What Does It Mean to Be a Child of Holocaust Survivors?
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What Does It Mean To Be a Child of Holocaust Survivors? By Avi Ashman Delivered at B’nai Jeshurun—Yom Kippur 2006 Before I start I would like to thank the rabbis, Myriam Abramowicz, and Freddie Goldstein for offering me the opportunity to speak in front of you, and I would also like to wish us all a Gemar Hatima Tova and a prosperous and healthy New Year. My name is Avi Ovadia Ben Sasha and number 48739 … This is how my father Yakov was called in the German Prisoners of War Camp and the number my mother was known by in the Auschwitz concentration camp. My father, Yakov Ashman, grew up in a small town named Lachva that initially was part of Poland but later became part of Belarus. My grandfather Vadia Ashman was a traveling merchant, and my grandmother Ester was a homemaker. In 1936, Private Yakov Ashman joined an infantry unit in the Polish army and was placed on the German border. On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland from the west, the north, and the south with a massive barrage of heavy artillery and the force of superior equipment. The first cannon round of that attack landed 30 meters—100 feet—from my father, but luckily he was not injured badly; it only ruptured his right eardrum. The Polish Army units were outmatched, and they started retreating inland. My father and a few remnants of his unit tried to escape from the German soldiers and hide in the forests but were finally captured and sent to a Prisoner of War camp. At the camp he changed his name from Yakov to the common Russian name Sasha to hide his Jewishness and survived by being a handyman. Need to construct a new uniform, alter your overcoat or iron your shirt before meeting a high-ranking German officer? Ask Sasha and he would take care of it. Your motorbike stopped working? Sasha would fix it. Was my father trained to be a tailor or a mechanic? No, but he learned both trades quickly in the school of survival. On September 17, 1939, Russia invaded Poland from the east. On September 28, Poland was partitioned, and my My mother Sarah (front left) in the white father’s hometown Lachva became part of Belarus. Soon shirt. My sister constructed this: a family picture before Sarah was born, and a after, Germany and Russia exchanged prisoners, and my picture of Sarah in her late 20s/early 30s - father returned home to Lachva. He later joined the after my mother passed away. Russian Army. At the end of 1939 the Germans captured Lachva and gathered the 2,300 Jews into a ghetto. Father’s older brothers, Michael and Aaron, became the leaders of a resistance group formed inside the ghetto. Father became a supplies sergeant in the Russian Army and continued fighting the Germans. On September 2, 1942, well before the Warsaw Uprising began, two underground leaders in Lachva—one was my uncle Michael—heard that pits were being dug at the town’s outskirts. A German commander told Dov Lopatyn, head of the Lachva’s Judenrat (a Jewish Community Council that the Germans created in every town that they occupied), that the Germans planned to liquidate the ghetto and leave behind only 30 craftsmen. Late that afternoon, 150 Germans and 200 policemen encircled the ghetto. The underground, with full cooperation from the Judenrat, planned to attack the police and the soldiers at midnight at the ghetto fence and create enough chaos that the ghetto’s population would be able to flee into the forests. When my uncle, Michael Ashman, and Dov Lopatyn gave the signal, the underground members, among them my father’s other brothers and relatives, broke through the fence and fought the Germans with axes and their bare hands. Large numbers of Jews rushed through the hole in the gate, but many were killed by German gunfire. None of my father’s family survived. Over 500 Jews, including my paternal grandparents, who did not manage to escape from the ghetto, were taken to the pits and shot dead. Only about 120 managed to escape and assemble in the forest. But many of those who did escape were betrayed by local Christian farmers, their old neighbors, and killed by the Germans. * * * * * My mother, Sara Zalcstein, was the youngest child in a religious family of eight that lived in a small Polish town near Warsaw called Radzyn Podlaski. Grandmother Razel leased land from Christian neighbors for a season and grew vegetables for both home consumption and for sale. Grandfather Eliyahu was an artisan bootmaker whose craftsmanship attracted many customers, both