1. JANUARY 13, 2017 | OLAM 9
At a family simcha
F E AT U R E
called Leah, insisting that she speak
up. “She harassed me. She kept on
telling me that by not speaking I was a
Holocaust denier. And she was right.
When the Holocaust deniers became
more vocal, we all had to come out.”
At that time, Yehudi Lindeman,
a professor of Literature at McGill
University, was arranging meetings
to allow hidden child survivors to tell
their story. When Leah came to the first
meeting, she was astonished to see a
room filled with half of the parents of
her students and many other members
of the community. There were law-
yers, doctors, all highly educated and
accomplished who hadn’t known of
each other’s hidden identity. Professor
Lindeman himself had survived as a
young child hidden in Holland.
Leah started to speak and spoke to
her listeners’ hearts.
“When I spoke to children, I would
tell them about the children of the Ho-
locaust, and they knew I would only
tell them the truth. I would also use
the powerful text I Never Saw Another
Butterfly, Children’s Drawings and Po-
ems from the Terezinstadt Concentration
Camp, 1942-1944.
“Once, in a classroom, one of the
children handed me a slim pictorial
book, Where is Willy? Even though I
had never seen it before, I agreed to
read it to them.
“On the first page, Willy is seen
sitting with his family, his parents and
his sister. ‘Willy is happy at home,’
read the text.
“On the next page, Willy is sitting
in a classroom wearing a yellow star.
‘Willy is not happy.’
“Then, on page three, Willy is
behind gates in the Warsaw Ghetto.
His sister is on the ground, both are
hardly alive, and death is all around
them. Willy is trying to put some food
into her mouth.
“The last page is blank. The chil-
dren were horrified. They cried out in
unison: ‘Where is Willy?’ I could not
answer them. I said: ‘Class, you tell
me: Where is Willy?’
They broke out weeping. The
principal asked me: ‘What have you
done to your class?’ I told them about
a child, just one.
“That is how we should teach
about the Holocaust – one child at a
time. Children, even adults, cannot
relate to the incredible numbers of
people who were destroyed, but they
can relate to one child, like Willy, like
me. I am the one child I talk about.
“My mother charged me with the
mission to “Live! Remember! Tell the
world! And that is what we Holocaust
survivors had to do. First, we had to
live. We needed time to build our lives
and our families within the context
of a Jewish home and to inspire their
Jewish connection through Torah
education. Only when we saw conti-
nuity, could we start to remember and
mourn and later to tell the world. I
was twelve when the war ended, but
I didn’t speak about it to anybody
until 1995, fifty years later. Every time
one of my children reached the age of
nine, I quietly revisited my pain and
thanked G-d for his happy childhood.
I am grateful to Hashem that I had
the strength to hold back from shar-
ing my trauma and that I thus didn’t
scar the tender souls of my children
and students with the horrors of my
childhood experiences.
“I first spoke publicly after I re-
tired. The Montreal community was
very surprised but extremely sup-
portive. People started to call me
non-stop; they had never known I was
a survivor. They had never heard of
Transnistria.
“After making aliyah, I connected
with Aish HaTorah and began to
speak at universities, seminaries and
even for members of the IDF. I would
meet my former students everywhere.
They were horrified to suddenly find
this out about their former teacher.
“I have been asked many times
how could I still believe in G-d. I can
only answer: How could I not believe?
G-d was right there with us, every
step of the way. I lived from miracle
to miracle, only because G-d chose me
to live for a purpose: to tell the beauty
of the Jewish way of living.
“Speech cannot do justice to the
hell of the Holocaust. On the death
march, I had to witness my school-
mates fall. I had to walk over their
bodies to survive. My mother made
me promise to live. I was afraid to
stop. Hashem gave me the strength.
It would have been so much easier to
just die. I was nine and a half and tiny.
“There were so many miracles.
At the start of the death march, the
Nazis tried to grab me and accused
my mother of stealing a German child.
Miraculously, they let me go, but I in-
ternalized that I could pass as an Ary-
an; amongst my dark siblings, I was
the only one with blond hair and blue
eyes. The Germans forced us through
the most difficult path, through thick
mud or up mountains. The death
march continued for months! The
Germans sat on wagons, striking Jews
with a stone-tipped whip. I searched
among the Germans for someone
whose eyes looked compassionate. I
saw a tall soldier gently patting his
horse. I ran to him. I remember the hu-
manity on his face. I tugged at the bot-
tom of his jacket which I could barely
reach. ‘Little girl, what do you want?’
I answered, ‘Will you let me sit on the
wagon? If not, don’t let me suffer any-
more and just shoot me.’ He picked
me up, as dirty as I was and, with my
stomach swollen, a sorry picture. He
put me on the wagon and even put a
blanket around me, enabling me to
be amongst the few survivors of the
death march. People who witnessed
my chutzpah and salvation didn’t
envy me. Nobody said a word. I felt
they hoped I would survive and tell of
the communities wiped off the face of
the earth as if they had never existed.
“I used to have a busy schedule
speaking around the world. Now I
have few engagements. I’m afraid
people are worried about my age, and
my health, but I need to speak. I need
to communicate how G-d was and
is with us, and about how He saved
and saves us. He performs numerous
miracles for each and every one of us
every single day.
“My mission is to inspire Am Yisra-
el with the love for G-d and His Torah.
G-d saved me to tell young people:
Choose life! Be committed Jews. Live
Jewish lives. Marry a Jew. Raise Jew-
ish children in a warm Jewish home
with a solid Torah education. Build
Jewish homes and communities. Am
Yisrael Chai.”
Leah with her sons and with her husband a”h