recently had an opportunity to speak person to person
with an Auschwitz survivor....allow me to relate the
circumstances: I was sitting with my son at a
table in a patio which is surrounded by various shops
and restaurants in Los Angeles. There are also
two escalators ascending and descending to and from
the second floor, which sports a Target and cosmetics
store. Anyway, we were casually sitting there
enjoying a cool coca cola on a very warm July afternoon,
when I suddenly happen to look up and see an elderly,
white haired lady descending the escalator in the company
of a younger man, who I correctly assumed was her son.
I immediately noticed that the lady had a number tattooed
on her forearm.
What a coincidence
that this lady and her son decided to sit down at
the table directly adjacent to me. When her
son arose and headed for a Starbucks, I thought
to myself, "Well, this is now or never, because
such opportunities rarely present themselves."
I turned and struck up a conversation with the lady,
and was very courteous, sympathetic and considerate
of her feelings. As she lit up a cigarette,
I said to her, "I couldn't help but notice the tattoo
on your arm. Were you in a concentration camp?"
She turned and looked in my direction and
nodded. I then asked, "May I ask which camp
you were in?" She immediately replied:
"Auschwitz." Just one word. Auschwitz.
I then said, "How did you manage to survive?"
And she looked at me and said, "God saved me."
I asked her if she
left with the German staff when they evacuated the
camp in February 1945, but she didn't respond.
I continued to ask
questions as gently as I could, and inquired as
to which country she had been originally deported
from, and she answered, "Czechoslovakia."
Her answers thus far were consistently terse, but
friendly. I then prodded a bit more and asked
whether she had been deported from Theresienstadt,
but she declined to reply, so I sought to redirect
the questioning by asking if she had ever encountered
any of the infamous female overseers in the camp.
She looked at me quizzically, as if she did not
know what or whom I was talking about, so I asked,
"Where were you housed in Auschwitz? Were
you in the Familienlager or were you in Birkenau?
" This question again met with no response,
so I then asked, "Did you ever have occasion to
run into Irma Grese while you were in the camp?"
The name appeared to mean nothing to her, so I asked
if she remembered Maria Mandel, who was one of the
head female overseers in the camp. Again,
no sign of recognition and not a word in response.
So then I said, "Die Aufseherinnen."
At that word, she
raised an eyebrow and glanced over at me.
The unusual expression on her face seemed to acknowledge
recognition of the word, so I asked again if she
had any memory of either of them, as both were very
notorious in the press and both had been tried,
convicted and executed after the war. When
I mentioned that Ms. Grese had been judged at the
Belsen Trial, the lady simply nodded and smiled.
I was about to give
up on any further questions when her son suddenly
walked up with two beverages in his hands.
When he sat down, the lady politely introduced me
to her son. Her English was refined and excellent
although with a distinctive Jewish accent.
I mentioned to the son that she and I had been talking
about her experiences during the war, and he glanced
up at me and then at his mother. I then casually
and sincerely remarked, "It is truly a miracle that
your mother managed to survive." Naturally,
he agreed, and then I asked how she happened to
be saved and he shot back, "She was liberated by
the Americans."
I let that statement
register for a moment and looked to the mother,
and she did not dispute it. Thereafter I said,
"But I was under the impression that the Americans
did not liberate Auschwitz. Wasn't it the
Soviets who liberated the camp?" The son looked
up at me, rather astonished, as did the mother,
and then she nodded her head in agreement with me
that she was liberated by the Russians. However,
the question prompted an immediate case of the 'runs'
for, within the span of three seconds, the son suddenly
blurted out, "Mother, it's time to get going now."
And that is exactly
what they did. In fact, they left so fast
I didn't even get a chance to mutter a good-bye
or 'next year in Jerusalem.'