I am a Torah observant Jew.) During this time my connection to Judaism had dwindled so much that when asked if I was Jewish I would respond, "By birth, yes, but not by belief," and the only thing that kept me even admitting that miniscule connection was the shadows of the Holocaust and its intense impact on my family.

Almost all of my older relatives had immigrated to the states from Poland either prior to or after the Holocaust. The Holocaust was something I knew about even as a young child, well aware that most of my extended family who were in Poland at the time had been killed by the hands of the evil Nazis. Some, however, were fortunate to have survived, though I never learned exactly how or even thought to ask. The story told below is the first one from my family that I have heard in such detail. It is the story of my maternal grandmother's niece Frida, whose grandfather was also related to my grandmother's father-in-law. Before I interviewed her I had only known one small piece of her long journey of survival, which I discovered was far from accurate. It has been such a gift for me to be able to sit down with Frida and listen to her vividly retell her story. Though her story is a frightening portrayal of the great height to which anti-Semitism reached in Europe during the World War II, it is also an inspiring testament to my cousin's will to live and the eternality of the Jewish people.

(Though I myself wrote her story based on our interview, I tell it in the first person as I felt it would be more personal and powerful.)

My name is Frida Offman Szlachter and I was born on Decemeber 22, 1925 in the small Polish town of Copshenica. I lived there on our family owned farm, about 50 acres in size, outside the main town with my mother Sarah, three brothers Simcha, Herschel, and Leibl and one sister Tzudel . My father Yitzchak died when I was only two years old. On our property we had a water mill which was used to grind wheat, originally owned by my grandfather, who was a businessman. On our land we grew wheat for the mill, potatoes and other vegetables, and owned apple, pear and other fruit trees. The closest big town was Sandermeirch and we were part of the district of Kelsa. My town was about 200 miles from Warsaw. It was also about 17 miles from the town of Plonch, my husband's home town.

I grew up in a very religious family. I went to public school during the week to learn math, geography, Polish language and history, among other subjects, and on Sundays I went to the Bais Yaakov school for my Jewish studies. I also went to a school called B'nos during my high school years to further my studies. I grew up speaking both Polish and Yiddish in the home. In the immediate vicinity of my house, which was a ten minute walk out of the town, there lived about 10-12 families, but in the main town there were approximately 500 Jewish families. The small area where we lived had a shteeble as well as an eruv to allow carrying on Shabbos. I was involved with the various Bais Yaakov activities for girls, where I learned to pray as well as read and write in Yiddish. Because of my family's strict religious observance, my parents did not allow me to be part of organizations like Shomer HaTzayir since they were co-ed and my parents were against boys and girls mixing together. They believed that people should meet through the traditional way of shidduchim. The co-ed nature of these organizations was the primary reason why people were against them in my town.

For the most part, my memories from before the war were positive, and there were not all that many problems with our neighboring non-Jews. Though I do remember that around the Jewish holidays the Christians in the area would spread horrible stories about the Jews, such as blaming us for the death of Jesus and the all-too familiar blood libel, claiming that Jews kill a Christian child each year and use his blood to make their Pesach matzahs. These stories usually were first told by the priests in church and would incite a rise in Polish hate against us Jews. Though I never witnessed a pogrom prior to the war, my mother told me she had.

There were many non-Jews in my town, but relations between us and them were not much more than superficially congenial. In school I often experienced anti-Semitism, and was not allowed to enter a certain high school for intelligent students simply because I was Jewish.

I did have one very close Christian friend from school, though, whose father was the mayor of the town. We used to spend a lot of time together studying and playing. She obviously did not hate the Jews like my other Christian friends. I believe this was due to her good upbringing at home, in which her parents did not instill in her anti-Semitic feelings. Other kids were taught to hate the Jews both at home and at church.

I was 14 years old when the Germans first came to our town. The date was September 1, 1939. I'll never forget that day. They came into the Jewish homes and made sure to let us know how bad they were. Everyone was naturally very frightened. We had heard about the Nazis and what they did on Kristallnacht from a Jewish mother and her son who fled Germany and stayed with my family, but we never thought they would their evil would reach our town. Everyone was trying to hide, especially us girls, out of fear that the soldiers would harm us. I remember the Nazis telling us they were going to work the Jews very hard and do bad things to us. Right away they were taking Jews and beating them up in the streets. Many Jews at this time ran away and tried to get to Russia where they thought they would be more safe. Some who ran away at first later came back due to lack of food and water. At the same time there were Jews who ran from Germany and stayed in our town, thinking they had traveled far enough away from the Nazis.

