Holocausto, de Aarón Sosa
El rostro, a diferencia de la cara, se asienta en el cuerpo pero no es parte del cuerpo. Viene de más allá. Nos indica el lugar de una interioridad insondable, única e irrepetible que, de algún modo, nos remite a la infinitud de Dios antes que aludir a la mera finitud de lo orgánico, pues en sí mismo es una huella de la luz de la creación; así pensaba el filósofo judío Emmanuel Lévinas, quien insistía, por ello, que la dimensión de verdad del rostro nos obligaba a una ética, antes que a una estética, ya que es la constancia, la evidencia fuera de toda duda, de que ante nuestros ojos existe un ser humano.
En cierto sentido, el retrato, como ya había descubierto Christian Boltanski, es lo contrario de un holocausto, de un sacrificio. El sacrifico consiste en la vida que se entrega a una verdad metafísica, puramente conjeturada, mientras que el retrato representa la manifestación más palpable de lo metafísico en la vida, de su dignidad incuestionable.
El triunfo del sobreviviente no consiste solo en haber pasado, a diferencia de su victimario, la prueba del tiempo; el triunfo del sobreviviente reside, más que en otra cosa, en la insistencia de la dignidad humana contra un poder que pretendía sustentarse, de un modo monstruoso, en su deshumanización. De allí que la nobleza del sobreviviente sobrepasa a todo individuo, logrando encarnar la dignidad misma de todos los hombres, el triunfo de la humanidad. El rostro del sobreviviente es, de esta manera, un monumento. Sobre esta huella de la dignidad indestructible gira el objeto que nos muestra el trabajo aquí presentado: la dignidad que en lo frágil, no obstante, nos revela el rostro de Dios. Rostros que han atravesado el punto más bajo de la humanidad, el horror más impensable y que, pese al sufrimiento padecido, nos hablan como aquel verso de Paul Celan, un sobreviviente de la Shoah, demasiado sensible para llevar a la vez la memoria del horror y el peso de la poesía: “el mundo se ha ido, me toca a mí llevarte”. Si la dignidad pudiese verse en imágenes, sería la imagen de estos sobrevivientes.
Erik Del Bufalo
Investigador y filósofo
Eva Krausz (Venezuela 2010): She was born on June 17, 1925 in Pécs, Hungary. As a child she lived in Budapest. When the ghetto was formed she was taken to forced labor, even though she was forced to marry, believing that married women were not taken. Through the Swiss embassy she returned to the ghetto and waited for her liberation. Thanks to the Joint she went to Germany, then to Paris and in 1947 to Venezuela. / Testimony: "You have to know how to cope with things. When you get old, you realize that you can't escape your destiny. Above all, you have to love people; love is the most important thing. You have to try to get rid of hatred, to repress it. You don't get any result with grudges, nor with hatred".
Elías Kuperstein (Venezuela 2010) : He was born in Novoselitsa, Romania, on May 25, 1928. In 1941 he began a difficult journey through four ghettos: his own town, Securen, Mogilev and Popivtsi. At the end of the war, with a sister and his father, he returned to his hometown and then, in 1949, emigrated to Peru, where a brother was already there. He arrived in Venezuela in 1975. / Testimony: "When we began to learn about what had happened during the war, I felt a lot of rage, a lot of indignation, but on the other hand I felt that one was lucky to survive. Although it is true that I was not in concentration camps with gas chambers, I was still humiliated. Where I was there was a different form of extermination: it was an extermination through time, so that the conditions in which we were kept would kill us".
Alegre Calderón de Saías (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Salonika, Greece, on February 4, 1923. In 1943 the area of the city where her family lived was transformed into a ghetto, where they had to stay - with the exception of a sister who was married and moved to Syria - and then taken to Auschwitz. She was taken to Bergen-Belsen, and after liberation, back to her birthplace. In Salonika she was reunited with an old acquaintance whom she married. They went first to the United States and settled in Venezuela in 1956. / Testimony: "It was night when we arrived in Birkenau. In the morning we saw some French women and asked them where they took the mothers, the grandparents, everyone. Hard-hearted people told us: Are you seeing that smoke? There they are. They killed them all: my mother, my uncles, my cousins, my nephews. Of my whole family, only I came back. Only I made it out alive.
Ezra Heymann (Venezuela 2010): He was born in Czernowitz, Romania, in 1928. Despite the entry of various armies into the city - Romanian, Soviet, German - his family was able to remain there until April 1945, when they moved to Bucharest. Faced with the threats of communism, as a philosophy student, he fled to Vienna and a year later to Heidelberg, where he completed his studies under the tutelage of Hans-Georg Gadamer, one of the great figures of twentieth-century philosophy. He joined his parents and brother in Montevideo, Uruguay, and stayed there until the military dictatorship pushed him to Venezuelan lands in 1974 where he developed a solid and admired career as a researcher and undergraduate and graduate teacher, having published important works and participated in national and international events. / Testimony: "You have to be very dedicated, but no one should believe that he did things alone: human solidarity is something very great. Above all, our parents had this understanding that no one, no fairy promised us a bed of roses at birth. You have to make an effort and at the same time know how to appreciate and be grateful for what you have received".
Sally Horowitz de Morgenstern (Venezuela 2010) : She was born on May 31, 1940 in Kitzman, Romania. He was barely one year old when the family was taken to several concentration camps: Mogilev, Martinovca, Djurin and Stepanovka. He endured numerous hardships and illnesses that did not cease after liberation. In 1945 she returned to her native country and when she was reunited with her father, after four years of separation, they had to flee to France and then to Venezuela in 1947. In Venezuela, after a difficult adaptation, she managed to find peace and forge a family together with Freddy Morgenstern. / Testimony: "I want to thank all of Humanity and every human being with whom I have had contact, because in one way or another they have enriched me. Every person I come into contact with has given me something, and that is what gives me the fullness of life".
Nathan Schachter (Venezuela 2010): He was born on November 9, 1920 in Czernowitz, Romania. In 1941, already married to Rosika Davidsohn, he moved with a large family group to a room in the ghetto. On November 3, 1941 they were deported to Mogilev, where they stayed until 1943 in very precarious conditions: his parents died there. They managed to escape, claiming to be from Dorohoi, but were recaptured and sent to the Viznitz ghetto. In December 1944 they fled to Bucharest, where they awaited, without anxiety, the end of the war. In 1950 he traveled to Israel, then to Curaçao to work as a Khazan and teacher, and in 1960 he arrived in Venezuela, dedicating himself to the garment industry. / Testimony: "My wife and I did the math and, since we got married in 1940, we have changed our domicile twenty-two times, between ghettos, escapes, changes of street, of town, of houses, of countries. I see that a stone stays in the same place, that when little flowers grow, weeds grow around it, it is difficult to pull people from one place to another, but we left twenty-two times from different places to save ourselves".
Leil Ekerman (Venezuela 2010): He was born on August 12, 1937 in Novoselitsa, Romania. When the Germans arrived he had to hide in a wooden box and soon after he was confined with part of the family in stables where they remained in difficult conditions until the end of the war. He arrived in Venezuela in 1947. / Testimony: "It was a very great bitterness that war. It is unforgivable everything they did to us, it is a terrible thing. I don't understand how the president of Iran says that this is a lie, that there was no Holocaust. What do you mean there was no Holocaust? They did kill entire families! Are you going to tell me that six million people did not die?
