Tzar and Miriam Levy survived the Holocaust and brought with them their letters revealing the stories of the horrors alongside the story of their love • "You restore my faith in goodness"
The late Tzzer and Miriam Levy, in the small picture - one of the letters
Photo:
Courtesy of the Ghetto Fighters' House Archives
In recent weeks, the Ghetto Fighters' House archives have received open letters and yellowing letters, which breathe life into the moving story of Holocaust survivors from Yugoslavia, Cesar and Miriam Levy.
Cesar died in 1974, and after Miriam's death in 1990, their children found the collection of letters.
"It was like a journey through time. These letters tell the story in real time. We did not understand what was written in them, and it took a long time until we reached maturity and translated them," says Nurit Mazor, the youngest of the three.
"Then we scanned the letters for ourselves, and recently I thought to myself that it would be a shame for them to stay with me at home, because we too are getting older, and what will the children do with the paperwork? So we decided to move them to a museum for the general public, and for future generations."
"I feel sad, superfluous here, everywhere I am cold, stranger and alienated, nowhere do I have the warmth I have been waiting for all these years," Czar wrote to Miriam on August 25, 1945. "Nowhere are you at home in the true sense, nowhere is it. A love we need today more than ever ... Miriam, if I could just put my head on your lap, close your eyes and feel a caress of a hand on your forehead, maybe I could cry properly and curl up in those warm knees, and I believe I would have had it much easier. So beautiful and pleasant, where you can forget everything and also, I really believe, get new strength and desire for a normal life. "
Five days later, on August 30, 1945, Miriam replies: "We are actually broken and depressed. I am horrified when I go out into the yard and remember how he was always happy, and today? Abandoned, no one. Just the two of us alone and desperate. I still do not digest and do not believe he can Be that there is really no one left! Your letter was waiting for me when I came. You certainly do not know what it means to me to know from you. It was for me as if you yourself were waiting for me. Unbelievable how much the letter calmed and encouraged me, gave me strength not to shy away. I was sad, but you are the only one who actually gives me back my faith in something good and clean. "
In October 1945, two months after they separated in Bergen-Belsen, Cesar and Miriam were married.
Two years later their son, Aryeh Leon, was born, named after Caesar's brother, Leon, who perished in the Holocaust.
In 1949, they immigrated to Israel and a brother and sister were born to Leon - Ami and Nurit.