A young Christian German named Cecilia facilitated the gathering and translated as best she could for us of the ladies' stories in Russian. She and her husband and two small children had answered the call to be agents of reconciliation between Christians (from Germany and around the world) and victims of the Holocaust.
Viera is from the Soviet Union, and was a young child at the time of the war. Her city was full of factories which were seized for the German war machine. The workers would work in the factories by day, and by night they began building a secret opposition garrison, which never had an opportunity to succeed. She and her siblings had so little to eat, that their growth was stunted. She remembers longing for milk, and when her mother had none to give her, she "made her own" by mixing chalk and water. She "made Aliyah" in 2002, and has three children and 9 grandchildren.
Larissa was 4 at the time of the war, but remembers everything. She was from the Ukraine, and when a member of our group asked about their views on Putin, a controversy broke out between Larissa and the two Russian ladies. We tried to change the subject quickly.
Luda, from Moscow, lost her grandfather because he was standing near the border when the Germans came on motorcycles, shooting people for sport.
She told us the story of Babi Yar, the capital of Ukraine near Kiev. It was there that 100,000 Russians were systematically lined up along the edge of a large pit, shot, and fell into an open grave. The earth looked like it was writhing, as some victims were still alive. More dirt and bodies kept being piled on top, with the ground shifting under the weight. The site had never been officially acknowledged as the site of this atrocity, but it was generally known what had happened there. When the government prepared to build on that spot in the 1990's, four days of rain halted the process as human bones began to resurface. The building process was stopped, and a memorial monument was finally put on that place.
Here is a picture of several of us, after hearing their stories, and sharing a meal and even some prayer time.
Two days earlier, in Jaffa, we heard from Eva Lavi, the youngest girl on Schindler's List, a woman who has given her testimony before the UN. She was between the ages of 2 and 8 at the time of the war, and lost a childhood which she would never recover. Her mother sat her down at the age of 3, told her that there were people trying to kill them, and that she should only listen to and trust her mommy and daddy. She was to hide and not make a sound when she heard German boots on the stairs, and she and her mother had found hiding places for her in the laundry, under the bed, and one day she was even forced to hold onto the frozen drain pipe outside of the window of their flat, when a Nazi officer barged in. The desperation of life in the Polish Ghetto was such that she remembers her dad sitting she and her mother down, and beginning to pour Cyanide in a spoon, offering it to her first (she figures so that she would not have to watch them die). Her mother, who generally viewed him as second only to God, fiercely opposed him on this, and said, "God knows what will happen to us. It is up to Him whether we live or we die." She credits her mothers faith, quick thinking, and steel wrapped in a deceptively fragile frame with their survival through the horrors of the war. When they were transferred to Auschwitz, her mother hid her under the barracks during the day, and the little girl remained safe yet became a witness to untold horrors. She was never able to tell that she had seen what happened to her two twin cousins amidst a crowd of young and old were told to run up a hill. Those who couldn't make it fast enough to the top were mowed down by German rifles. She began to shake with this recollection. When an officer came to claim her for their children's program, her mother nearly fainted, sure that this would be one of the programs that children were rounded up for, and never seen again. In a moment of kindness, the guard told her where she could view her daughter the next day, and assured her that she would be fine. Eva was then bathed and scrubbed, placed in new clothes, and dumbfounded by the amounts of food put before her. Without realizing, she had been selected to prove to the world and the visiting Red Cross that conditions in labor camps were to be envied. She was dressed in new clothes, given three meals a day, until the time when the Red Cross visited and asked her if she was hungry - to which she said, no she was not. She even had chubby cheeks at the time. At a time when all of Europe was hungry, the Germans wanted to say they had created enviable conditions in their camps. Finally, she and her mother were identified as being on Schindler's List, and were given transport out of the camp (when asked why he would need such a young employee, Schindler said that she was actually a specialist, and that her small fingers were needed for specific operations). A Polish man who was forced to serve at the camp gate, fell to his knees as she exited the camp, saying it was the first time he had ever seen a child leave the camp alive. When they arrived at the factory for their supposed jobs, Schindler did not require any of them to work, but bought ammunition from elsewhere that they were supposed to be making, and helped them to resettle and recover. She remembers feeling that it was not ok, that she had survived, when so many, especially her twin cousins, had not. Her one constant prayer was for her aunt and uncle who were grieving their twins to have more chidren, and God would answer by blessing her aunt and uncle with a light haired and a dark haired daughter - two cousins which she remains closely bonded to, to this day.
1 comment:
Heart wrenching. So very, very disturbing and detailed. Lord have mercy.
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