Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

by Elaine Saphier Fox (Editor), Phyllis Lassner (Introduction)

Overview

The stories in Out of Chaos forms a profound testament to lost and found lives that are translated into compelling reading. The collection illuminates brief or elongated moments, fragments of memory and experience, what the great Holocaust writer Ida Fink called “a scrap of time.”  In all, the anthology expresses survivors’ memories and reactions to a wide range of experiences as they survived in so many European settings, from Holland, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Greece, Yugoslavia, Poland, and France.

The writers recall being on the run between different countries, escaping over mountains, hiding and even sometimes forgetting their Jewish identities in convents and rescuers’ homes and hovels, basements and attics. Some were left on their own; others found themselves embroiled in rescuer family conflicts.  Some writers chose to write story clusters, each one capturing a moment or incident and often disconnected by memory or temporal and spatial divides. 
 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780810129115
Publisher:	Northwestern University Press
Publication date:	08/31/2013
Pages:	318
Product dimensions:	7.30(w) x 10.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Elaine S. Fox is of counsel at the Chicago office of Seyfarth Shaw LLP and received her J.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, with honors, and her B.S. from Northwestern University.

Read an Excerpt

OUT OF CHAOS

Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust

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By Elaine Saphier Fox

Northwestern University Press

Copyright © 2013 Northwestern University Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8101-2911-5

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CHAPTER 1

PART 1. In the Beginning

First Name: Leonie
Also Known As: Loni or Lony
Last Name: Bergman
Maiden Name: Taffel
Date of Birth: August 25, 1935
City of Birth: Berlin
Country of Birth: Germany

Earliest Memories: A Walk in the Park

Leonie Taffel Bergman

I am nearly three years old. It is a beautiful spring day in Berlin. My parents and I are taking a walk through the park close to our home, by Alexanderplatz. Many people are doing the same. It must be a Sunday, a day when people do not work and often look forward to that time for socializing, relaxing, and going visiting. The event—this walk—has an air of formality: an occasion to "look nice" in public. These walks are familiar to me.

Being the only child, I walk between my parents, holding the hand of each. There is talk between them, and I, as a child, also talk when I have some comment to make. I am careful when I speak: not in what I say but how I say it. I do not want to cause anything bad to happen.

Recently I have been warned by my parents not to speak Yiddish, the home language, when in public. It is dangerous to let others know that you speak that language. They may hurt us! I don't know why. It is only when I am with my parents that I can speak the way we speak at home. Wanting to be obedient, I try to be very careful.

Our promenade continues. People are sitting on benches, stopping and talking to those they greet, casually strolling. It is most pleasant. I continue to chat with my parents, in a low voice, using the home language.

I notice my shoelaces are untied. I let go of my parents' hands and stop to tie the laces. As I do so I look and see where my parents are and notice them walking ahead slowly. When I finish tying the shoe, I run forward, go between two sets of hands, and hold on to those hands. As we are walking I explain, in my nearly three-year-old way, what I was doing, using home language: "mayn shikhele hot zikh ge-efnt" (my shoe was open). I look at the hands I am safely holding. Suddenly, I look up at the faces that go with these hands. These people are not my parents!

I have a terrible sense of dread. I quickly let go and run to my parents, who are directly ahead. I fear for us—for me and for them. I have spoken Yiddish to strangers, and this will bring immediate danger to our family. I feel so scared.

In retrospect the whole episode with the strangers lasted such a short while, and they were probably surprised, pleasantly I expect, that a child should suddenly join them, and I had nothing to fear. Maybe they didn't even focus on what I was saying because little children often do not speak clearly; possibly they didn't distinguish between the sounds of German and Yiddish. Maybe they themselves were Jewish. These things I do not know.

But the fear I felt immediately, both of endangering my family and of having done something wrong, is still with me today, some seventy years later. I am often ready to blame my inability to foresee negative consequences that could occur when a serious event happens in my life. This might include a move, a change in family status, a serious medical situation. I will feel that if I had been more alert, I might have anticipated possible difficulties and therefore prevented, or lessened, them.