When the Nazis first came in, no one could have imagined in their worst nightmares that they would do what they did. Right away their was darkness, everyone was scared and life was no longer the same. When the Nazis came into my house, they told my mother to kill a chicken and cook it for them. All my mother could think about was that if she killed the chicken herself, and not a shochet, it would be traif and cooking it in her pots would make them traif as well. This was the kind of Jew my mother was, passionate and G-d fearing.

That first Shabbos after the Nazis came everyone called the "Black Shabbos". There were no candles to light and everyone was scared for their lives. It was far from the weekly joyous celebration that everyone had known their entire lives. From that point on, men did not gather any more in the shuls for prayer. People davened instead at home alone.

The Jews were forced to perform menial tasks in town like cleaning the streets. The Nazis beat up the Jews, arrested them and put them in jail. They especially liked to take intelligent Jews. I didn't witness any of these horrors since I was hiding in my house, terrified to go outside.

The Nazis formed a Yudenrat in our town. They were ordered to take all the valuables of the Jews, gold, silver, and even copper doorknobs, which were used to make German ammunition for the war.

Right away we were forced to wear the Magen David on our clothing. Since I had blond hair and blue eyes and did not look Jewish, without the star I could easily pass for a Pole, something that worked to my advantage later on in the war. A cousin didn't want to wear the star and the Nazis killed him because of this.

Throughout all of the intensifying craziness, the Poles were not helpful, their non-action being motivated by their hope that they would possess all the Jews' belongings once we were taken away. Later on in the war, their non-action turned into brutal action, helping the Germans in their campaign to wipe out us Jews.

During this time, before the Nazis set up the ghetto, they would periodically call out small groups of Jews and kill them right on the spot. We were all were frightened that at any moment we could be taken and killed. As a result of this, by time the Germans liquidated the ghetto there were not many Jews left to take out.

In 1941 we were all taken to the ghetto, allowed only to take what we could carry. The Nazis placed all the Jews in ten houses in the town, surrounding it by a fence in order to keep us all in. They even used dogs to make sure we didn't get out. But I managed to sneak out at night to get my family food from my Christian friend's family. This is where my blond hair and blue eyes were very helpful, and, again, since I didn't wear the star, people would not suspect I was a Jew if they saw me. Though sneaking out frightened me very much, there was no other way to get food. Thank G-d, I never got into a confrontation in all the times I sneaked out. I would walk through the forest to get to my friend's house and had to cross over a stream. My friend's family had dogs, that would bark when I got close, and this alerted her that I was there. Her father, the mayor, was the one who gave my friend the food to give to me. My family was the only Jewish family that they helped.

In the ghetto no one worked. Food came in small amounts from the Germans and they continued their practice of randomly killing Jews.

We were taken out of the ghetto erev Rosh Hashanah, 1942. I remember my mother was baking small pita-like breads when we were forced to leave. Whoever could walk on their own strength was directed towards buses. Those who couldn't were shot right away. My whole family was on the bus together. We were told that these buses were headed towards Treblinka, but during the trip the Germans began to pump poison gas into where we were being held. We all started to choke and knew that this gas would kill us. Realizing what was happening, my youngest brother Leibl kicked out one of the covered up windows and jumped out. I didn't want to jump out after him because I knew if I did it would be the last time I saw my family. On the other hand, I knew if I didn't, I would surely die. I was so frightened and was crying hysterically along with my entire family. With no time to think, I decided to jump out after my brother. The rest of my family was too scared to jump, and most likely would not have fit through the small opening in the bus even if they tried. Before I jumped, my mother gave me a pouch that she had filled with a bit of money and some of the family's valuables in order to help me survive whatever was to follow. This was the last time I saw my family.

