Elka hid from Dr. Josef Mengele, living in a stable and beaten by Gestapo soldiers • Tzipora saw Jews hanged when she was only two years old • And Aviva remembers the moment her mother learned that her sister had been murdered, and how her tears wet letters she would not send • "The important lesson we learned - gratitude "
The entrance gate to the Auschwitz camp
Photo:
AFP
"Crying every morning, but free"
Bird Freund, 83
Zippora Freund was born in August 1937 in the town of Skampa, Poland, to Hava and Moshe Strykowski.
In 1939, the Jews were transferred to the ghettos.
The Germans took the men, and Zipporah, along with her mother, brother, aunt and children, stayed there and did everything to survive.
"I was only two years old. We were all taken out into the yard and ten Jews were hanged," describes Bnei Brak, a resident of Bnei Brak.
"My aunt turned my head so that I would not see the shocking sight, but there are things that are etched in my memory."
Tzipora's mother, together with her aunt, fled with their children from the ghetto to the forests.
The women were looking for families to take the children under their care.
The Nazis raided the area where they were staying, and the children were smuggled and hid under leaves in the forest.
Fortunately, the Nazis did not find them, and the little bird was sent to a Christian family.
"My mother and aunt changed my name to Hania and thus saved me. That day I gave a hand to a Christian 'aunt'. This Christian couple saved me. For several years I lived with them. When the war ended my aunt, who survived, came to take me. I did not want to go, I loved "My adoptive parents, who were good and cared for me. I became a complete gentile, went to church and did not want to hear about Judaism at all. The separation was difficult, but my beloved aunt Rebecca raised me like a mother, and so did my brother Abraham, who also survived. She was an angel from heaven." .
Her parents and brother Yehiel perished in the Holocaust, but she survived, immigrated to Israel and raised a glorious family with three children, one of whom is Haim Freund, CEO of Ezer Mitzion. Tzipora, who participates in the Virtual Life March, wants to convey an important message: "Believe in the Holy One, And respect every person.
Every morning I get up and cry.
The Holocaust does not come out of my head.
It's hell, monsters of indescribable people.
I do not remember my parents, but I thank the Holy One for my three children, my grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
We go on with life, but to forgive is impossible for me.
Thank God, I am proud that I have my country and that I am free. "
Yuri Yalon
"My Mission - My Parents' Story"
Aviva Krost-Komrov, 81
Aviva Krost-Komrov, 81, from Netanya, does not remember anything about her family fleeing to Eretz Israel.
She was a toddler, and although she does not remember the freezing cold and the train rides in harsh conditions, the journey is deeply ingrained in her.
Her parents fled Poland in September 1939, and where they did not move: Lithuania, Moscow, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, and finally arrived at the long-awaited station - Israel.
The journey lasted five months, and the family was hardly equipped with food, diapers or any other essential product.
In Lithuania, her mother found out she was pregnant.
When she failed to have an abortion, in May 1940 - Aviva was born.
"I had two houses of Holocaust survivors: a house that is not talked about and does not receive warmth and love, as happened in a social house, where at night she would hear her mother, who went through all the concentration camps, wake up scared and scream, and the next morning did not speak" - and her house, where it happened On the contrary: "There was a lot of openness and love, but also 'overprotection'. I could not do anything without permission, which was not given to me. I was wrapped in cotton wool and it infuriated me. Today I can understand how much they were afraid."
Aviva adds: "I was 5 when my mother was told that her sister, to whom she was very close, had been murdered in pits in the Ponary Forest. I remember my mother holding two letters that would never be sent, crying to the core, wetting the letters with tears. We did not have to travel to Poland to experience the Holocaust "She was at our house."
Experiences like the one her parents experienced, she says, "shaped the education I received and instilled in me a love for the only country I feel is mine."
These experiences also relive the Holocaust in her memory, sometimes day by day.
That is why she chose to commemorate them.
"On the day of the Holocaust, I will be in schools and tell their story, which will not disappear as they were wiped out, in one shot, in a single fire. The story will continue to resonate - this is my mission, my children's mission. The mission should be ours."
Shahar Ben Yemini
"Only survivors appreciate what a country is"
Elka Bornstein, 90
Elka Bornstein, who will participate this year in the parade of life as part of the virtual simulation that will be broadcast on Holocaust Day, was born on October 30, 1930 in Romania and became an orphan as a child.
"My mother died in childbirth, and my father contracted an ulcer and died in surgery. We were left with five orphans in the Holocaust," she says sadly.
"My younger sister was taken to a crematorium with my aunt in 1944. I ran away from a selection with one cousin, and some of my family members were murdered in the Holocaust. I came to Auschwitz as a child. I was taken by force. I arrived at Children's Block, Block 9 in Auschwitz. Instead: 'Where is everyone who came with the transport?'. He said to me: 'Everyone in the chimney.' He saved my life, because he told me: 'Run away to another block.' So I did and got to Block 14, where I found my mother's sisters. Auschwitz was "Death camp and whoever went through it is a hero. I was in it and stayed alive. I was in terrible fear that every day Mengele would come looking for young girls. I had to hide from this killer doctor."
After surviving Auschwitz, Elka had to take the well-remembered death march: "We walked day and night in the snow, in the rain, without clothes, until I could not and collapsed. I was very weak. A good friend from my town took me to horse stables, hid me and covered me with straw. She She rescued me. I slept four days and nights because I was completely unconscious. Then the landlord handed me over to the Gestapo, who interrogated me with beatings to the head. I arrived at a refugee camp with a swollen head from beatings. The head nurse took pity on me. She thought I was German "In Germany. We went to her parents and I stayed there. They loved me. It was like a dream with a house and a white bed, but I did not know what my end would be. I was there until the war ended. After three weeks the Russians came and told them I was Jewish in a German family home."
After the war, Elka discovered that her older brother Haim had survived the Holocaust.
She met him and her sister Malka, who also survived.
Elka, who lives in Givatayim, married a Holocaust survivor, they had three children and today she has dozens of grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
"Life goes on," she emphasizes, "only those who were in the Holocaust know how to appreciate what a country is. I have to be optimistic. I have to thank God, because I did not believe I would get out of it alive. It is more than the Exodus. It is important to tell the next generation. Our country. "
Yuri Yalon