In August of that year, 1938, three days before my third birthday, we arrived in Brussels, Belgium, having left Berlin. I am unable to recall anything about that journey.

First Name: Chaya
Also Known As: Chayale,
Helene Daveau, Elena Kantor
Last Name: Roth
Maiden Name: Horowitz
Date of Birth: September 30, 1934
City of Birth: Berlin
Country of Birth: Germany

The Megillah: 1937

Chaya Horowitz Roth

You are with me still
My small hand melts in yours
You reach for the drawer in the big brown buffet
And take out a shiny black tube
Unfurling the parchment you begin to chant.
I do not see the grogger
I do not know the story
Yet I remember well
The warmth of your enveloping hand ...


First Name: Judith
Also Known As: Ulla
Last Name: Straus
Maiden Name: Levy
Date of Birth: February 1, 1933
City of Birth: Dortmund
Country of Birth: Germany

My Grandfather's Watch

Judith Levy Straus

It all started in 1938 or 1939. I cannot remember which. I was five or six years old—an only child—and we lived in Amsterdam, Holland. "We" consisted of my parents, my uncle Ludwig Falkenstein (I called him Dada), and my grandfather Moses Falkenstein. Our home used to be in Germany, but in 1933, when Hitler came to power, my father was immediately dismissed from his position as an electrical engineer working for a government agency because he was Jewish. My parents and I moved to Holland, and my grandfather and uncle joined us in 1937 or 1938, just before the start of World War II, and two years before the Nazis invaded Holland.

There was tension in our house. My parents and uncle and some of their friends would gather in the living room to discuss "things," but the door was always closed. I did not know or understand what they were talking about; I just knew it did not feel good; it made me afraid. My grandfather was kept out of the living room discussions as well. Apparently he was too old, and I was too young. And so we kept each other company, my grandfather and I.

I would always feel better after sitting on his lap for a while. He told me stories, he let me comb his hair, and he would pull out his pocket watch. It was a very special watch—the most beautiful golden watch I had ever seen. It was a shiny, pinkish gold, and it had my grandfather's initials and the year 1900 engraved on its back. The face of the watch was covered by an exquisitely ornamented cover with a swirling floral design, and when you pushed a button, the cover would open and you could hear the "tic-toc, tic-toc"—so steady, so dependable—like a heartbeat. My grandfather would let me push the little button, and I would listen. And I would feel protected and at ease.

In March 1943, my grandfather was picked up by the Nazis and transported "east" to Sobibor, where he was murdered upon arrival. My uncle went into hiding—underground, and with him, it appears, went the watch. My father, David Levy, my mother, Alma Falkenstein Levy, and I were sent to Westerbork, a transit camp, where we stayed for a little over a year. From there we were transported to Theresienstadt. In September 1944, my father was sent from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz, where he was also murdered upon arrival. My mother and I survived.

My uncle survived the war, and so did the watch, and so did the memory of my grandfather and me sitting together and listening to its steady beat. The watch is now under a dome on one of my bookshelves. It is more than one hundred years old, and it still has a steady beat. And I still push the little button, and listen, and remember.

The School Lessons

Leonie Taffel Bergman

I am in class. My desk is wood; it has an inkwell, and I am holding a pen over my penmanship book. The teacher is showing us, again, how to write our letters. "Make the circle; don't lift the pen; continue the circle and make it larger; it will turn into an oval; don't leave any spaces between the circle outlines." We are to measure carefully the ink on our points, shake off what is too much, and begin to form the shapes that she shows us. I try hard—but my pages are always messy. The teacher stands near me, corrects my hold on the pen, positions the notebook, and helps me form my letters. I hope for improvement, and so does she. After all, she has tried in her firmest, yet unorthodox, way to have me focus on improving my penmanship, and she expects it will now have had an effect on me. It does, but not what she had hoped for.

