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The Surviving Baby Against All Odds | Israel today

2021-04-07T13:55:47.578Z


| Jewish culture During an experience from the Nazis, Aviva's mother discovered that she was pregnant • At the age of 3 months she was shaken with her family without food and clothing • "The mission of us all to tell and not to forget" Aviva Komarov with her family Photo:  Photography courtesy of the family Aviva Krost Komarov, 81, from Netanya, does not remember anything about her escape to Eretz Israel, whi


During an experience from the Nazis, Aviva's mother discovered that she was pregnant • At the age of 3 months she was shaken with her family without food and clothing • "The mission of us all to tell and not to forget"

  • Aviva Komarov with her family

    Photo: 

    Photography courtesy of the family

Aviva Krost Komarov, 81, from Netanya, does not remember anything about her escape to Eretz Israel, which she went through with her family during World War II, which makes her a Holocaust survivor baby.

She does not remember the freezing cold, the journey on huge sub-train conditions, the moment on a train full of crowds where her sister had disappeared and her mother had already imagined how she had been abducted, which could have easily happened.



She does not remember the journey that took five months, when her mother did not have milk for breastfeeding and her health was poor. 

But even though she does not remember, the journey is imprinted in every part of her body and in her open home. In an interview with Israel Today, she shares what her parents shared with her and shares us most closely, in the complex daily life with Holocaust survivor parents.

Her parents fled in September 1939, at the beginning of the war, and planned to make illegal immigration to Eretz Israel when they did not have the necessary documents.

They knew that the Germans had not yet arrived in Lithuania, so 300 members of the Betar movement organized and fled to it.   

At that time there were two ambassadors in Lithuania, one of them Turkish, whose parents knew that a secret visa could be obtained through him.

They lived in Lithuania like the locals, and from there their escape began.

A few months after Aviva was born, they continued to Moscow - when she was three months old with her six-year-old sister, without baby food, diapers or any other product essential for growth and development, which contributed to her poor health: "I have no idea what I sucked from my mother. There was almost food, "she shares.    

"My parents came to Moscow with great apprehension. My father was wanted by the secret police of Russia and Poland for being a Betar activist. Nevertheless, they continued to Odessa by train to the Black Sea port, and when they received the documents there, they sailed to Bulgaria and from there to Turkey. . 

"In Turkey, my condition was probably so bad that it was impossible to continue, so they stopped so that I could recover, and from there they started the second roll-off train to Syria, from there to Lebanon and from there finally to Haifa, found jobs and started their lives."

You grew up in a home that experienced a Holocaust in an unconventional way, and also talked about it, not trivial. 

"Some will say yes. My parents carried a very heavy burden because at some point in their escape from Poland to Lithuania my paternal grandparents, my two brothers and my mother's sister fled with us. It was clear they could not get documents, and they had no choice but to leave." Knowing that it's either you, or they, and I think it will always be on their conscience. " 

"To me, there are two types of homes for Holocaust survivors: the homes that were not talked about at all, like my friend's home, where at night she would hear her mother who went through all the concentration camps waking up scared and screaming, but the next morning she did not know what. And beyond that - they also did not know how to give warmth and love. " 

"My house, on the other hand," Aviva continues, "was on the one hand very warm and loving, but also very over protected. I could not do anything without permission, which was not given to me. In the 11th grade my brother-in-law intervened and told my parents that they would not let me live. That it prevents development!

That's why I finally left. "

Were you angry with them?

"So - obviously I was angry. I was a girl and deprived of the basic ability to be like everyone else, when at that age it was most important to you. I felt wrapped in cotton wool. Today I can understand more how much they were afraid."

"The desire to know the past was and will always be in my bones" 

"My home is what imprinted in me the obsessive connection to the Holocaust. It is no coincidence that I traveled with my parents to Poland (to mark the 90th anniversary of the school where her parents attended) with the symbols of Israel on the garment. This is an unusually strong image.

Seeing my father stand and thank the audience for being anti-Semitic, because thanks to that he has a country, to see him take his passport out of his pocket, kiss and wave it ... it was an amazing sight.

I could choose not to travel, it was not mine like it was my parents'.

But the desire to look for roots, to know my Hebrew - has always been in my bones. " 

This is how you actually met a family you never knew.   

"True. I never had grandparents or uncles. I met my first uncle when I was nine - my father's brother appeared in the doorway and to me it was like he fell from the sky. The reality I knew was me, my parents and my sister." 

The story could have unfolded quite differently.

In November 41 there was a very large aktion in her hometown, and Komarov says she was a long way from death: "My mother's brother, his wife and her eleven children went to the Lopukhova forest. There in the pits, they were all shot to death. I could just as well not be born, my parents could be killed ". 

"I remember that moment as a five-year-old girl, when my mother was told that her sister, who was very close to her, had been murdered in pits in the Ponary forests.

Remembering my mother holds close to her two letters that will never be sent, and she cries to the brim of the soul, wetting the letters with tears.

This is a picture that will forever be etched in my memory. " 

Not an easy look for a five-year-old girl.

"True, but a fact that I remember and that it is not something that has been repressed."

These experiences that your parents had, made you perceive them in a certain way? 

"Look, for me they were parents as much as the parents. However, I know that in light of my mother's parents dying (regardless of the Holocaust, but from an illness) she was a miserable child. She told me how she and her brother would sit for hours by the stairs waiting for a plate of soup. "Before the war, to experience such poverty and hunger is unbearable, not to mention the death of her mother - she cried all her life." 

And do you feel that these experiences shaped the education you were given?

"Absolutely. It contributed to the fact that in my life I have never seen myself leave the country and this is the only place I feel is mine. To leave means to betray those who fell for my country to exist. And it is something I have given my children all my life. To tell my family story to anyone who is willing to hear "That's my mission."   

We did not have to travel to Poland to experience a Holocaust.

We had her inside the house "

"My father actually talked less about the Holocaust, but made up for it by letting us read a lot of books on the subject. Maybe by telling himself that if he could not - that the books would do the job. I realized that the news that came in bundles about another dead relative was what caused He wants to burn, to want us to know exactly what happened there. " 

The Holocaust lives for her every day of remembrance, sometimes literally every day.

Komrov could ignore the hard feelings left in her by the few complex images she remembers.

She could not visit Poland and ignore the impossible realities of life of those closest to her, but with resourcefulness and emotion, she chose to take the stories to other places: “It was clear to me that everyone in my family, children and grandchildren would travel to Poland as well. "We lost too much for us to throw it away. It gave me the feeling that here, we are a third generation stepping in there, it's our victory."   

"On Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day of 2021, I will stand in several 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 through me and my family. This is my mission, my children's mission.

Source: israelhayom

All news articles on 2021-04-07

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