Oscar Gross (Venezuela 2010): He was born on July 3, 1926, in Cieszyn, Poland. In 1941, when the Nazis occupied the city, the ghetto was formed and he had to work under the orders of the SS. He was transferred with his family to the Dulag transit camp and separated there. He and his brother went through countless labor camps until they finally arrived in Blechhammer. In one of the so-called "Death Marches" they managed to escape, but two weeks later they were seized again by the almost dying SS and taken to Mauthausen. He was liberated and taken to Italy, from where he was able to reach Israel and then Venezuela. / Testimony: "To this day I cannot understand how thousands of Germans followed Hitler and became criminals, torturers; how they liquidated innocent children, women, young and old without any mercy. To this day I still dream at night of my dear spirits, those who were tortured and liquidated."
Magdalena Grosz de Eckstein (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Megyaszo, Hungary, on April 19, 1926. At the age of twelve she moved to Miskolc to attend high school and in 1944 was taken with her entire family to Auschwitz, from where only three sisters survived. The liberation surprised her in Bergen-Belsen. After the war she was able to reach Budapest, but a hasty suitor made her flee to Prague and then, together with a sister, to France. In Paris she met her husband and in 1953 they arrived in Venezuela in search of peace and quiet. / Testimony: "I can say that I am very satisfied with my life in Venezuela. Here I was really happy. I have grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I don't think I have much life ahead of me. I don't think much because I leave the children to think, I am already half retired; I love them, I love them, but I really don't want to think. God forbid that my children and grandchildren go through something like what I went through, that's the only thing I wish for, that it never happens again".
Rebeca Ruso de Perli (Venezuela 2010): She was born on January 22, 1939 in Thessaloniki, Greece. As a child, her family moved to Athens, where they were caught up in World War II. Thanks to the permanent interference of a friend, they were able to hide in several houses until the end of the conflict. In 1948 she arrived in Venezuela with her parents and her brother born in 1945. Her integration into the Jewish community has been deep and she came to occupy for eighteen years the position of executive director of the Confederation of Israelite Associations of Venezuela (CAIV). / Testimony: "One has to know what happened during the war, in the Holocaust. It is always said that six million Jews perished, but that is only a figure and behind each of those numbers there is a story that must be told, some more tragic than others, but all stories of human beings. All the survivors were marked by that experience. Those who perished ended up there, but the marks that remained are forever."
Tonka Schilling de Borgman (Venezuela 2009): She was born in Drohobycz, Poland -today Ukraine-, on January 15, 1910. At the beginning of the persecutions, thanks to her brother-in-law, the whole family escaped and was hidden in various non-Jewish houses. She married at first marriage to Moises Horowitz, who was murdered in Boryslaw, and from this marriage was born Isodoro, her first son. After the war she remarried Abraham Borgman, with whom she had her daughter Gueña. Thanks to her sister and brother-in-law, they arrived in Venezuela in 1947. / Testimony: "Why did I survive? I don't know, my God helped. Every time I thank God and I ask myself if it is possible what happened. Very few people survived. Today people go to dances, people don't know what happened, they don't think it really happened. If I hadn't been there, I wouldn't be able to believe that it was possible.
Robert Frank (Venezuela 2010): He was born on August 15, 1927 in Tarnow, Poland. The house in which he lived with his parents and three siblings was left inside the ghetto area, so they were able to stay together and in less precarious conditions than many others. When the ghetto was liquidated in 1942, he was separated from his family - taken and killed in Auschwitz - and taken first to the Plaszow concentration camp, then to Mauthhausen and finally to Gunsen. At the end of the war he managed to reach his hometown, from where he began a journey that would take him to Berlin, Frankfurt, New York, the Philippines, Hong Kong, Colombia and in 1965 to Venezuela. / Testimony: "When you see so many people dying every day from illness or something else, one doesn't think much about the value of life. You just live from one day to the next because you don't know if it will be your turn tomorrow. If you get sick or die, it's because it's your turn. The good thing about human beings is that we forget the bad and remember the good. I just say that, with all the bad things that happened to me, I am living a normal, happy life".
Rosina Davidsohn de Schachter (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Dorabani, Romania, on July 22, 1922. When she was five years old the family moved to Czernowitz. With war looming she married Nathan Schachter in 1940 and in 1941 they were taken to the Czernowitz ghetto and immediately deported to Mogilev, where they stayed until 1943. They managed to escape to Dorohoi but were recaptured and sent to the Viznitz ghetto. In December 1944 they fled to Bucharest, where their daughter was born. In 1950 they traveled to Israel, then to Curaçao where her husband was spiritual leader of the Ashkenazi community, and in 1960 she settled in Venezuela where she consolidated a family in which she has been blessed to see the birth of great-grandchildren. / Testimony: "The war affected a lot, but I was young and very optimistic and that helped me. However, we must not forget what happened so that it never happens again. I have great-grandchildren and I think that someday I will be gone, but I just hope they don't go through what I went through."
Hana Sinek de Morgenstern (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Prague, then Czechoslovakia, on March 31, 1922. As a teenager she joined the Czech resistance. In 1944 she was taken to Theresienstadt, where she put into practice the nursing skills she had acquired in a Red Cross course in Prague. She escaped shortly before liberation, returning to the Czech capital, where she found her sister and studied nursing. With the arrival of Communism she decided to go to Paris, where she met her husband. Together they emigrated to Ecuador and passed through several South American countries until settling permanently in Venezuela in 1971. / Testimony: "To be Jewish is not to be something exceptional, but to be Jewish means that you must have a greater attitude to survive misfortunes and not let yourself be defeated. Judaism itself and the whole history of our people have to be a guide for us here, without beating our chest and without being exaggerated. Being a Jew is an honor, we must never forget that we are Jews".
Magda Weis de Hartman (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Olaszliska, Hungary, on December 12, 1917. Her mother died before the war when she was very young. In 1944, her father, siblings and other relatives were taken to a ghetto, and from there, almost among the last deportees, to Auschwitz. She was also in other camps: Plaszow, Breslow and finally Bergen-Belsen, where two sisters and a cousin died. At the end of the war she was able to emigrate to the United States, where she met her husband; after their marriage they settled in Venezuela. / Testimony: "On the day of the liberation they only said: 'You are free. I couldn't think anything, I could only think about my two sisters and the three sisters with the child they killed, and my father and everything. I could only think that I was not going back to Hungary."
Christiane Leider de Sternbach (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Le Plessis Bouchard, France, on October 1, 1930. She spent her early childhood without knowing she was Jewish and when the war began her father hid her and her brother outside Paris, where they were taken in and saved by a French woman. In the middle of the war, her father picked them up and from Marseilles they embarked on a year-long journey that took them to many ports without them getting the documentation to disembark in some of them. Finally, in 1941 they were able to settle in Curaçao and in 1956 they arrived in Venezuela to restart once again, the destiny. / Testimony: "One has a story to tell. I wish my grandchildren that we have peace, that we are all together as a family, that they do not have to go through what we went through, through that tremendous experience that we Jews had to suffer".
Lazar Zeev Bone (Venezuela 2010): He was born in Iasi, Romania, on August 3, 1934. His father died after a pogrom in 1941, while the rest of the family survived the blizzards of the war. In 1947 he moved to Bucharest with an uncle and that same year, in an attempt to reach Palestine, he was taken to an island in Cyprus. A few months later, along with other refugee children, he arrived in Israel, where he lived in a kibbutz and did his military service. In 1995 he traveled to Venezuela to meet her and stay for a short time that has become a forever. / Testimony: "It is barbaric what a mind is capable of doing to a human being, I cannot comprehend it to this day. I have met many people, some evil, some with good intentions. I cannot understand how the Germans of that generation could have such a deranged mind, to have so much hatred against a race."
