Little Esther waited for her father, who one day disappeared • Then she waited for her mother on the platform - and to this day at every train station she looks sideways, hoping that she will return And her granddaughter in the attacks
Esther Schlesinger is a smiling and pleasant woman, and remains so after life has summoned her tragedies one after the other, from her childhood during the Holocaust to the last few years. In the grenade neighborhood where she lives in Efrat, Gush Etzion, she is considered a particularly beloved figure, active in the synagogue, the veterans club and happily helping anyone who requests. To the horrors and bereavement she did not let her personality or shape her life.
Holocaust and Heroic Remembrance Day: Silence siren heard throughout the country // Photo: Moshe Ben Simhon, Shmuel Buchris, Newsenders
For example, when she was 12, she wrote in her diary, as a child desperately missing her mother: "I know I'm a sad girl now, but I'll grow up and be happy." Today, after having a family with three children and dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, she says: "I knew sadness was not my essence, that's the circumstances. And I promised myself that when I grow up I will be happy and create a happy home."
It is not easy for her to recreate the events of those days. Even after many years, her voice trembles and tears come to her eyes when she remembers her mother and four brothers sent to Auschwitz. She was born in 1938 in the town of Schlagotrián in northern Hungary, a fourth child (out of six) of a privileged and wealthy family. Her father, Ze'ev, was a descendant of the Deutsch family - a famous dynasty of rabbis who originated in Germany and founded the Jewish community in Schlagotrian. Her mother, Rachel, was of the privileged Rochberger family, whose ancestors served for several generations as the head of the Jewish community in the city. They lived outside the city, in a large house with servants, caretakers and driver for both family vehicles.
Then the war broke out. "The tragedy of Hungarian Jewry was that it was fast and purposeful. Times were short but harsh," she says. "Hungarian Jewry was horribly complacent. They heard about what was happening in Europe but were patriotic. They said 'we won't happen', despite the laws Against them and their rights denied. They were very much involved in Hungarian culture. Hungarian Jewry, for example, did not know Yiddish. The educators spoke German. "
In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by the Germans, and Esther, then six, did not understand what was happening. The adults did not share the children with what was happening, and the picture of the war was given to her. "One day Dad disappeared and there was no one to explain to us that they had taken him and all the men to work in the Hungarian army. In my mind, I was sure he would return to sit, and I waited for him all the time to come back." Waiting, she says, is something that will accompany her throughout her childhood. At first she waited for Dad, and at the end of the war she waited for her mother at the train station, but it did not come.
To this day, every time she arrives at a train station, she looks sideways, searching. Maybe this time the mother will arrive. And the silence will accompany her childhood and adulthood. "There was never anyone who said to me, 'Esther, your mother is dead.' It's all speculation. And you're constantly waiting, looking forward. After the Holocaust, there was complete silence around me. I would hide under the table to see if they would mention my mother and know what happened to her."
"We just learned not to be"
The second clue to the change taking place around her was expressed in the yellow badge that all Jews were forced to wear for their clothing and understanding, even with a 6-year-old girl, because this badge makes her a target. In May '44, the city's Jews were concentrated in the ghetto, and Esther and her family moved to her maternal grandmother's house. "Suddenly we came to a house full of people who are all sore, angry, with moods," she recalls. "My grandparents' house, which was a beloved home for me, a smiling home, with sweets and hugs, became something else, a pressure cooker."
Her grandfather, who had been an officer in the Hungarian army and wore heroic signals from World War I, did not believe that the Hungarians would let the Germans harm the Jews. Her mother, on the other hand, realized that the end was imminent, and decided to at least try to save her two older daughters - who, she believed, had a chance of surviving. She knew that the boys would not be able to hide, since their Jewishness was evident on their bodies and the little ones were also hard to hide. The ghetto operated for about a month and in June '44 all 2,300 Jews living in Auschwitz were sent.
Esther and her older sister, two and a half years ago, Hannah, had been smuggled shortly before night, by one of the family's workers, to a small Hungarian village, where a local woman received a lot of money for hiding. An artist gave her half of the amount and the remaining half promised to deliver only after her daughters were restored to her health and integrity. "We went through a journey. We were very well-groomed girls who lacked nothing, and suddenly you never sell, to a primitive village. We were immediately taken to the clothes and shoes, which were of good quality that could be sold on the market. There was torture. Like stepping on needles. If we didn't meet the tasks, we would pay a price. "
In the Hungarian family's home, they were no longer Hannah and Esther, but Yulishka and Ilonka, Christian Hungarian girls. "I was bright, with devilish hair and blue eyes. My beautiful sister wore a headscarf to hide her black hair," Esther says. They learned to cross, pray, hate, and curse Jews. "She taught us that the Jews killed Jesus. I didn't even know I was Jewish." And every evening the sisters prayed for union with an artist.
