The Concentration Camp Survivors
Suzy
This week marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of the start of the Holocaust. As I look at the photographs of the survivors and listen to their speeches, I am in awe of the strength of their spirit to have survived those horrors. Then I think of Suzy. Suzy and her family were from Italy. They were a large family; you could almost say they were a tribe. They came from the Lago Maggiore district of Northern Italy. During WWII, they went into hiding until the Nazis hunted them down. They were ruthlessly herded off to the concentration camps. Suzy was about thirteen years old at that time. She had exquisitely fine features, almost like a Botticelli painting. When I met her, she was perhaps in her late thirties or early forties. Her face was deeply etched with lines of suffering that belonged on the face of a woman much older than herself. Her daughter reflected the beauty of what her mother once had been.
It was the late sixties. Suzy was living in Tehran with her husband and children. Her husband worked for an Israeli construction company called Solel Boneh. The company was helping to develop parts of the city. That day, she had invited a group of ladies for tea. As she and her daughter offered us refreshments, I once more became aware of the tattooed number on her arm. People with that tattoo were Holocaust survivors. I had been curious as to the circumstances that led to those numbers. That day, I could not resist asking her about it. Without any hesitation, she told us. Her daughter stood protectively by her side.
Everyone in her family, except for an aunt and herself, had perished in the concentration camps. How had she survived? They took one look at her face and decided to send her to the Joy Division. That was what they called a unit intended specifically for the sexual needs of the SS men. These unfortunate young women had to squat in a long, straight line for hours on end, while the SS soldiers walked up and down, as if in a supermarket, choosing the one they fancied. When they satisfied their needs, the girls had to return to their squatting position. Suzy was there perhaps for about a year before the war ended. British soldiers arrived to free the camp. Amongst them was a young Jewish Eastern European man who had escaped with his family to England. He enlisted in the British army to fight against Nazi Germany. When he saw her, he knew he needed to cherish and protect her. He took her home to his mother and told her to take good care of Suzy, for he wished to eventually marry her when she healed. And that is exactly what he did.
Vera’s Uncle
Vera’s family was from Czechoslovakia. They were successful factory owners there when Hitler’s regime reared its ugly head. Her father urged the family to leave, but they could not envision the scourge that was to come. He begged and pleaded with them, but they trivialized his concern. When he finally realized he could not budge them, he decided to save his own little family. They moved to England. It was difficult at first; they missed the warm support of the large family unit. But as always happens, they adapted to what now became the norm. Vera and I were at the same boarding school in Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex. Once, when we shared the same dorm, she recounted the following story to me one night, after the matron put off the lights. Our cots were next to each other. We faced each other as she spoke in a soft whisper.
Not too long after they arrived in England, WWII began. Her family in England lost all contact and communication with their relatives. It seemed they had disappeared into thin air. Can you imagine their anxiety and desperation?
Years passed. The war ended. All that time, her father tirelessly searched the displacement lists and any other place he could think of, in the hope of finding at least one member of their family. It was all to no avail. He and his wife were sad and disheartened. From having a large, loving, and warm, supportive family, they had become a husband, a wife, a father, a mother, and their children. There were no grandparents for their children to be fussed over and spoiled by, no sisters or brothers to confide in, no aunts or uncles, no cousins. Everyone was gone. They felt utterly alone and so bereft.
One day, the husband and wife decided to go to the cinema. They settled down into their seats, waiting for the main attraction to start. In those days, they showed a segment called Pathe News. As they sat watching it, the husband suddenly jumped up from his seat and cried, “My brother! My brother! That is my brother!” Tears were pouring down his cheeks. People turned around to look at him in astonishment. Pathe News was presenting a segment concerning the displaced survivors of concentration camps. On the screen, there was a picture of his brother! That day, he became part of the news. That is how Vera’s father found one of his brothers. One wonders what would have happened if the couple had not gone to the cinema that evening? He might never have found his brother. Life takes such strange twists and turns.
The Lost Soul of Rehov Dizengoff
It was the spring of 1962 or 1963. I was in Tel Aviv. Two friends and I were strolling about Rehov Dizengoff. Rehov Dizengoff was a bustling street full of lovely shops and cafés. People were milling about everywhere. They were window shopping, strolling, chatting. It was a joyous place to be. The cafés put out tables on the sidewalk and were doing a brisk business, offering various kinds of food. On the whole, the crowd was a young and happy one. It was the lunch hour, and people sat down to eat. We were getting a bit hungry and decided to eat as well. We chose an outside table, ordered our food, and began to catch up with each other’s news. We had not seen each other in a while. One friend was from Tehran and now lived in Tel Aviv. The other was a Sabra, an Israeli born and bred; then there was me. I had been in London and was on my way back to Tehran. As was the fashion in those days, all three of us were stylishly puffing away on either Winston or Kent cigarettes, affectedly blowing the smoke through our nostrils up into the air.
The food arrived. We continued to talk and on occasion took a bite. Suddenly, I felt a man standing by my side. I glanced up at him. He was disheveled and unkempt. As I looked at him, he stretched both his hands to my plate, picked it up, and started shoveling the food into his mouth. All three of us looked at him in outrage and disbelief. I was about to say something when the waiter hurried to our table and said, “Please, madam, I will give you another order. You see, he is a concentration camp survivor. He thinks he is hungry and still in a concentration camp. He survived the death furnaces, but he lost his mind. He has been broken, and it is impossible to fix him. He means no harm. I will immediately bring you another order.”
We all became silently sombre. We all lost our appetites. A heavy painfulness descended upon us. Oh, the inhumanity of it all. This poor soul had lost all his family and his mind in those death camps. Somehow, he ended up wandering up and down the posh Rehov Dizengoff, not knowing where or who he was. What touched me even more was how that community kept a protective eye on him. That was almost sixty years ago, and it is still as fresh in my mind as if it were yesterday.
Ah, the cruelty of man.