Alice Steiner de Salamon (Venezuela 2010): She was born in Satu Mare, Romania, on September 25, 1925. In 1944, when the Germans invaded the country, the family home was left inside the ghetto and hundreds of people came to live with them. Within weeks they were sent to Auschwitz, where their mother, grandfather and younger brother died. Near the end of the war, she was part of the so-called "Death Marches", being taken to various camps until liberation. Upon returning to her hometown she married Yoska Friedman and together they left in 1948 for Austria and then Canada, where they remained until 1954, when they arrived in Venezuela. / Testimony: "I was very much affected by the war, but then I was infected by life in Venezuela, my family, my work and my environment. As you can see, I am still here, and I hope to stay a little longer to enjoy my family. The important thing is that the tragedy that happened to us does not happen again. I hope it never happens again, that people never allow it to happen again".
Reiza Kleinerman de Talmaciu (Venezuela 2009): She was born on October 14, 1936 in Czernowitz, Romania, and was immediately taken to Bessarabia. In 1940 she fled to Czernowitz and was imprisoned with her family in the ghetto. Taken to Transnistria, they escaped, hiding for two years in Mogilev, in precarious conditions, with the bare minimum to survive. After a time in Dorohoi and Bucharest, fleeing communism they arrived in Venezuela in 1948, where she studied Pharmacy and made the story of her life a path retraced especially for this interview. / Testimony: "I would see when Dad would leave at night, take something to eat, open the lid of the sewer and go down there, he and other Jews. We were fortunate that the three of us stayed together all the time in Transnistria. My dad was lucky that he was never picked up, deported, transported to the labor camps."
Ana Reisch de Bubis (Venezuela 2010): She was born on April 23, 1933 in Czernowitz, Romania. When the war began and the ghetto was formed, she was taken with her family, embarking on a journey that would take them through countless misfortunes to the labor camps of Otaci, Mogilev, Skazenetz and Tivriv. In order to return to Romania, her mother declared that she and her sister were orphans. The father died of typhus. She returned to Czernowitz and at the end of the war was reunited with her mother. In 1948, after a stint in Cyprus, she arrived in Israel, where she met her husband, Yehuda Bubis, with whom she settled in Venezuela in 1953. / Testimony: "To my children I never told my story. This is the first time I talk about the concentration camps. Sometimes one or another memory comes out, but I never told them what I went through, for fear of instilling in them the fear that I have always felt. I was always left with the trauma of the fear of being Jewish, to this day, even though we have a state and we are proud of it. But one always has fear in one's heart".
Alejandro Landman (Uruguay 2020): He was born on July 26, 1933 in Stanislawow, Poland. When the war began Alexander was only 6 years old; he recounts that his childhood up to that point had been very happy. On July 26, 1941, his 8th birthday, the Nazis invaded his town. They survived in the Stanislawow Ghetto for a year, "people were dying of hunger and disease. There was a typhoid epidemic and it was very cold. Together with his mother, Pepa, they decided to escape to save their lives. Thus began a terrible journey in search of a hiding place. Of a large family, only his mother, his mother's sister and his father's brother survived. He arrived in Uruguay on July 3, 1948 and in 1959 he graduated as a civil engineer and formed a family with children and grandchildren. / Testimony: "I am not religious, I do not believe in miracles; but I consider that all of us who survived it was, first, thanks to our good luck, because good luck exists. Then to physical strength, because if I could resist a freezing cold of -30°C, it is because I obviously had the strength. Finally, thanks to the will to survive, because there were people who let themselves be, did not fight and did not succeed. I did everything I did, I walked all night long, I walked from town to town, because I had the will to survive, consciously or unconsciously, but I had it."
Isaac Borojovich (Uruguay 2020): He was born in August 1927 in a small town called Svir, which in those years was part of Poland. He lived there with his parents, his little sister Itele and a large family of grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. In 1941 he began his difficult journey through the ghettos of his own city and those of Michaliszki and Vilna. He even had to hide in a cesspool for hours in order to survive. From 1943 onwards he was sent to 6 concentration and labor camps, which started new and terrible experiences he never forgot. Among them were Stutthof and Bergen-Belsen. Out of a whole family of more than 40 people, only Isaac, his mother and a cousin survived. He arrived in Uruguay in 1946 with her; an uncle, his mother's brother, was waiting for them there. Isaac formed a beautiful family with his wife Raquel Hecht, four children and 5 grandchildren. / Testimony: "To those who heard my story, what I went through, what other people went through, what I saw people suffer, tell everyone and don't forget that this can happen again anywhere; please pass on what happened in the Shoah (Holocaust)."
Larissa Mogilewski Inwentarz (Uruguay 2020): She was born on August 1, 1932 in the city of Kharkov, former Soviet Union. For work reasons her parents moved to Odessa, where Lala - as she was called - had a happy childhood. At the age of 9 she was diagnosed with whooping cough which meant that, together with her mother, they moved for a time to her paternal grandparents' house in Kharkov. They traveled on June 22, 1941, the same day the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union. Larissa would only return to Odessa, as a tourist, fifty years later. Her father was called to the front to fight in the Red Army. When the bombings began, the government carried out a massive evacuation that ended up in Uzbekistan. Alone with her mother, she experienced extreme poverty and suffering. Soon they received a telegram confirming her father's disappearance on the battlefield. Her last postcard had arrived on July 30, 1942. The end of the war found her with a stepfather whom she would love as her second father, Symcha Inwentarz, who married her mother. For two years, they toured Europe collecting more than 100 Jewish orphans - thanks to the Joint's intervention - whom they helped ship to the promised land, what is now the State of Israel. / Testimony: "As time goes by, happiness erases the memory of suffering. What one never forgets is the love one has received. What I ask from life is peace, nothing else. Peace for my children, my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren".
Denny Adler (Uruguay 2020): He was born in Breslau, Germany, now Poland, on September 4, 1938. Denny arrived in Uruguay two months after his birth, escaping from the war. His father had a store in Germany and on several occasions signs were placed on his door so that customers would not buy from him because he was Jewish. Given the situations of discrimination that his family suffered and before they began to deport Jews to concentration camps, they escaped on an Italian ship bound for Colombia. Unsuccessfully, the ship sailed to Paraguay, where it also failed to dock. Finally it was Uruguay who received them and allowed them to enter, with the condition that they would dedicate themselves to work on the land and it was thus, that his family settled in Paso de los Toros to attend an Agricultural School, "Agrarschule" as he remembers. / Testimony: "May the next generations not forget where they come from and value their identity".
Ilse Simons de Lowenthal (Uruguay 2020): She was born in Eltville, Germany on December 10, 1925. Ilse's father was the only Jewish employee of a very large company in Eltville, a small town in Germany. He was fired for being Jewish and after failing to find work because of discrimination, they moved to Frankfrut in 1935. Both parents worked as domestic servants to save the money for the 4 tickets and the Visa to emigrate to Uruguay. Uruguay was the destination as Ilse's maternal aunt was already living here. They arrived both parents, Ilse and her sister to our country in July 1937 and opened a rotisserie where Ilse with 11 years old helped her parents to communicate in Spanish with suppliers and buyers. / Testimony: "Gratitude to Uruguay for letting us come and form our life here".
Irene Rzadzinska (Uruguay 2020): She was born in Warsaw, Poland on September 16, 1922 to a liberal Jewish family. They did not speak Yiddish because they all wanted to attend university and at that time people who spoke Polish with an accent were not accepted. Irene, before the war started, knew that she had to escape, she could not stay in her native Poland. It was a premonition stronger than herself, and so she did, so much so that the first letter from her mother told her how lucky she was to have been able to escape. She spent many years in Russia (USSR) in a labor camp, without access to good food or soap for hygiene. She was liberated, and with the British Empire traveled to Imolia, where she had the opportunity to meet Mahatma Gandhi. Although she had a good life in Bombay, she was still looking for a relative. And so she found her uncle Isaac Zwajo, who helped her to come to Montevideo, where she would start her new life. She met Heinz Natham and after a brief courtship, they got married. She had two children, four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. Irene (Z "L) blessed be her memory, passed away in January 2021. / Testimony: "I am always told that I am stubborn and I reply: if I had not been so stubborn I would not have been saved".
