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After the war, my boyfriend and I decided to get married.
It was then that I told him, that I unequivocally told my husband that I did not want to have children.
Not in this corrupted world.
“Hitler wanted to destroy the Jewish people, and you are helping him.
Quite the opposite: we must have many children, so that the Jewish people will live and multiply.”
I heard his words, and thought there was some sense in them.
And after the baby was born, he was the first we saw in him the revival of the Jewish people,
almost like the resurrection of the dead. The first Jewish baby!
And he wasn’t only my baby, he was everyone’s baby. Everyone took comfort in him, and so we named him Menachem [the comforter].
The camp where this transpired was called Lindenfels – it was a German resort town,
in which UNRWA had taken custody of the hotels, and converted them so as to house hundreds of refugee children.
These were orphaned children who had survived – we collected them, together with the counselors, from the various monasteries, from forests, from gentile families.
There were several hundred children.
I worked at the warehouse, and was responsible for distributing shoes and clothing.
Each child would come in, and I would take his or her measurements, and give them according to their measurements.
They sent us emissaries from Israel, to teach Hebrew, to prepare the children for Aliyah, to teach them Zionism.
We received Passover Haggadot from the Joint (JDC), and held the Passover Seder in accordance with law and custom.
But the main thing was the preparation for emigration to Israel. This brought them closer together.
I had been through this hell, I had seen what happened to my own family,
86 souls from my mother and father’s sides of the family all together. I had carried a death decree in my pocket the whole time.
At the time I would never have dared dream that I would survive –
that I would be worthy! And that I would be worthy for a state of Israel – an independent state,
which 2,000 years was dreamed of and not lived to see!
And that I would be worthy to have children, grandchildren, and now even a great-granddaughter!