Not more than a few weeks earlier she had me stand on a table at the door where all the children were leaving to go home. I stood there, in full view of every student walking out of school, holding my penmanship book wide open so all the ink blotches and red marks could be seen by them. She hoped my embarrassment would force me to write better. It did not work. I was embarrassed, but my penmanship did not improve.

I am six years old in 1941, and in the first grade of a public elementary school in Schaerbeek, Brussels.

It is in this same classroom, some weeks later, on a typical school day, when another lesson is introduced. As the class is doing some reading work, a messenger comes in and confers with the teacher. After the messenger leaves, the teacher calls me to her desk. She tells me to take my things and put on my coat. I have to leave. My mother is coming to get me. After waiting for over an hour, ready to leave with my mother, I see another messenger come into the classroom. She approaches the teacher, and soon after the teacher tells me that it isn't necessary for me to leave. I do not know why this change occurs. The teacher seems relieved, though she never explains anything to me. The rest of the day does not seem unusual.

About a month later, with much more urgency, my teacher tells me to take all my belongings and to go to the principal's office immediately. I become very fearful at that news and at the rush and suddenness of this command. What will my mother think? Will I be able to go outside again? Or must I now stay shut in, within the limits of "safe walls"? What place is safe? Can I be told again to leave? I ask, but I do not know. I ask, but I cannot understand.

I was then taken home by someone. And that was the end of my public schooling for over four years.

Soon the years of hiding would begin.

CHAPTER 2

PART 2 On the Run

First Name: Aaron
Last Name: Elster
Date of Birth: September 15, 1931
City of Birth: Podlaski
Country of Birth: Poland

The Marketplace

Aaron Elster

My mother shakes me awake from a deep sleep and sternly orders me to dress in a hurry. I am confused and scared. Is this the day rumored about our death? The last few months neighbors sat around our kitchen table and talked about the gas chambers at Treblinka, our being deported there, and the certain death to follow. As a child, sitting on the floor listening and not able to participate in adult conversation about the death camp, I was afraid of dying a painful death. Fear takes hold of me. I silently beseech God to save me as we are being rushed into our hiding place on the first floor. To get there, we have to go upstairs and enter through a disguised covered opening and then climb down a ladder. Almost forty men, women, and children are prodded to hurry and descend the ladder down into a secret, small, empty room where we are all crushed against one another. The painted dark green window keeps anyone outside from seeing us in this room. Children cry, and mothers are urged to keep them quiet.

Ripping open our hiding place, the Gestapo and their collaborators find us. Screams and shootings force us out. They chase us up a small hill from Ulica Piekna toward the town's marketplace on Ulica Rogofska in Sokolów, Podlaski, about fifty miles east of Warsaw. Unable to keep up with the rest of us, our neighbor, the old tailor, falls to the cobblestones. The Ukrainian guard, a German collaborator, swings his rubber truncheon and begins pounding Shepsel the tailor about the head and body until he stops screaming. The smirking collaborator soon reappears in the marketplace. Once in the marketplace our whole group is forced to sit in a square facing a green-uniformed Gestapo officer pointing his automatic weapon at us, both the young and old. We are awaiting deportation in the cattle cars to Treblinka.

On this September day, the shining warm sun surrounded by bright blue skies and white clouds creates a painful dichotomy. I am horrified of my death in the gas chambers.

Bloody bodies from previous groups that were shot or beaten to death are still in the marketplace. An elderly woman lying in my line of sight has a blood-soaked dress that covers the lower part of her body. Old men reciting the Shema and praying to God for deliverance, the mournful cries of little children, the distraught mothers still clutching babies to their breasts, and the Gestapo's screams and beating of anyone not lined up to their exact specifications, all tell me these are my final hours. No one will come to our rescue. The Nazis have full power to kill us at will. Trembling overtakes me. I am terrified. I pray to God to spare me, but if he won't, I believe it is in his power to open this blood-soaked earth and swallow these murderers.