As a result of jumping out of a moving bus along with the extreme intensity of the situation, I fainted mid-flight. When I woke up on the ground on the side of the road, I found my brother next to me on the ground…dead, shot and killed by Nazi soldiers. Somehow I had survived. I sat there crying, not knowing what in the world I was going to do from there. I wanted to give my brother a proper burial, but I didn't have the tools necessary to dig a whole in the ground. I was worried that wild animals would come to eat him, so I did the best I could and covered him with dirt and leaves. I then decided that I needed to do something, so I got up and headed towards the next town. I didn't want to walk in the streets out of fear of being spotted by someone, so I went into the forest. I had a feeling that I knew how to get to Plonch, where my future husband was from, and began to run in that direction. I ran all the rest of that day and all that night, 17 miles in all until I got to Plonch. I only had with me what I was wearing when I left the ghetto and the pouch from my mother around my neck.

Running through the woods the next day, I spotted through the trees straw-roofed houses and I knew that I had made it to Plonch. It was the first day of Rosh Hashanah. The Nazis had not arrived there yet since it was difficult to access as the roads leading there were simple dirt roads and it was located deep in the country. The town did not even have electricity or running water. By the time I arrived, people knew what had happened in my home town. People congregated in the streets, naturally terrified and wondering what would happen to them.

Upon hearing the horrible news, my husband Moshe/Morris ran away with his brothers. They went to a Polish friend of theirs who agreed to allow them to make a bunker in his barn to hide. They constructed a double wall there and hid in between them whenever Nazis or even Poles came around, since there were many bands of Poles at that time going around killing Jews. At times they would kill a Jew for a mere kilogram of sugar. In total there were eight people hiding together behind the wall. At night they would sleep on the hay in the barn. The next time I saw my husband was in 1945, after the war in Lodz.

During this time, many others ran as well including my sister Sima and her family, who were all killed by Poles while living in a camp in the forest in 1942.

In Plonch, there was a policeman from my town who scheduled a meeting for me with a man who could obtain fake papers for me. My name from that point until the end of the war was Yadja, a name my husband still calls me by to this day. As soon as I had by papers, I ran from Plonch, fearing that what happened in my town would happen there. After a short while I came to a river that I could not cross on my own and needed to hire a ferryman to take me across. The ferryman took me across but stole all of the belonging that my mother had given me in the process. Though I was upset, the important thing was that I was alive and that I made it safely to the other side of the river. There, along the opposite bank, I sat down to decide where to go from there. After a short time, a wagon led by two horses passed by with a man and his wife in it. Seeing me, he said, as if in a dream, "Tell me who you are. Don't be afraid to tell me who you are. Are you Jewish?" I thought to myself, "What do I have to lose?" So I took a chance and told him that yes, I was Jewish. He asked me where I was from and about my family and it turned out that he had done business with my grandfather. He told me to wait there by the river and that he would pick me up on their way back from church. So I waited there for around two hours, during which I pretended to sleep so as to avoid having to talk with anyone else who passed by. He eventually came back and took me to his house. I felt that Hashem had sent me a rescuing angel from heaven.

It turned out that the couple was also hiding two other Jews, colleagues of the man's wife, who was a professor. The couple didn't have any children and she started to teach me as she would one of her students. She wasn't working at the time since the Germans put restrictions on the Poles as well and closed down the schools in the area. In the house where I stayed, they were constantly having meetings of members of the Polish intellectual class. Everyone who came there knew I was Jewish and liked me very much, especially my Jewish cooking, which I learned growing up watching my mother. For a while I didn't eat the meat there since it was not kosher, but then people kept telling me that I wasn't eating properly and would get sick, so I started to eat some meat. I felt very safe at this house and had a strong feeling that I could survive there until the craziness of the war died down.

One of my chores in the house was to take 10 gallons of milk in two cans everyday to a group of German soldiers, about a mile and a half walk away. As I was returning one day, I noticed a girl walking behind me who I recognized. She was one of my family's workers in our mill who lived in a house next to us that we had given to her. Never would I have imagined that this woman, who my family took care of so well, would report me to the Germans so I did not try to hide where I was going and walked directly back to the house, in plain view of this woman. The next day, there were Nazis and Polish police at the house looking for a "stranger" who was staying there. I was outside planting flowers when they came. One of the Polish police came up to me and said, "You can tell me that you're Jewish." Of course, I didn't. To see if I was really Polish, as I claimed to be, he asked me to recite a certain prayer said in church from memory. I told him that I never learned to memorize the prayers and would need a book in order to say it. I then asked him if he could say it by heart, but he couldn't so he didn't ask me anymore about it. I told the officer that the woman must have thought I was someone else and he left me alone. Then a town official came who said that I was a cousin of the man I was staying with. They looked at my papers and then went back into town to check to see if they were real or not.