Jeannine Brunstein Rabino (Uruguay 2020): She was born in Belgium, in the city of Brussels, in December 1940. He finally managed to leave Belgium with his family and they escaped to what was supposedly free France, Vichy France, but the Nazis were there too. Living in France he became ill with dysentery and they could not call a doctor for fear of being denounced, and so all his life he has had digestive tract problems. Later they managed to reach the south of France where they were hiding for almost a year. When they obtained visas for Uruguay, they embarked on a risky journey to cross the border into Spain through the Pyrenees. The route was provided by smugglers and at night they crossed on foot. From Spain they left by ship in 1942, bound for Uruguay. / Testimony: Today with my 81 years old and my mother deceased, I feel more and more the horror of the Shoah. Although I fled with my parents when I was very young, I was always haunted by the ghosts of the trains, the barbed wire, the children torn away from their parents, the smoke from the chimneys.... As Elie Wiesel said: "To serve Memory... what would man be without the ability to remember". Unfortunately, however, there are many who forget. Thanks to Prof. Rita Vinocur and her team for those who fight to keep the memory of these horrors alive. I continue to quote this author, "The opposite of life is not death, but indifference between life and death." Thanks to Hashem (G-d) we have arrived in this blessed Uruguay, which was almost the only country that opened its doors to us and here we were able to have a happy life, without fears, with studies, work and success. The world closed its eyes and ears, but Uruguay had the greatness to accommodate us, as well as later to contribute to the creation of the State of Israel. May G-d always protect our Uruguay, so noble and with such a great heart, where for the first time I was allowed to have a homeland. Thanks to the strength of our State and our people, we can and must proudly say: ¡¡¡¡ NEVER AGAIN !!!!
Alejandro Kronfeld (Uruguay 2020): He was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia on May 20, 1924. In 1941 Axis forces invaded Yugoslavia. Alexander was at home with his family when they learned that they were being rounded up for deportation to a concentration camp. They managed to escape by skiing around the back of their house. They arrived later, in the city of Trieste, Italy until they took a ship to Uruguay. This country allowed him to have a happy life; to develop as a mechanic technician and to form his family. He had two children, 5 grandchildren and a great-grandchild. He worked actively in the Jewish community: he was an integral part of the Comité Central Israelita del Uruguay in the Press and Dissemination section, was president of a branch of the B'nai B'rith and was a director for several years in the Nueva Congregación Israelita (New Israelite Congregation). He also made night patrols to protect community institutions.
Charlotte de Grünberg (Uruguay 2020): She was born in Liège, Belgium. Charlotte, her brother and parents survived the Shoah in hiding in France, traveling through much of the country, seeking refuge and hiding with her brother for more than a year in a closet. In her exile she saw many trains pass by without knowing, at first, what the final destination of the "passengers" was, which in reality was to be exterminated. Resident in Uruguay since 1952. She is General Director of the ORT Uruguay University, where, among other activities, she is involved in the dissemination of the Shoah theme in the form of courses, films and books. Central protagonist of the book "La niña que miraba los trenes partir", by Eng. Ruperto Long, which was awarded the Golden Book Award 2016 in the category Fiction of National Author and translated into several languages, recounts her experience during World War II. Married to Dr. Joseph Grünberg; she has one son and three grandchildren. / Testimony: How does a child adapt to the sudden loss of all his referents? The agony of fear and permanent humiliation as the only stable element. Stalked at all times by Gestapo raids, local collaborators and denunciations. For three years we traveled through France trying to escape the "final solution". Part of my family did not make it. "I use my wounds to try to help others."
Clara Rosenkopf de Drak (Uruguay 2020): She was born in Krakow, Poland in 1936. She was the only child of married couple Helena Safier and Chaim Peterseil. When the war began, she was only 3 years old. She lived for a time in the Krakow Ghetto and at her father's urging, she and her mother left the ghetto for the Aryan zone with false papers obtained by her father. He stayed behind so as not to risk them, for fear of being recognized as a Jew. Her father was taken to the Lodz ghetto and two other Polish camps near Krakow and also spent three years in the Buchenwald concentration camp. Clara survived by pretending to be a Christian. She and her mother left the ghetto one night without knowing where to go. They were helped by their physical appearance as well as their language, as they both spoke Polish naturally. They passed through several hiding places. In 1943 they arrived at a Catholic institution called the YMCA. Clara felt that her mother was a heroine and her father sacrificed himself to save them. At the end of the war, Clara and her mother searched for her father and received the terrible news of his death. Finally, on August 5, 1948, they arrived in Uruguay when Clara was 12 years old. She managed to build a beautiful family with her husband, two children and five grandchildren. / Testimony: "It is beautiful to be part of this project; I am a survivor and like the other survivors, I remember the six million murdered whom we will never, never forget. Humanity will always, always remember them and we will never allow it to happen again. Thank you for making me feel that the soul still beats in all of us."
Clara Goldberger de Singer (Uruguay 2020): She was born on April 13, 1923, in Romania in Satu Mare. When the war broke out, the family was living in Budapest and discriminatory measures against Jews were introduced. In 1940 young Jewish men were forced to perform forced labor under brutal conditions. In March 1944, Germany invaded Hungary; up to this date the Jews had not been deported because Hungary was an ally of the Nazi regime. From that date on, Clara and her family's life would change; they would be forced to leave their home and move to another one, where they lived together with other families in a very small space, together with her mother and sister. Her father was deported in 1943 to forced labor and later would be taken to the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp. Clara and her sister Olga were sent to work in a brick factory and were later deported to Ravensbrück in October 1944. The train ride to the camp was a terrifying experience; days of traveling, overcrowding, no food, no water. Clara together with her sister and about 700 others were forced to face a terrible death march, of which only a few managed to survive. Finally they were free in a forest in Czechoslovakia. Rebuilding life in Europe was not easy for them, so they decided to emigrate. Clara, together with her husband and their 3-month-old daughter arrived in Uruguay, where they formed a beautiful family. / Testimony: "I believe that my destiny was to have what for me is the most important thing: family".
Ester Grinberg de Segal (Uruguay 2020): She was born on July 15, 1926 in Romania in the city of Chernivtsi. Ester was 13 years old when the war broke out; she was studying in high school. Romania was not occupied by the Germans since the government was pro-Nazi. Jews were sent to Transnistria, but her family did not get to go. His father was in Brazil because as a doctor he was not allowed to practice his profession at the time of the Holocaust. He, along with other doctors, traveled in search of better opportunities. After the war, life was very difficult, there were microphones in the houses. You couldn't speak at all; they wrote what they wanted to say. Finally, the family decided to leave Russian-occupied Czernowitz; they arrived at the border at a large open field. They traveled there in a cart, pulled by oxen. It was winter, the cold was terrible; they searched them, looking to see if they were hiding anything, and they asked her to use an accordion she was carrying and found that she could play very well. That accordion saved them all. She arrived in Uruguay after the war in 1946. She was married 64 years, has 2 children, 3 granddaughters and 4 great-grandchildren. / Testimony: I would not want the next generations to go through what I had to suffer in my young years never again!
