August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland
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 square.
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.
'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.
An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones.
He looked me up and down, and
then asked my age.
'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to
the left, where my three brothers
and other healthy young men
already stood.
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
wanted to stay with her.
'No, 'she said sternly.
'Get away. Don't be a nuisance.
Go with your brothers.'
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.
My brothers and I were transported
in a cattle car to Germany.
We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night 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.'
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 ever learned, the girl
with the apples.
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.
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.
Eventually I 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.
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.
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.
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.'
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.
'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.
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.
Herman Rosenblat of Miami Beach , Florida
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