When the man who took me in heard about this, he quickly gave me money and sent me on a ferry to Kracow. He told me to go to a hotel and look in the paper for some work. When I left the two Jewish professors who were also hiding there gave me an address to look for in Levov, which I held in my bra throughout the rest of my journey, an address that proved to be useful later on. When I arrived in Kracow, I checked into a hotel there. It was the first time I had ever been in a big city or stayed in a hotel. I looked through the newspapers there for work and found an ad for a job as a babysitter for a family during the day and then as a waitress at night in a pub they owned serving drinks to German soldiers. When I went to the house for an interview, the man opened the door and spoke to me in German. Although I spoke a little German and could understand what he was saying, I didn't want to speak German to him since it was so similar to Yiddish and I feared they may be able to tell I was Jewish, so I spoke to him in Polish. I got the job and moved into their house. I soon found out that my boss was a Nazi. Though he was a private businessman, all businessmen needed to belong to the Nazi party in order to run their businesses. But he was a kind man and I felt that this was a good place for me to be since it was very unlikely that they would suspect a Jew to be in this type of place.

He registered me in order that I could work for him. I enjoyed my work; their two kids were nice and well-behaved. Each night, after dinner, I worked for another two hours giving out drinks in their pub and cleaning up. I made good money and had no real expenses since they were feeding me all of my meals, so I was able to save a good amount of money. Shortly after being there, I realized that he was also hiding other Jews, two of them, keeping them safe by pretending to hold them in jail. He brought them every morning to his house to work and returned them to their cell at night just to sleep. He kept them there so they wouldn't be sent away to a concentration camp. When they saw me, they had a feeling I was Jewish, but I didn't want to say anything to them just in case. They didn't speak Yiddish since they were from Germany and spoke only German. A few months later, one of them asked me if I would be able to bring them bread, since there were a lot of people who were dying from hunger in the jail. I figured I couldn't lose anything by doing so, and with the money I had saved I could certainly afford it. I had a friend named Ana who lived in the house next door and worked for another German family. I had a feeling she was too was Jewish, but, again, I didn't want to make any grave mistakes, so I didn't ask her. I did ask her, though, if she wanted to go with me to get them bread and she agreed. So we went together and at first there were no problems. We were successful in our mission, motivated mostly by the fact that it was a mitzvah to help out other Jews in need. One day, though, the superintendent from the house followed us and saw us put the bread on the window sill for the inmates. As a result, my friend was arrested and badly beaten. They beat her so much that she confessed that she was Jewish. Right away they took her and killed her. After finding out about this, my boss approached me and asked if I too was Jewish to which I told him no. He tried to get me to admit that I was, as Ana had done, and asked me why I gave the inmates bread. I told him that I gave them bread simply because they were hungry, that I just wanted to help them. He told me that he was given an order to arrest me and would give me one night to think over what I was telling him. He then took away my papers, but left them in an unlocked drawer as I looked on. In the drawer there was also money. I really believe that he did that intentionally and wanted to help me. He left and locked me in the room where I was staying. Without any other options, I decided to escape by jumping out of the window, which was only two floor stories high. I took my papers from the drawer, along with the money that was there and jumped out. Down below there was a high pile of sand which the kids would play in, so my fall was somewhat cushioned. The only thing I broke was my arm, but I didn't even feel the pain since I was so terrified of what was happening. After the war I returned to that house to show my husband where I jumped from and also to try and find that superintendent and get him arrested for killing Ana.