Catalina Gitla Hochmann de Jakter (Uruguay 2020): She was born on April 4, 1934 in Poland, in the village of Brok-Ostrow near Warsaw. Her family consisted of her parents and her little sister. In September 1939 the Nazis entered their village; she was only 5 years old and they were separated from her father, leaving her with her mother and a 6-week-old baby sister. The next day the killings, raids and interrogations began. Catherine's family and others were taken to a camp near the Soviet border. While in that camp they learned that the Soviets accepted the arrival of Jewish displaced persons. So the family, her parents, sister, maternal grandparents and uncles decided to escape from that camp, with the help of a Polish friend. They managed to flee to the area of the Urals, to an important city where they spent the war as refugees from 1939 to 1945. Life there was not easy, they lived in a military barrack, in a small space where he slept with his parents and sister. The family decided to emigrate to Uruguay. They arrived on June 28, 1947, where a maternal uncle who had arrived before the war was waiting for them. Catalina formed a beautiful family, with her two children, 6 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren with whom she continues to enjoy this adventure that is life. / Testimony: "My greatest message would be for me to thank life, to thank the country Uruguay for how I was able to develop with dignity with the little we had when we arrived; to thank the free, secular and compulsory education of this country that allows us all access to education. My testimony is a testimony of my life trajectory from birth to the present day. From the beginning all my internal war began; no matter where we were, the war was with me. Although I live in Montevideo which is a blessing from G-d, the war is always present in my mind and that is what it means to be a survivor.
Ivetta Konforti Cohen (Uruguay 2020): She was born in 1935 in Skopje, former Yugoslavia, present-day Macedonia. He is part of the 2% of Yugoslavian Jews who were not murdered by the Nazis in the extermination camp of Treblinka. In 1940 they left Skopje and with their family moved to the city of Dechan -nowadays Kosovo- and there they settled in the house of the family of Arslan Mustafa of Muslim origin, who allowed them to build a house in his land, which later served as shelter for many other Jews. They left Skopje in 1940/1941 for Dechan. In the autumn of 1944, they entered the Balkan Mountains from Tirana, bound for Debra. It was not easy to decide which was the best route so that no one could see them. Risks could come from both sides: if they met a German patrol, they knew they would have little chance, if any at all. In several days they could barely make headway. Trucks with soldiers on the road, sounds of gunfire in the forest or any other movement that was a potential risk made them stay hidden and not move. Those days were especially hard. In 1948 the Konforti family immigrated to Montevideo-Uruguay. / Testimony: "To good hunger there is no hard bread".
Gerardo Fraenkel (Uruguay 2020): He was born in Berlin, Germany on September 23, 1930. Gerard's father had fought in the German army during World War I and believed that nothing would happen to them until foreign representatives of a Jewish institution asked his mother to help obtain permits for other families who needed to leave the country - a time-consuming task that put her in contact with members of the Gestapo - and she understood the true danger of the situation. When they learned that those over 50 were to be taken to the concentration camp, Gerard's father hid in the suitcase of the car and his mother drove to the Dutch border with Gerard in the back seat. They managed to get Gerard's father across the border and meet relatives. In June 1940 they got tickets to leave Germany with his mother and grandmother. In a plane they arrived in Minsk, then by train to China, then in a ship casually called "Montevideo" they traveled from China to Japan, where he lived for two months and was reunited with the rest of his family. Then by ship to Uruguay, where he finished his fifth year of school and formed his life projects. Gerardo has children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and wrote the book "A Long Way Home" in order to pass on his story and experience to the younger ones. / Testimony: "My father was waiting for us at the port of Montevideo, in my vision I saw him much older. When we arrived we went to live in a boarding house on 26 de Marzo and Martí. The next day, I had my first walk with my father; I loved the beach. To this day when I look at the beach I can, at times, feel my father's hand as I did that day"; quote from his book "A long way home"
Hanna Hahn de Winter (Uruguay 2021): She was born on January 11, 1922 in Naklo, a small town on the Polish-German border. Years later he moved to Berlin with his family. Already in the 1930s, when the Concentration Camps were still in their infancy, his father Curt Hahn was deported to Buchenwald in 1938. Curt was later liberated. His stay in Buchenwald, although relatively brief, seemed interminable to him and left him with after-effects. Hanna was just shy of her 17th birthday when she experienced the traumatic Kristallnacht in Berlin. Part of the family that remained in Europe was murdered during the Holocaust. In Bolivia Hanna met Rabbi Fritz Winter (Z "L) -also a survivor of the Night of the Broken Glass- whom she married, remaining in Cochabamba, Bolivia, until 1950. That same year they arrived in Uruguay, the Switzerland of America at that time. Hanna (Z "L) of blessed memory passed away in January 2021. She had three children, three grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. / Testimony: Somehow, for her too, "Remember and do not forget" has been a mitzvah (commandment) and the memory of those tragic years always accompanied her.
León Poplawski (Uruguay 2020): Leon Poplawski was born in Hajnowka near Byalistok, Poland. From an early age he felt the rigors of war. He searched for food for the family as early as 9 years old, crossing snowy fields and risking his life, but he had a sharp mind and knew how to sneak out of danger. When they were taken on a cattle train bound for the Treblinka extermination camp with his entire family, he escaped with his four siblings through a loose piece of wood from the roof of one of the wagons. An official at the station had warned him that they were heading for certain death. It was during a snowy night in the middle of the Polish countryside. In throwing himself off the train, Leon suffered a hernia that lasted throughout the war. On one occasion, Leon was inside a house where they were going to give him food and the Nazis arrived. He hid in the chimney and the commandant came in and said it was cold, light the chimney. Leon climbed up the chimney as best he could or he would be burned alive and was saved as he had been so many times before by his quick thinking, his physical quickness and his bravery. He also managed to hide with his family in barns, especially in one of them in which they placed a false door, where they stayed during the day and at night they went to look for food for them and for their benefactors, a farmer with 7 children. Feeding them all was the condition for hiding them. That door was opened by the Nazis at a certain moment and they all held their breath, hidden and with great reflection of the sun they did not see them, which was a miracle. In addition, they would go out in the dark nights, begging for food at peasants' houses, making a lot of noise to make it look like there were many of them and with wooden shotguns painted black. In this way they frightened those who lived in the houses and obtained food that they had to share with those who were hiding them. His sister died in one of the barns and he never heard from his parents again. León ended his life at an advanced age in the Hogar Israelita del Uruguay. He was also an early member of the Holocaust Remembrance Center of Uruguay. / Testimony: He gave many talks to young people for many years. "I want to tell them what happened in the Shoah (Holocaust) so that it will be spread and in turn they will tell the next generations so that it will not be forgotten".
Lothar Rosenblatt (Uruguay 2020): He was born in Beisefôrth, Germany on May 26, 1927. Lothar arrived in Uruguay at the age of 10 on November 16, 1937. He and his family were among the first to arrive in Uruguay. His father, who had read Hitler's "My Struggle", made the decision to emigrate because of that book. He was very serious about it, contrary to his relatives who lived in his area. And he went to Uruguay because his mother's family had a confectionery in Frankfurt, which was frequented by the Uruguayan consul, who took his orders, due to the growing wave of anti-Semitism. After a short time and due to the increasing deterioration of the situation of the Jews, three siblings of Lothar's father also emigrated, although two, Betty and Max, along with other relatives were murdered in the concentration camps. Part of the history of the Jews in Beiseförth was documented by Julius Rosenblatt (Lothar's second cousin) in the series "Max and His Challenges", picture books that from a child's point of view show how they were losing rights and how they went through the Night of Broken Glass. / Testimony: "May what happened never happen again". "When you are convinced of something, you have to follow the impulse, that's what saved us".
Raquel Meizels de Davidman (Uruguay 2020): She was born on February 24, 1927 in a village called Beltz in Poland. In 1939, Beltz was occupied by the Nazis and this caused great confusion among the population. Rachel was only 12 years old when her village was invaded and her life and that of her family would change forever. They decided to escape during the night, leaving all their possessions behind, in search of salvation. After a very difficult journey, they managed to reach the Soviet Union, escaping from the Nazis. There they endured terrible suffering and hardship. The war came to an end and Raquel and her family passed through several refugee camps all over Europe. The rest of the family of both parents was exterminated in the Shoah. They finally made it to Uruguay in 1947, where she formed a beautiful family with Aaron Davidman - also a survivor - with two children, granddaughters and great-grandchildren. / Testimony: "May no one else go through what I went through and may this never be allowed to happen again."
