History

In a earlier blog I mentioned my Grandmother, or as some of you know her to be Safta Zipora, when I was 15 in high school I invited my Safta & Saba (grandfather)along with my mother to talk and educate students. Here is the transcript that Mr Alexander provided.

MRS WIRSCH - SURVIVOR OF AUSCHWITZ AND BERGEN-BELSEN



*All these words are hers - spoken in Hebrew/Yiddish at Island School, with her daughters echo for her daughter's English class on the 15th April 1994*

I was eighteen.
They put us in bathtubs.
Then they cut off all our hair
and shaved our heads.
They put on us a piece of rag -
no underwear - naked underneath.

After what they did to both of us
I didnt know my sister.
It's hard on me to talk.
But you must not forget.

Those that worked
had like a piece of wood
not even a plate
not a dish
and in that piece of wood
they used to get their soup.

At four o'clock in the morning was "Apell".
That was the counting.
You count them.
Five in each line.
And the Germans counted us.
It took two or three hours to count us down.

In broken crematoriums
we waited,
with the smell
of burned bodies,
with the screams -

And now we don't sleep long.
We hear the Germans
walking when we sleep.

Nine hundred girls at first:
walking the death walk.

It was snow
Christmas time
heavy snow, new.

Whoever fell,
We didn't stop.

Near the end there was a village
with three houses in the forest.
They gave us food.
Maybe that's what saved me.
As we left the SS came.

On the way to Belsen
seven hundred died -
and this I can't forget.

When the Americans came
I weighed twenty eight kilos.

At the good camp, in Sweeden,
There I met my husband.
He is German born.
That how we met,
there, at the gate.

Still, today,
I don't know what he found in me.
No shoes would fit.
I had to tie them on with rope
and thats how we fell in love.

It's very hard to tell:
This is only the edge of the story -

(her forefinger here held tight
against the tip of her thumb)

-it's not the whole story.

The whole story is ver, very big.
No book and no movie
can ever describe.

I passed what I passed.
It's hard, but I am happy.
I have my husband,
I have my grandchildren.
I am luck that I have all that.
----------------------------------------------------

And that was read recently on March 8th, 2006

For those of you who didnt know this really is just a tip of the story, my safta is one of my hero's!

Just imagine the strength that comes from family history line

signing off ***