To backtrack a little bit, while I was working for this family, I had to pretend to go to church on Sunday. I never actually went and instead spent my time sitting on a bench outside. One day I met a woman who was sitting next to me and we became very friendly. I told her that I was working for a German family and she asked me why I wasn't with my family. I told her that the Germans in my hometown wanted to take me to Germany to work so I ran away. Throughout my years of running and hiding my Jewish identity I constantly had to make up stories in order to survive. This woman told me that if the family I was working for now ever tried to send me to Germany I should come to her house. So when I jumped from the window, that's exactly where I went. I told her I wanted to run away and, upon seeing that I had no shoes and was only wearing an apron, she gave me shoes and an old coat. She had her son take me to a small train station in Velitchka. You needed special German permission to ride the trains, which I did not have, but I got on a train anyway that was going to Levov. In Levov lived a friend of the two Jewish professors who were hiding in the first house I was in, whose address that had given me when I left. I sat in the German section thinking I would be safer there. When a train official came around he asked me if I was German and I told him yes, so he left me alone. On the way there the train stopped at a small station and I got off so that they wouldn't check to see if I had a ticket. There was a Red Cross station there so I asked them to look at my broken arm. They made for me a simple wooden splint which helped my arm to heal properly. I also bought a paper there and was shocked at what I saw. In the paper, there was a picture of me and a description of how I was wanted by the officials. They were looking for me! I couldn't believe it. At the time I had long braids, which I had been growing for six years and loved so much. I cut them off, though, so as to alter my appearance. I was planning to get back on the train to get to Levov but the Red Cross helpers told me not to. They felt that taking a bus would be much safer. The Red Cross people were very helpful and were only looking out for the best of the people. So I took a bus and got to Levov and looked for the address that I had with me. When I arrived at the house, the people there told me that I would have a hard time in Levov. There were many Ukranians there who were just as bad, if not worse, than the Germans. They were only looking for Jews to kill. During my short stay there, I didn't even go outside except to go to the bus station to leave and head to Warsaw. I was able to pay for all this travelling with the money I still had left over from my previous job. Before going to Warsaw, I even bought new clothes so I wouldn't look like I was homeless and be suspected of running from somewhere. It was around the beginning of 1944 when I got to Warsaw and right away I checked into a hotel across from the station.

I soon found out about a job that required fluency in both German and Polish and entailed going shopping for the kitchen of the crew which was working to dismantle the Warsaw Ghetto. Occasionally, workers would find Jews still in hiding and kill them. Working on this project were partisans and others who I suspected of being Jewish. One day, my suspicion was strengthened when one of these partisans warned me to be careful the following day because my German boss was targeted to be killed. Sure enough, the next day, as I was walking out of the hotel with my boss and others to go to work, out of nowhere came a swarm of bullets and my boss was shot dead. I was covered with his blood and fainted on the ground. The police arrived and questioned me, but I told them that I didn't see anything because I knew it was the partisans who did this and I didn't want to get them in trouble. I went back to work in the ghetto and the very next day the Poles, including the partisans, made an uprising against the Germans.

In all the sudden craziness I decided to side with and run away with the partisans, who were turning over buses and involved in gun fights with the Nazis. I was primarily just hiding with them and didn't get involved in any of the fights. Once we saw that we were starting to lose, we went down into the sewers to hide, where we stayed for about a week. It was horrible down there. There were rats everywhere and we had no food or water. If we stayed there much longer we would have died, but regardless, the Germans eventually found us and forced us to come out waving white pieces of cloth or they would force us out with gas. From there we were all taken to a concentration camp for Polish prisoners in Breslow. In just a moment, my years of success in running and hiding and concealing my identity were over, and I was now captured by the Nazis. Upon arriving at the camp, they shaved our heads and gave us uniforms and flimsy sandals to wear. Across from our camp was a Jewish camp, where I saw people dressed the same as we were. We were forced to work in coal mines, loading up wagon after wagon with coal that was used to run the German trains. Throughout my time there I was constantly hungry and thought I was going to die. As they only fed us water with small pieces of potato, a mixture they called soup, I used to steal from the food that they gave to their dogs. Of all the hardships and challenges I experienced throughout the war, this was for sure the worst and most difficult and was not always optimistic that I would survive.

When the Germans began losing the war, they took all of us from the camp, put us on trains, and brought us to Berlin. This was around April 1945. At the time, British and American forces were bombing Germany, as we were nearing Berlin, our train was hit by an American bomb and the car I was in separated from the others. Fortunately all the Nazis were on the other cars, so we all jumped off the train and ran into the forest to hide. We survived by eating whatever food we could find and supplemented this with food we stole from houses nearby.

On May 8^th Russian soldiers came and took over the area where we were hiding. They thought that we were Germans and held their guns to us. I explained to them that we were coming from a concentration camp and that we were Polish. There was one major there who I thought was Jewish, so I went up to him and said confidently in Yiddish, "I'm not Christian, I'm Jewish." I didn't think about what might happen if I was wrong, but it didn't matter since my feelings were right; he was Jewish. I told him that the Poles I was with didn't know I was Jewish and if they did, they might kill me.