Sara Filut Fiszerman de Socolovsky (Uruguay 2020): She was born on October 31, 1943 in the village of Prushlik and miraculously survived the Shoah because Jewish babies born in Poland at the height of the war could hardly be saved from the Nazis' clutches. When the Nazis entered their village, they were sent to the Makuf Ghetto. Her parents were forced laborers and her mother also worked in a kitchen. She had to hide her at the risk of her own life. She did everything possible to prevent her from crying or laughing. The fear that the baby would be killed was constant. Because of the lack of food, her father would run away at night when the garbage trucks passed by, he would run after them, managing to break some bags so that they would fall off the truck and he could look for some food to take to Sara and her mother. / Testimony: "Because we spent several years in that difficult situation of permanently running away, there are very deep traces in my soul such as insecurity, continuous discomfort and also nervous breakdown that have not allowed me to live as a normal person." "How could I survive? I don't know and I can neither imagine nor remember, because when the war ended I was two years old. Simply G-d was good to me. My mother was a fervent believer and she thought it was G-d's hand that saved me."
Valeria Wollstein de Cohn (Uruguay 2020): She was born in 1928 in a village called Beled, Hungary, near the Austrian border. About 80 to 100 Jewish families lived in the village, some more religious than others. Valeria's first sign of danger came in 1938, when the Nazis annexed Austria to the Reich; a large part of the family lived there. Uncles, aunts, uncles and cousins came to Beled in search of refuge and eventually some made it to Australia and others to Uruguay. Hungary was invaded by the Nazis in March 1944. Until that date, Hungarian Jews were subjected to acts of discrimination with laws that segregated them and some violent actions carried out by the Arrow Cross Party, the most extreme movement of Hungarian fascism. Valeria's family received in their house about 5 families crammed in rooms and sharing bathrooms. They stayed there for about a month and a half. Each family cooked their own food, had restricted hours for going out and of course had to wear the Star of David on their clothes. After a while, they were moved back to the town and all the Jews were forced to leave their homes to be taken to the Szombathely Ghetto. One of the many destinations of Valeria and her family was the Auschwitz Concentration and Extermination Camp. Arrival in Auschwitz meant the separation of the family, Valeria together with her sister Eva were selected for forced labor. They were in Auschwitz for about 5 weeks. Unfortunately the parents and the little brother were murdered in Auschwitz. In 1947, Valeria and her sister Eva arrived in Uruguay and began to rebuild their lives with their aunts and cousins. In 1950, Valeria married Alberto Cohn - also a Shoah survivor - with three children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. / Testimony: "I will always recognize what Uruguay did for my sister and me. Here I found people very well, more open. This country welcomed us as human beings, as equals, they gave us an identity card and when we were three years old we could vote. They gave us the possibility to work, to progress, to be free. To exercise our way of being Jews. Uruguay is the refuge of my life, where they let me be, grow and achieve my goals. I will always be very grateful. Soy celeste!”
Salomon Birbaum (Uruguay 2022): He was born on January 21, 1922 in Rome, Romania. When the war broke out Salomon was in Chernobyl. He was imprisoned in various ghettos and concentration camps and went through much suffering and disease, including typhus, one of the most deadly diseases of the time. As a prisoner he was taken to the forest daily and had to cut two cubic meters of firewood per day, otherwise he and his companions did not receive anything to eat or drink. He escaped five times while he was a prisoner. On many occasions while he was free, hiding in the forest with five comrades, they had to eat grapes with garlic or even a little grass, it was the only thing they could get to eat. On one occasion while he was detained by the Ukrainian army, as he was detained by several sides, he and other comrades were forced to open a mass grave with more than 600 corpses to remove clothes, jewelry, gold dentures and then they had to bury them again. He remembers it as one of the most unpleasant experiences of his life because of the terrible smell of putrefaction. / Testimony: "On one occasion we were stowaways in the open with a group of people on a train, there was a lot of freezing current that came in front of us because of the speed it was going, we were poorly dressed and poorly eaten that one did not even notice when the people who were around us were dying. Then we had no choice but to cover ourselves with the corpses of those who died to try to withstand the bitter cold.
Eva Vasen (Uruguay 2022): Eva was born on September 30, 1927 in a small town near Vienna, Austria. She was only 5 years old when Hitler came to power in 1933. On March 12, 1938, during the Anschluss, Wehrmacht troops invaded her country without encountering resistance and the Republic of Austria became a province of Germany. That day his parents were listening to the radio when they learned that the chancellor of their country had to resign because Hitler was taking power. The day after the invasion her father went to work as usual and the Nazis were waiting for him to arrest him for being a Jew. As a child she was forbidden to attend school and play with her friends because she was Jewish and her friends were Christians. Eva tells that her aunt Marta had a very difficult time, she lived in Hungary with her mother (Eva's paternal grandmother) and they were both taken to a concentration camp. Eva's maternal and paternal grandmother were taken to the gas chamber of that concentration camp. Only Eva's aunt Marta survived. Eva's father was imprisoned for 3 months, but was released thanks to her mother's influence in Vienna. After his release they had only 24 hours to leave Austria. They had to leave a whole life behind to try to make a new start somewhere else. They moved immediately to Hungary and then traveled by train to Genova where they took the ship Mendoza that would take them to South America. They arrived in Uruguay on November 26, 1938. / Testimony: "My father fought with the German army during World War I and even received decorations at that time, for this reason he thought that they would not take him away, but it did not help him at all. My aunt Marta was very optimistic, she always thought that she would get out of that situation and that she would survive, and she certainly did, but with much suffering".
Miriam Beck (Uruguay 2022): Miriam was born on May 8, 1927 in Haifa, Israel. When she was very young her family moved to Cluj, a city in northwestern Romania. On September 1, 1939 the war broke out, she says she will never forget, one Thursday night she was with a friend in her mother's room and heard on the radio that the war had broken out. In 1940 Hitler decreed that half of northern Transylvania was to be transferred to Hungary, at that time Miriam was thirteen years old. "When Transylvania was divided into two: Hungary and Romania, we stayed in Hungary, so I continued until 1944 when I finished my 5th year of high school," she recalls. On April 19, 1944, the Germans invaded Hungary. "That's when our odyssey began. They came house to house asking who we were. We went to live in the sanatorium. We had to wear the 10cm by 10cm star on all our clothes, everyone, from the children to the elderly. They limited our hours of departure, I was almost all day on the roof, we were in the sanatorium for a month. I remember how every week detectives came in trucks to see who could go to the ghetto. In that town the ghetto was inside the brick factory." When she was 17 years old she was taken prisoner together with her family and it was at that moment when they started the journey to Auschwitz: "they made us get into cattle cars, with only a small window on top and barbed wire around, we got in between 150 and 200 people, the only thing they gave us was a water bucket and another one for our needs. There we were told that we were going south, where the old people would take care of the children and those who could would go to work. At a certain point we realized that we were not going south but north. We crossed the border and from then on we traveled 5 days by train without water, without anything, totally enclosed. In June 1944 we arrived in Auschwitz. They separated men from women. They left us in a huge latrine sitting for 5 days without food, without even water." When they arrived at Auschwitz Bek was 17 years old but looked much younger. Although the rule was that over 35 and under 17 went to the gas chamber, Bek was spared because she and a group of 20 other girls were kept in a shed straightening nails. In total Miriam was in 11 concentration camps: Rechlin, Ravensbrück, Oranienburg, Malchow, among others. It was Oranienburg where she spent the longest time, nine months. Today Miriam is 96 years old, has two children, five grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. She lives between Uruguay and the United States. She speaks seven languages. She practices yoga, swimming, walks, reads a lot and spends long hours on her computer, communicating with her friends in Israel. / Testimony: "At the end of the year when I hear the fireworks I remember the war. I hope that my story will help to contribute so that many people will not go through anything like what we went through".