Jews and Christian. But he lost many customers when he kept them waiting in his shop while he attended daily prayers in the nearby synagogue. So, from time to time, there was no food in the house and the kids went to sleep hungry. As poor as my grandparents were they scraped together enough money to send their sons to a heder, a religious school. After completing their heder studies, children started working to help their families. My Uncle Shimon, the oldest son, became an artisan bootmaker, moved to Warsaw, and later established a family there. The two younger sons moved to Warsaw as well: Zvulun became a garment-store helper, and Mordechai a carpenter. After the Germans captured Warsaw in September 1939, my Uncles Mordechai and Zvulun escaped to Russia and joined the Partisans. But Shimon stayed in Warsaw and later perished in the Treblinka concentration camp. The money my uncles sent back home helped to send my mother and her older sister Devorah to a regular Polish school with a curriculum of math, Polish language, and literature studies. (Mom’s other sister Miriam died at a young age.) Soon my mother’s hometown Radzyn fell into German hands. One fall day, in 1942, the German Gestapo stormed into Radzyn, rounded up the Jews, and marched them to the train station in the next town, Mezeritch. At nightfall the Germans pushed my mother, 16 at the time, and her older sister Devorah into one train car and her parents into another. As all the cars filled with frightened Jews, Sara and Devorah clung to each other in the dark and cramped car and Devorah said, “Surale, we will survive this.” A German soldier gave the signal and the train started moving toward Treblinka. As the train raced through forests toward its destination, Devorah and Sara were able to open a small window. “I just wanted some fresh air and water,” my mother recalled. The train started slowing down as it neared Treblinka. Devorah told her sister, “Surale, I will help you jump out of the window and will jump right after you. You must live!” The train was now approximately 3 miles from Treblinka. Devorah pushed my mother out the window, and she fell on the track- side and rolled down into a ravine. The train passed and Sara climbed back to the tracks looking desperately for Devorah. But Devorah stayed on the train. My Aunt Devorah and my maternal grandparents perished in Treblinka in the fall of 1942. My mother collected her thoughts, rolled back down into the ravine, walked into the forest and started walking away from Treblinka. She walked many days in the forests, eating berries and drinking dew water. From time to time she sneaked into a Polish farm to sleep and warm up in a shed before being chased out by the Polish farmers. Somehow she ended up in Seleditze, her Uncle Avraham’s town. Tired, hungry, thirsty, cold, feverish, and ill with typhus, Sara lay down near the synagogue until one of her uncle’s neighbors recognized her and brought Avraham to see her. Mother wanted to die, but Avraham told her she must live as who knew which family member would survive? He took my mother to his house and nursed her until she recovered—he had saved her life. Luckily, Avraham was immune to typhus because he had survived it himself as a soldier in the Polish Army in WWI. Shortly after Sara was cured, the Germans came to Seleditze looking for Jews. Avraham hid with his family in his house’s small basement. But Sara and 20 other Jews hid in the attic of a house across from her uncle’s place, where they stayed for a few days until one day they heard the Germans coming. One of the hiding women’s little baby started crying and everyone bagged the mother to quiet the baby or leave so they would not all be captured. The mother refused and cried hysterically as well. The Germans came near and one of the men in the group took the baby out of the attic and laid him on one of the beds downstairs. The Germans couldn’t find the Jews in the attic but saw the baby. They remarked how beautiful the baby was, shot him, and left. In the meantime other German soldiers found the hidden door to Avraham’s basement—their cat sat on the hidden door meowing and caught the German’s attention. As they opened the door Avraham jumped on one of the soldiers with a kitchen knife and killed him. The soldier’s partner shot Avraham to death and killed the rest of the family in the basement. Sara and the other Jews hid for a couple of weeks until the Germans announced over loudspeakers that the last transport would leave that day and whoever was found after that would be killed.