At that time I weighed a sickly 60 pounds as a result of being in the camp for a year. The Russian soldiers brought us food which made most of the people sick because our bodies were not used to normal food or normal amounts. I only ate and drank a small bit and as a result didn't get sick.

The Jewish Russian major then asked me, "What do you want me to do for you?" He said he could take me to a German house to pick up some clothes, since I only had the clothes I was still wearing from the camp. I told him that I wanted to go to a German woman's house and shave her head. I knew it wasn't the nicest thing to do, but I felt such a strong desire to do something to the Germans, to show them even a small taste of what happened to us.

There was a law at that time that soldiers were allowed 24 hours to do whatever they wanted to the German people, after which they were prohibited to do so by the Geneva Convention. So the major took me to a German house and I shaved off part of the woman's hair, just enough to ruin it.

After the war, I went back to Poland on the same cattle transport trains used to take Jews to the camps. I went to the town of Sandermeirch where I found out that two cousins of mine had survived the war and were in Radum. There was a registry of survivors there where people went to find out if any one they knew was still alive. So I went to Radum, to this one house where all the survivors were living. I found my two cousins there. It was a miracle that we were all alive and together again. There was one man in the house who just found out that his wife was still alive in Czechoslovakia and sent her brother to bring her to Poland. In the meantime, he invited all the people from the house to make a party to celebrate the great news.

Before the party I went out with a newlywed couple and another man to the movies. After the movie, the man suggested that we go into a cafeteria to get coffee and cake. At first I didn't want to go, since we were on our way to the party and there would most likely be coffee and cake there. But I changed my mind and went into the cafeteria with him, but the young couple decided to go straight to the party.

When we were done with our cake and coffee we went to the house for the celebration. When we reached the house, we passed the two Polish police stationed there to protect us and, upon entering, I noticed spots of blood on the floor. I pointed this out to my friend, which he believed was most likely from a chicken that someone brought back from the shochet for the party. We went further into the house and began to walk up the stairs when we heard the sound of someone moaning in pain. It turned out to be the young couple, who were lying on the stairs almost dead. In the apartment above there five more Jews, including the host, who had been killed, apparently by a group of Poles living in the area. The young couple most likely had the misfortune of meeting these murderers as they were leaving the house. In the apartment they left a note that said, "We killed you because you are Jews". The only bit of light in all of this was that my cousins had left two weeks before this to go to Germany, for if they were still in Radum, they very likely would have been in the house when the murder took place. Of course, it was a miracle that I decided to go to the cafeteria with my friend, for if I didn't and went straight to the party instead, I would have been in the same situation as that young couple.

The bitterness of the situation was increased even more with the return of the host of the party's brother-in-law who brought back the host's wife from Czechoslovakia to reunite with her husband. Instead of arriving amidst celebration and festivity after the long hardships of the war, they were met with even more pain and horror as they now had to bury their loved one, along with six other Jews. Immediately after the funeral, I and all the other Jews in Radum left and went to Lodz, where there many more were Jews, all of them survivors. After this horrific experience in Radum, for many years I was afraid to answer my door when anyone knocked on it, thinking it might be someone trying to kill me.

I got married to Moshe (Morris) Szlachter on Decemeber 2, 1945 in Poland two weeks after we saw each other for the first time after the war, though we had known each as kids. When I had gone to Lodz from Radum I saw his name in the register there. I also found a cousin there who was getting married. She was 18 and her husband was 42. She was in the camps, but her husband, with the help of his wealth, was able to escape being taken away. Her brother was in the camps with her, but went to Israel during the Haganah and died in battle there. He was 18 years old. Imagine that, to survive the barbaric death machine of the Nazis, only to go to Israel and die in battle defending your homeland.

My cousin's husband said to me and Moshe that it's now time for us to get married. He figured that I was alone and he was alone and it made sense that we should get married and be together. So we made a wedding right there in the house.

For the next five years we lived in Lodz. My husband started a business selling men's clothing, forming it from absolutely nothing.