Linda Kohen (Uruguay 2022): Linda Olivetti Colombo, known as Linda Kohen, is an Uruguayan painter, draftswoman and visual artist of Italian origin and descendant of Piedmontese Jews. Born on October 28, 1924 in Milan, her family fled Nazi Germany in 1939 and settled in Buenos Aires and finally in Montevideo. In 1946 she married Rafael Kohen, adopted his surname and settled again in the Argentine capital. In 1977 she emigrated from Uruguay, in 1979 she settled in San Pablo where she lived until 1985, year in which she returned to Montevideo. Linda Kohen, has been a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother; she continues to paint in her studio in Montevideo, she is a restless soul, studious, kind and of an exquisite sensitivity. / Testimony: "We were an Italian-Jewish family. We found out about a newspaper that began to circulate with the first anti-Semitic laws, defaming and highlighting non-existent defects of the Jews. We began to receive refugees from Germany, there was a very sad atmosphere and my father who was a man who had traveled and lived in Argentina said "I am not going to continue living in my country as a second class citizen" and began all the procedures to leave Italy. We suffered morally, we could not go to school, we could not have contact with non-Jewish employees. We were lucky to leave early in September 1939 before we were persecuted and captured".
Lea Zajak de Novera (Argentina 2023): Lea was born in Bialystok, Poland, where she spent a happy childhood, but in September 1939, at the outbreak of World War II, at the age of 12, her life is shattered forever. She and her family are moved for two years to the Pruzany Ghetto, where they live in overcrowded conditions. In February 1943 they were transferred to the Auschwitz extermination camp. Her parents and her two brothers were sent directly to the gas chamber, while Lea, together with her aunt, managed to survive, being saved day by day, always by a miracle. After two years of hell, as the end of the war approached, with the evacuation of the camps, Lea took part in the Death March and was liberated by the Russians on the banks of the Elbe River on April 23, 1945. Two years later she arrives in Argentina, via Uruguay, clandestinely, where she marries and has two children and five grandchildren. / Testimony: "There are events that cannot be narrated, one cannot narrate the unspeakable because there are no words of how to qualify it. By surviving, with a lot of hard work and a lot of willpower, we were able to return to try to have a normal life. Many went crazy, others took their own lives." "The human mind works at a hundred when danger is perceived and as soon as we got off the cattle car that had transported us from Bialystok, Mom told me to follow my Aunt Sara, ten years older than me, sent to the line of those who looked healthy. I had a brown coat that made me look bigger and I slipped out. It was the first time I was saved. Mother and my brothers went straight to the gas chamber." She tells of when the terrifying Dr. Josef Mengele, the "racial hygiene" theorist who conducted experiments on human beings in the camp, lifted the fleshless skin from her hand and ordered her to be put on the list of those going to the slaughterhouse. "A Russian doctor, who was a prisoner of war, wrote down the name of another prisoner who had already died and saved me." Of her savior she does not forget her name, Lubov, "which in Russian means love."
Tomi Kertesz (Argentina 2023): Kertesz was born on August 27, 1928 in Budapest, Hungary. The Great Depression of the 1930s left his mother unemployed. His father had fought in World War I and a wound left his left hand virtually immobilized. He received the Iron Cross and a humble pension as a war wounded. In 1935 surnames began to be Hungarianized due to persecution and nationalism. His surname changed from Kohn to Kertesz. The following year, they wrote to his uncle, Jancsi, who had been living in Argentina for seven years to tell him that it was a good time to return to Budapest. Jancsi went to visit, but first he traveled to Germany, which was already covered with swastikas: "He told us that and told us to go to Argentina because the Nazis were coming to Hungary. But my parents were well off financially and we stayed. But already in 1937 people started to arrive who were escaping from the Nazis or other regimes, but at that time, Hungary was like an island of peace". In May 1944, the bombings began. Planes dropped bombs on an oil refinery and extinguished the night with a flash of oil and fire. Kertesz was 15 years old and worked in a chemical factory that was bombed. "I can't understand how we survived that. We were near some acid vats. Is it luck? Is it fate? Sometimes I stay awake trying to find an answer to that chance." Soon after, it was decreed that the Jews had to move to a ghetto in Budapest: "We moved into a building that had the Star of David on the door." His migration began on December 31, 1948, and on June 3, 1949 he set foot on Argentine soil for the first time. / Testimony: "On the day of liberation when they opened the hiding place, so that the Russians would understand that we were Jews and not kill us, we drew a Star of David and the communist hammer and sickle on the wall. They lowered their guns and ordered us up the steps. I was anxious to look for my family." "The cold was splitting the skin. In Klausal Square, which was inside the ghetto, there were corpses piled up like sandbags up to two meters high and kept in good condition by the sub-zero temperatures." "At night I had trouble sleeping. I dreamed that there were firemen working in the thawed Danube and that they pulled a bloated body out of the water. I thought it could be my father and I couldn't tolerate the idea. Many times I dreamed that scene."
Eva Fon de Rosenthal (Argentina 2023): She was born on September 9, 1925 in Budapest, Hungary. The Hungarian State, in 1938, was allied with the Germans until its president, in October 1944, decided to break that pact and became an enemy of the Nazis. At the age of 15, she was forbidden to study because she was Jewish. She lived locked up in houses whose fronts were marked with the yellow star. She had the yellow star sewn into her clothes. She worked as a slave digging wells. She almost died of typhus, the working conditions and the way of life were totally inhumane and because of this, Eva contracted the disease from the contaminated water. After getting false certificates to leave the country, she decided to look for her parents and found out that her mother was in the Ghetto and was later deported, although she did not go because the train cars were full. She walked a long way looking for her father and was told that he was deported, she kept looking until she was told that he was in the rows further back. When she saw him she hardly recognized him. In 1948 she arrived with her parents in Argentina and since then she has lived in Buenos Aires with her daughter. / Testimony: "I would like to turn the page of my teenage past, between the ages of 15 and 20 I suffered many humiliations and immediate death threats. "We were taken to live in Jewish houses where in each room there was a family, they put yellow stars on our clothes, and we women from 18 to 30 years old had to go and do forced labor. One thought that what was ordered we had to comply or else the consequence was going to be worse. We had to walk 70 kilometers to a village where we made deep wells. I lived as "an inferior being". "The tragedy I suffered in my soul was at the moment I got out of the deportation line. I escaped and saw my parents go to their death. When the conflict ended I saw hundreds of people with yellow stars shouting we are saved."
Pedro Roth (Argentina 2023): Pedro was born in Budapest, Hungary, on July 8, 1938. His father was captured and murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. He lived in hiding with his mother and his mother's sisters in the Budapest ghetto. Most of his family was murdered during the Holocaust. He arrived in Argentina at the age of 14. Before that, he was in Transylvania, Romania, and from there he went to Israel, only to arrive in Argentina, just to see the bombing of the Plaza de Mayo in 1955. He is a tireless worker, an ideator of projects, faithful to his principles. He studied film at the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes in La Plata. He began as a photographer of artists, social and art galleries. Later, in the 60's, he ventured into painting with the artists of the Di Tella Institute. He currently works as an artist in Buenos Aires and is a great collector of contemporary Argentine art. / Testimony: "I spent my childhood hiding in the Budapest ghetto. Four months in a cellar without seeing sunlight because they were bombing the city. My father was killed in Auschwitz. I am memory, I must remember everything for me, for my murdered relatives and for the six million Jews who cannot tell their story."
