Her Father had a hard time recognizing them with the condition they were in. And her father was a wizard with his hands. He had golden hands. He could create anything. And so he gets a job in a German factory in the Warsaw ghetto, becomes a manager. But then the raids begin and he and her mother are at the factory and to protect her he fashioned a false bottom in a chest. And she and Lila her sister would stay in that.
Her mother called it a vegetable bin. A chest that would hold things. You lifted the top and you would store things in it. Her father put all rags and old newspapers on top so if it was lifted , it didn't look very nice. But underneath he had built two little chairs, and a potty and when they went to work, they left with them whatever they had, some water, whatever bread they had, and they put them into this furniture, and put it against the wall and went to work.
If you ask her today how did you do this, it's very hard for her to explain. Having grandchildren it's not very easy to keep children quiet. Different time and place. Children in Europe were supposed to be seen and not heard. As her mother later on in life tried to explain to two obedient daughters. And I think it was, they knew. They grew up very fast and realized that this was a matter life and death. That they had to be quiet. . Once they were in there they had to be quiet. There were times because when everybody went to work, older people, or able people go to work, the Germans would come through the building. They could hear them walking up the stairs. They could hear them talking. Yet they weren't found.
She always thought back, had they brought with them the German Shepard dogs, of course they would have been found. But somebody was looking over them and they didn't. And her parents would come back and at night they'd be with them. There were many things she can't explain, that for some reason she thinks the Almighty was looking over them
5 comments:
Been following this story, Sassafrass. Waiting for more.
If you haven't already, I would like you to try to read a little book (it isn't very thick) called Man's Search For Meaning by Victor Frankl. It's pretty old, so you may have already read it. He tells of his own 3 years imprisoned as a young Jew, a doctor, in Auschwitz and Dachau. He watched his family die. His story is that even under those conditions, not all prisoners became animals. Even knowing you are about to die each day, at any minute, man still has ultimate control over his own thoughts and his own attitudes to what is going on around him. Some prisoners did not become informers and thieves. Some shared their food with the sick even though they themselves were only hours away from starvation.
This little book had a life-changing effect on me when I first read it years ago.
Sassyfrass. Sorry. Max's little claws are slipping off the keys again in his excitement. Spelling wrong again.
Max, thanks for that tidbit. There were so many heroes in that god awful
time. I think to survive was heroic. What spelling problem?
god was watching over her?
that's a bit litigious to me. where was he when it all started?
He was there the whole time
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