In 1946, I went to take back to my hometown to try and reclaim my belongings and sell my family's property. At that time, the Poles there in the district of Keltza had again made up a story that the Jews kidnapped a small Christian child and killed him in order to use his blood in the baking of the Pesach matzahs. I was on the train during this time, going to Sandomeirch where the deeds to my family's land were kept. On the train the Poles were taking people off who they suspected of being Jewish. Again, because I didn't look Jewish, I was not harassed. I immediately went back to Lodz, never to return to my hometown or district, and told the office there that whoever wants to buy my land would have to come to me in Lodz. Over 40 people came wanting to buy my family's lot.

We wanted to got to America and even had papers to go there, but the Russians who were in control at that time wouldn't let us go. Eventually, in 1950, we were permitted to go to Israel, where we lived for 11 years. When we left, I was pregnant and my daughter was almost born on the boat. Once again, as had happened so many times before, we were not allowed to take any of our belongings and had to pay extraordinary high fees to leave, which would have wiped us out financially if we had not sent money to friends in Israel prior to our departure. We were on the boat for 21 days and I was sick the entire trip, constantly on the deck vomiting. The boat took us around the north part of Eurpoe, around Spain and then into the Mediterranean Sea. When we got to Israel we found out that our money had been stolen and so we were left with nothing. But we were did not get too upset, for we were happy to simply be alive, to no longer be in Poland, and to now be in Israel.

It was good to be in Israel. One month after we arrived, on November 24, 1950, I gave birth to our first child, a baby girl. Who could have imagined that a few short years after the hellish Nazi oppression and their death camps Jews would be standing on the soil that their ancestors have been yearning to return to for almost two thousand years? As good as it was, though, it was also very hard. We couldn't buy anything on our own since all goods was rationed out by the government and there was constantly war or the threat of war, which forced the government to take people away to the military.

Moshe and I learned Hebrew very quickly; he still remembered some from his time learning in cheder as a child. I started a business in woman's clothing and did very well. He found a job working in construction and was taken to the army in 1956. After some time we began thinking of leaving Israel because of this consistent need for citizens to become soldiers . At the same time, however, we were already so situated, comfortable, and happy there that we weren't sure whether to leave or not. In the end, when the opportunity came, we decided to leave in 1961 since we had no way of knowing if the chance would come again.

We moved to New York and joined family and friends who had been living there from before the war as well as a few who, like us, survived the war. The ones who came earlier had set up an organization called The First Ploncher Benevolent Society to take care of the financial, social and emotional needs of those coming to the states from the town of Plonch or elsewhere. We found that people were so curious or interested to know about what happened to us during the war. It was already over 15 years since the war and people were busy with their families and their work. So we didn't talk about it much, though when asked we were always open to share our experiences. I had one boss who always asked me to come to office during lunchtime to tell him about the war. I usually would share with him my experiences, but there were some days when I did not have the strength or the desire to retell, and as a result relive on some level, the horrors that I faced, because even with the passing of time, it has not become any easier to talk about the Holocaust. It still feels like a very recent memory whenever I think about it, one that I can never get rid of or forget.

After the war, I constantly had dreams that people were trying to kill me. Making the transition from nightmare to normalcy was not easy. Still today, when my husband and I talk about experiences in the Holocaust we become nervous and shaky. There was so much fear to overcome after the war. For example, during the war I had a problem with my appendix. I didn't take care of it, though, until after the war because I was afraid that when they gave me anesthesia I would subconsciously start speaking Yiddish and reveal my Jewish identity. Every single day was a struggle for survival. Every single day I thought that I might get caught and be killed. Every single day there was a feeling that this could be the last. I was constantly having to look out for other people, to see if they were following me or were suspecting me of being a Jew. This fear has stayed with me up until today. When I first moved to America, I didn't want to take subways, because I didn't like the idea of going underground into a place where it was dark. Instead I rode the buses where I could travel in the daylight.

I and others like me lived in an insane world of running and hiding and suffering the worst oppression humankind has ever come up with. When asked what lesson I would share with others as a result of experiencing the Holocaust first-hand, I simply say that we must never ever forget what happened to us. We must tell our story so that the world knows what happened to over 6 million Jews and millions of non-Jews in possibly the darkest chapter of human history. We must never forget in order that it does not happen again to any race or class of people in our world.

When speaking about the Holocaust, people would often ask me about my relationship with G-d afterwards and if I was angry. Sure, I was angry with G-d after the war and wondered countless times why G-d didn't help such a good people like the Jewish people in their time of desperate need. At the same time, though, I have always attributed my survival throughout the war to the help I received from Above.