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From Jerry & Sharon
Watson:
We heard this incredible story
last week while we were on a tour in Poland. We had just
visited Auschwitz prizon camp when our tour guide read it to our
tour group. I think our friends and neighbors would like to
read it too. This copy was sent to us by our good friends in
Texas.
Sharon and Jerry
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August 1942. Piotrkow , Poland.
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The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All
the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had
been herded into a squa re. Word had gotten around that we
were being moved. My father had only recently died from
typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My
greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
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"Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to
me,"don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen." I was tall
for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be
deemed valuable as a worker.
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An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the
cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age.
"Sixteen,"I said. He directed me to the left, where my three
brothers and other healthy young men already stood.
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My mother was motioned to the right with the other women,
children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore,
"Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wa
nted to stay with her. "No,"she said sternly. "Get away. Don't
be a nuisance. Go with your brothers."
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She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She
was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once,
she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
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My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany
. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night
weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day,
we were issued uniforms and identification numbers."Don't call
me Herman anymore." I said to my brothers. "Call me
94983."
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I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead
into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I
had become a number.
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Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of
Buchenwald's sub-camps near Berlin. One morning I
thought I heard my mother's voice,"Son," she said softly but
clearly, I am going to send you an angel." Then I woke up.
Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could
be no angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.
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A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around
the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards
could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of the
fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with light, almost
luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I
glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her
softly in German. "Do you have something to eat?" She didn't
understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the
question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt,
with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked
unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.
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She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over
the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away,
I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow." I returned
to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She
was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of
bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or
linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't
know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that
she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking
her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl
on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in
its way as the bread and apples.
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Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into
a coal car and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in
Czechoslovakia. "Don't return," I told the girl that day.
"We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look
back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name
I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
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We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was
winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate
seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the
gas chamber at 10:00 AM. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to
prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me,
but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my
parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
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But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw
people running every which way through camp. I caught up with
my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates
swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all
of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that
the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a
place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had
saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there was
none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the
angel had come.
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made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish
charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived
the Holocaust
and trained in electronics. Then I came to America , where my
brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army
during the Korean
War, and returned to New York City after two years. By
August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was
starting to settle in.
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One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me.
"I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double
date." A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept
pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx
to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a
blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx
hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with
swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that
sparkled with life.
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The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to
talk to,easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind
dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We
took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic
breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember
having a better time.
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We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.
As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that
much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the
subject, "Where were you," she asked softly, "during the war?"
"The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the
irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you can never
forget. She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in
Germany, not far from Berlin ," she told me. "My father knew a
priest, and he got us Aryan papers." I imagined how she must
have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And yet here we
were, both survivors, in a new world. "There was a camp next
to the farm." Roma continued. "I saw a boy there and I would
throw him apples every day."
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What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other
boy. "What did he look like? I asked. "He was tall, skinny,
and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six months." My
heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.
"Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was
leaving Schlieben?" Roma looked at me in amazement. "Yes!"
"That was me! " I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded
with emotions. I couldn't believe it! My angel.
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"I'm not letting you go." I said to Roma. And in the back of
the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want
to wait. "You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet
her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was
so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most
important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her
goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she
had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found
her again, I could never let her go.
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That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50
years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I
have never let her go.
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Herman
Rosenblat, Miami Beach, Florida
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This is a true story and you can find out more by Googling
Herman Rosenblat. He was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75. This
story is being made into a movie called The Fence. This
e-mail is intended to reach 40 million people
world-wide. Join us and be a link in the memorial chain
and help us distribute it around the world. Please send this
e-mail to 10 people you know and ask them to continue the
memorial chain. Please don't just delete it. It will
only take you a minute to pass this along.
Thank
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