And we need our angels now. We aren't Jewish, Bob, but you bet o's youth will want to wipe out all ex-GIs and USA patriots. Sadly, I must say that I believe the re-Hitlerization is happening now in this wonderful country we served to preserve its freedom.
SamKat
> God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform!
>
> August 1942. Piotrkow, Poland
> The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously.
> All the men, women and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto
> Had been herded into a square.
>
> Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only
> recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded
> ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated.
>
> 'Whatever you do,' Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, 'don't tell
> them your age. Say you're sixteen.
>
> 'I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be
> deemed valuable as a worker.
>
> An SS man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones.. He
> looked me up and down, and then asked my age.
>
> 'Sixteen,' I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and
> other healthy young men already stood..
>
> My mother was motioned to the right with the other women, children, sick
> and elderly people.
>
> I whispered to Isidore, 'Why?'
> He didn't answer.
> I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her..
> 'No, 'she said sternly.
> 'Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers.'
>
> She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was
> protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not
> to. It was the last I ever saw of her.
>
> My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany.
>
> We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night later and were
> led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and
> identification numbers.
>
> 'Don't call me Herman anymore.' I said to my brothers. 'Call me 94983.'
>
> I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a
> hand-cranked elevator.
>
> I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had become a number.
>
> Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald 's
> sub-camps near Berlin.
>
> One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice.
>
> 'Son,' she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel.'
>
> Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream.
>
> But in this place there could be no angels. There was only work. And
> hunger. And fear.
>
> A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, around the barracks,
> near the barbed wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I was
> alone.
>
> On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone: a little girl with
> light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.
>
> I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly in
> German. 'Do you have something to eat?'
>
> She didn't understand.
>
> I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She
> stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet,
> but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life.
>
> She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence.
>
> I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly,
> 'I'll see you tomorrow.'
>
> I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She
> was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better
> yet, an apple.
>
> We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both.
>
> I didn't know anything about her, just a kind farm girl, except that she
> understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me?
>
> Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence
> gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
>
> Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car
> and shipped to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia .
>
> 'Don't return,' I told the girl that day. 'We're leaving.'
>
> I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye
> to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.
>
> We were in Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and
> Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
>
> On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.
>
> In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed
> ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over.
>
> I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
>
> But at 8 a.m. there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running
> every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers.
>
> Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was
> running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived;
>
> I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key
> to my survival.
>
> In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my
> life, had given me hope in a place where there was none.
>
> My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
>
> Eventually I made my way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish
> charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust
> and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam
> had already moved. I served in the U. S. Army during the Korean War, and
> returned to New York City after two years.
>
> By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to
> settle in.
>
> One day, my friend Sid who I knew from England called me.
> 'I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date.'
> A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few
> days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend
> Roma.
>
> I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a
> Bronx hospital.. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling
> brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life.
>
> The four of us drove out to Coney Island . Roma was easy to talk to, easy
> to be with.. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too!
>
> We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the
> boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the
> shore. I couldn't remember having a better time.
>
> We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.
>
> As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been
> left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, 'Where were you,' she
> asked softly, 'during the war?'
>
> 'The camps,' I said. The terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable
> loss..I had tried to forget. But you can never forget.
>
> She nodded. 'My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin
> ,' she told me. 'My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers.'
>
> I imagined how she must have suffered too, fear, a constant companion. And
> yet here we were both survivors, in a new world.
>
> 'There was a camp next to the farm.' Roma continued. 'I saw a boy there and
> I would throw him apples every day.'
>
> What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. 'What did
> he look like? I asked.
>
> 'He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
> months.'
>
> My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be.
> 'Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving
> Schlieben?'
>
> Roma looked at me in amazement. 'Yes!'
>
> 'That was me!'
>
> I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't
> believe it! My angel.
>
> 'I'm not letting you go.' I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on
> that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait.
>
> 'You're crazy!' she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for
> Shabbat dinner the following week.
>
> There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most
> important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many
> months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given
> me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go.
>
> That day, she said yes. And I kept my word. After nearly 50 years of
> marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
>
> This story is being made into a movie called The Fence.
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