I look at my little sister Sarah, who clutches some dried farfel wrapped in a handkerchief in her little hand. Her eyes are ablaze with fear as she sits squeezed into my father's bosom. Father's hopeless look, gaunt face, and sad eyes express all that words could not.

My father grimly looks at me as he orders: "Loif, Arele, loif." Run, Aaron, run.

First Name: Edith
Also Known As: Edith Singer
Last Name: Turner
Date of Birth: June 23, 1929
City of Birth: Vilna
Country of Birth: Poland
(now Lithuania)

Shema Yisrael

Edith Singer Turner

I was born in Vilna, Poland (now Vilnius, Lithuania), in 1929. I had a wonderful childhood surrounded by my family, good friends, and excellent schools. It all changed abruptly when I was ten years old. Germany attacked Poland in September 1939. Within two weeks, Poland lost the war. My father, Nachem Singer, had experience from the First World War, and he believed that it was safer to live in a small town during wartime. So we left our lovely home and the beautiful, cultural city of Vilna and moved to a small town called Swieciany. Within a few weeks, Germany and the Soviet Union entered into an agreement whereby the Soviet Army occupied the eastern part of Poland. Swieciany became part of the Soviet Lithuanian Republic.

On June 22, 1941, just before my twelfth birthday, the Germans attacked the Soviet Union. I remember the day when the German tanks entered and the soldiers wearing helmets marched in. It was a sunny June day, but to me it looked dark, like a black cloud descending on us. Shortly after, the Nazi terror began against the Jews.

Three months after the Germans invaded, the SS rounded up the entire Jewish population of our town and sent us to Poligon, which was an extermination site. Then the Germans moved Jews from small towns and villages to the Poligon Camp. There were about eight thousand Jews in the camp. Lithuanian police and SS surrounded and guarded the camp. Conditions were brutal. Men, women, and children were squeezed into three small barracks, practically one on top of the other. We had no food or water. The latrines were in front of the barracks. It was hot and the stench was terrible. If anyone tried to escape, they were shot on the spot.

My mother, Miriam Singer, was a nurse. She joined a few doctors and nurses who formed a semi-emergency tent to treat many injured and sick patients. Talking to several people, she learned that the Lithuanian commandant could be bribed, and she found a man who knew him. During the roundup, she gave this man a diamond ring, earrings, and a beautiful gold watch surrounded with diamonds to bribe the commandant to let us go. The commandant believed that sooner or later we would be caught, so he let us go. My parents, sister Alice, fifteen years old, and I escaped with four more people, who my mother claimed were our family. They ran in a different direction, and we never saw them again. A couple hours after we had escaped, the Germans shot and killed all eight thousand Jews.

After walking all night, we hid in the barn of decent Christians, the Mishkela family. They kept us for four weeks, but we had to leave because it was too dangerous for the Mishkelas to hide Jews. Not knowing which place would be safer for us, we left to join my father's family in Glebokie, Poland (now in Belarus). The trip to Glebokie was frightening and exhausting. Avoiding SS and police stations near the town of Postawy in Belarus, the wonderful Mr. Mishkela and his son Juzek led the way. It took us four cold November nights. I was scared walking in the dark and hearing dogs barking. We carried bread, water, and cooked potatoes. Mr. Mishkela brought us to the home of his reliable Christian friends who allowed us to rest near the warm oven, and they gave us hot soup.

As soon as we got to Glebokie, the Gestapo forced the Jewish population to give up their homes and move into a small, crowded area of the town, which became the Glebokie Ghetto. An electrified fence with a big iron gate surrounded the ghetto, guarded by Germans, local police, and German shepherds. The Gestapo counted the Jews, who worked as forced laborers for the German Army, as the Jews went in and out of the ghetto.
(Continues...)