The relative of the woman who hid them belonged to the Arrow Cross Party, a pro-Nazi, racist and anti-Semitic party operating in Hungary. Both sisters learned that they had to hide every time he came to visit. "We hid for hours in a barn, in a closet. We went through a process that many Holocaust children went through. It was to be and not to be. When he was at home, we hid in the closet, couldn't cough, couldn't go to the bathroom or ask for water. Not to be consumed. Not to be hungry. We learned to disappear, that we have no rights, to apologize for being, just not to be. We didn't understand what we were, but we realized that our essence was something that was stubborn, and that we should never be revealed. "
Two millimeters from death
Towards the end of the war, when rumors grew that the Germans were losing battle, the aunt of the two sisters, who lived in Budapest, decided to take them out of hiding. Knowing that an artist and their four brothers were probably murdered in Auschwitz, she assumed she was the only one, in fact, who knew where her nieces were. She sent the money promised to the Hungarian woman with a Jewish girl who had fake certificates, which brought the two sisters to Budapest.
But the feeling was far from certain. During this period, the murders of Jews in Budapest were multiplied by the Arrow Cross gangs. Bodies were thrown in the Alps to the Danube River, which was reddened by blood. One rainy night, one of the gangs broke into the reserved building where the sisters lived, which was owned by the Swedish consulate, and began to slaughter its occupants. The Jews who lived there were gathered in the courtyard, and the gang members beat, silenced and shot them. The bodies piled up, and the blood washed over the large expanse.
As she was led into the yard at gunpoint, forced to step on the piled-up bodies, Esther felt a thud near her eye and her face was covered in blood as she was hit by a bullet. She lay in a vague sense of consciousness and felt her being lifted and thrown on a wagon. More and more bodies were thrown, covered, and she had trouble breathing.
"I can choose what I want to remember from this event," Esther says. I didn't see who was standing there, I was later told that it was a Jew who disguised himself as a Nazi soldier. He must have been hiding in the tavern and heard the wagon boast about his actions. , And I'm going to take you to the Budapest Jewish Ghetto to take care of you. "
"He got on the wagon and turned it back into town. I didn't know what was going on. I felt we were driving, I felt the jumps on the way, I felt every shock because I was very badly injured. Suddenly the wagon stopped. Burst into tears and started screaming at me, 'Little girl, you won't die, you won't die.' I couldn't speak because of the injury, but I remember all I thought at that moment was that I was so dirty with blood and he hugged me. He took me while he was crying and mumbling "Don't die, don't die." He sat down and continued to hug me. "
Esther and the other wounded were brought to the ghetto hospital for treatment. She needed surgery due to the bullet penetrating her head. "They probably didn't have anesthetics anymore, and I remember the man telling me, 'We need to hurt you to heal you. Please don't cry and don't move.' She does not remember the pain of the same surgery, but certainly remembers the comfort she felt from the things she was told.
"Suddenly, after all the atrocities, somebody wants me to live. I'm important to someone. I didn't feel any pain, and then suddenly screams, 'Two millimeters, two millimeters'. A door opened and someone burst in and shouted 'What happened?' They said to him, "The little one was saved. Two more millimeters and she was not here." Esther, her aunt and cousin who were injured in the pogrom, and her sister Hannah, who faced a firing squad For the liberation of Budapest by the Russians.
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After the war, the sisters met their father, who survived the labor camps. He never told them about his experiences in the war, and only 40 years later, after he died, heard how the leader of the prisoners survived death marches, distributed food to the weak, and saved the young from death. The father, broken from the death of his beloved wife and four children, immigrated to Israel on an illegal ship, was captured and spent a year in a detention camp on Cyprus. After his release, he settled in the Seed Seat in the Lower Galilee and married a special and compassionate woman. The couple had seven children.
Late seven
The two sisters arrived in Israel in 1964 at the age of 13, Esther recognized Tuvia Schlesinger who gave her one look and told her that she would be his bride, and when she was 20 and he was 23, they married. The bereavement and pain returned to Esther's share in , 1993 when her younger brother Shaya Deutsch was murdered in his greenhouses in Kfar Yam in Gush Katif by a Gaza terrorist. He was 39 at the time of his death. "Shaya was a legend," she says, "the best of us are always taken." His murder shocked her and something inside her exploded. Until then, she says, she had an inner thought that only in her diaspora were Jews killed because they were Jews. As she sat on him, she realized that she was also sitting on her four brothers who were murdered in the Holocaust.
Last August, beloved granddaughter Dvir, the son of publicist Yoav Sorek, was murdered. Dvir was then in the course of the Seder meeting in Migdal Oz, and was murdered on his way there, a few hundred meters from his grandparents' house in Efrat. She doesn't talk about him easily. "Dvir was the essence of this country's growth. He loved nature, full of light and magic. It was pure." At a time when he was studying at a yeshiva, he visited them almost every day, and these visits she cherishes to this day. "Every time he would open the door, all the good he would come home with."
Despite the loss she experienced, Esther decided that she would not let what she had done permeate the family she had built. "We raised them happily. We did not hide the Holocaust, but she was not present. We had a happy home. Each of my children is a gift. I had fun being their mother. We succeeded. Who could ask for more." •