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Excerpted from OUT OF CHAOS by Elaine Saphier Fox. Copyright © 2013 Northwestern University Press. Excerpted by permission of Northwestern University Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents

List of Illustrations xi

Acknowledgments xv

Introduction Phyllis Lassner xxi

Child Survivors Marguerite Lederman Mishkin 3

Part 1 In the Beginning

Earliest Memories: A Walk in the Park Leonie Taffel Bergman 9

The Megillah: 1937 Chaya Horowitz Roth 12

My Grandfather's Watch Judith Levy Straus 14

The School Lessons Leonie Taffel Bergman 16

Part 2 On the Run

The Marketplace Aaron Elster 21

Shema Yisrael Edith Singer Turner 23

A Holocaust Composite Walter Reed 28

My Voyage on the SS St. Louis and After Leah Molton-Motulsky Kadden 37

Zamboni's List Isaac M. Daniel 45

The Rocky Shores of Marseille: 1942 Chaya Horowitz Roth 52

The Train Station in Turin: March 1944 Chaya Horowitz Roth 53

The Boot Gitta Horowitz Fajerstein 54

Part 3 Hidden with Parents

Belgium

Reminiscences of Being Hidden Olga Kirshenbaum Weiss 59

Boom 1943 Henry Stark 67

Blood Henry Stark 68

Part 4 Hidden with Rescuers

Belgium

Coal Henry Stark 71

The Declaration Leonie Taffel Bergman 72

Mother and Daughter-Parallel Thoughts Marguerite Lederman Mishkin 78

Who Am I This Time? Marguerite Lederman Mishkin 81

To Annette, the Center Point Marguerite Lederman Mishkin 89

A Child Remembers Lillian Schreiber Zoloto 92

France

Born-Again Jew Adele Laznowski Zaveduk 101

Taste of Liberation Adele Laznowski Zaveduk 107

Happiness and Sadness Adele Laznowski Zaveduk 109

The Borrowed Saint Nicole Dreyfus Terry 110

Armand Can Do Anything Nicole Dreyfus Terry 114

Long Live Liberated Alsace, a Child's Vindication Nicole Dreyfus Terry 119

Poland

The Warsaw Ghetto: The Last Night with My Parents Irma Morgenstern Grundland 123

The Christmas Gift Ida Paluch Kersz 128

Part 5 Hiding in Plain Sight

From Radomsko to Chicago Miriam Studniberg Webster 143

Pretending to Be a Pole Amos Turner 157

Part 6 In Concentration Camps

The First Night Judith Levy Straus 169

A Child's Confusion Judith Levy Straus 170

The Transit Camp Judith Levy Straus 171

Westerbork, 1943: Monday Night in the Big Barracks Judith Levy Straus 172

"One Out of One Hundred" Kurt Gutfreund 176

Part 7 Aftermath

Fall 1944 Rixensart Henry Stark 189

Charcoal Aaron Lister 190

Fading Memories Aaron Elster 194

The Haul in the Wall Henry Stark 196

Disillusionment Judith Levy Straus 200

Bond with Rain Ava Hegedis Kadishson Schieber 202

A Passion to Tell Chaya Horowitz Roth 209

A Dog Ahlyce Goldman Kaplan 220

Untitled Poem Ava Hegedis Kadishson Schieber 222

Part 8 Lost and Found

The Story of Adam Paluch Adam Paluch 225

Secrets Sheila Taub Birger Gerber 233

An Imagined Conversation, or Perhaps Leonie Taffel Bergman Marguerite Lederman Mishkin 240

Afterword Elaine Saphier Fox 247

Historical and Personal Timeline of the Holocaust 253

Glossary 267

Extermination and Concentration Camps 275

Hidden Children/Child Survivors Chicago Mission Statement 283

Contributors 285

Editorial Reviews

This superbly edited compendium of the diverse recollections of children who survived the Holocaust is a deeply affecting document. Indeed, as an awakener of empathy, I know of nothing comparable.” —Peter Hayes, editor of The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies





“Out of Chaos: Hidden Children Remember the Holocaust is an essential read for both scholars and general audiences. The testimonies of hidden children offer a lens on Jewish children’s lives during the Holocaust and its aftermath by transmitting stories that would have otherwise slipped into oblivion."  —Journal of Jewish Identities

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