Sara Rus (Argentina 2023): Schejene Maria Laskier de Rus, known as Sara Rus, was born in 1927 in the city of Lodz, Poland. At the age of twelve she suffered the violence of Nazism and was moved with her family to the Lodz ghetto. Later she suffered subhuman living conditions in the Auschwitz concentration camp and finally she was taken to Mauthausen, where she was liberated. When the war ended, Sara and her husband Bernardo, survivors of the concentration camps, emigrated to Argentina with the illusion of starting a new life and building a family. Sara managed to have two children, overcoming the organic difficulties resulting from a body deteriorated by her long stay in the concentration camps. Thus, on July 24, 1950, Daniel was born and five years later, Natalia. In 1977, once again, Sara was a victim of the violence of the State Terrorism: on July 15 her son Daniel was kidnapped at the National Atomic Energy Commission, where he was developing scientific research tasks. From that moment on, Sara began her search for him, making countless national and international efforts. Today, Sara is a member of Mothers of Plaza de Mayo - Founding Line and of the Association of Survivors of Nazi Persecution, embodying her double condition of survivor of the Nazi genocide and victim of the last civil-military dictatorship in Argentina. / Testimony: "In Auschwitz-Birkenau the men were taken out directly. I never heard from my father again. I dared to approach an SS man with a whip in the middle of the square. People looked at me. I thought they were going to kill me. He looks at me and says, "How dare you approach me." I told him in German: "Why did you take my mother away from me? If I think today what I did... He looks at me and says, "Where do you speak German from?". I told him that German was spoken in my house. He asked me, "Which one is your mother?", and he said, "Go get her." The first save. From then on my mother was always with me. She survived the war with me. But we went through very hard times." "In all the experiences that I tell the young people, from my life in Poland, the terrible experience of the war, to the loss of my son who disappeared in '77, what I mainly want to leave them is a message of love. I fight not to forget. I fight for Memory. So that the Nazis, those there and those here, will never have the strength they have had. Memory is the most important thing. If we don't have memory, things happen again".
Hélène Goldsztajn Gutkowski (Argentina 2023): Hélène was born in Paris in 1940. After the great roundup of July 1942 and before fleeing, her parents managed to place her in the care of a Catholic family with whom she lived for more than two years. Her parents and her brother, who, after obtaining false documents, had managed to cross the demarcation line, lived clandestinely first in a village in the free zone and then near Paris. Once the Parisian region was liberated, in August 1944, they were reunited with the girl. Hélène arrived in Argentina in 1961 where, after a few years at the Alliance Française, she graduated as a sociologist. She is one of the founding members of the Asociación Generaciones de la Shoá in Argentina and author of the books Vidas (editorial Shalom, 1986), Vidas en las colonias (editorial Pardès, 1991) and Érase una vez... Sefarad (editorial Lumen, 1999). She has three children and six grandchildren. / Testimony: "Sometimes it is hard for me to feel like a survivor. I am part of the one hundred thousand Jewish children in Europe who were hidden to be saved, of the one and a half million who were murdered."
Pedro Kalb (Argentina 2023): Pedro was born in Leipzig, Germany in 1929. His father, Haskel, born in 1899, came from Poland, and his mother, Reisl Adler, born in 1906, from Austria. By 1933 Hitler was elected Chancellor, and in that year his father, sensing the danger, arranged for his family to emigrate. The family arrives in France and rents a house in Enghein-les-Bains. In 1939 his father, who is in New York on business, decides to stay in the United States where, if the situation becomes more critical, it will be easier for him, he thinks, to help his family to leave France. The following year he tries to obtain visas for his wife and two children, but the affidavit system decreed by the U.S. government soon forces him to give up the illusion of reuniting his family in the United States. In 1940, the Montmorency plant was bombed. Pedro remembers that he was at school at the time and that all the children and staff had to run down to the basement and were given gas masks. His father, still in New York, tries to obtain visas for four South American countries. In November of that year they set sail for Brazil on the steamship Angola. In the middle of the sea, the ship is intercepted by a German submarine. Nazi sailors board the Angola and check the cargo and the documents of the passengers, they are saved by the false documentation they had. Already in Brazil, Pedro enters the Anglo-American school of Copacabana. His father had planned to join them in Rio, where he thought the family would settle. But one of his former clients, who had managed to emigrate to Argentina a year earlier, was able to obtain an entry permit for each of them, so it was decided that the family would meet in Buenos Aires to settle there. / Testimony: "I have dedicated my whole life to give lectures on the Shoah, especially in Catholic schools so that they know what happened once in the world and understand that it is something that should not be repeated. I do not want to go into details of the tortures, persecutions and murders that were committed, but remember that they killed six million defenseless Jews in the countries they occupied and this would have continued if Germany had won the war".
Lily Ventura de Sciaky (Argentina 2023): She was born in Paris, France in 1933. When the war started Lily was 7 years old, as France surrendered she had to leave Paris to escape from the Germans. After a long journey she, her brother and parents arrived in Nice, in the south of France. They were safe for a long time as the Germans did not reach the southern part of France. The Nazis invaded the northern part of France and the southern part belonged to the Italians who were allied at the time with Germany. In 1942 the Italians had surrendered to the Americans and southern France was invaded by the Germans. During the first raid in Nice, more than 1,000 Jews were arrested. Most are transferred to Drancy before being deported to Auschwitz. Thanks to a friendship with the Uruguayan consul, they decide to apply for visas to leave France. During one of the raids, she and her family are not captured because they hide in the apartment of the Uruguayan consul. In 1947 they have all the necessary papers, travel certificates, political and social certificates, transit visas, etc. After a voyage of almost four weeks on the Formosa, they arrive in Montevideo. The four members of the family obtained the right to stay in Uruguay and a few months later settled permanently in Buenos Aires, Argentina. / Testimony: "I'm not a person to share my lived experience much because talking about this subject actually disturbs me, it still disturbs me very much 70 years later because it's not that I'm reliving it but I'm living it all over again as the images come into my head."
Pedro Lievendag (Argentina 2023): He was born in Hamburg, Germany in 1935. Peter had to flee Germany with his family when he was only 6 years old. The only possible destination for Jews at that time was in the Shanghai ghetto. When Japan entered the war in 1941, they were confined to the poorest quarter. Overcrowded, with little food and deplorable sanitary conditions, they suffered for seven years. Once liberated, he arrived as an illegal immigrant in Argentina in 1948. / Testimony: "We were in Hamburg until 1941 and the only way to escape at that altitude was via Russia, Siberia and Manchuria by train. It was 40 degrees below zero. We arrived in the Shanghai ghetto and stayed in precarious conditions for 7 years. We were lucky that the Chinese and Japanese were not anti-Semitic, but we were still herded into a ghetto.
Monica Dawidowicz (Argentina 2023): Monica was born in the ghetto of Lida, Belarus in 1941, in the midst of the horror of the Shoah. She was named Rujel Mowszowicz. Her parents Nejama and Shaike are deported to the ghetto along with their two young daughters, Neja and Esther. They quickly realize that survival there meant death for their daughters. At only three months old, Rujel was taken out of the ghetto and given to a non-Jewish Polish couple. They will be the ones who will nurture her until the end of the war and her new identity will be Irina Shipula. Later Irina will become Monica. A story that reveals the cruelty of human beings and at the same time the infinite love for life. / Testimony: "Soon after my birth, my parents understood that they could not protect their three daughters in the ghetto and in those conditions. They decided to give me to a Catholic, protective, Polish family and then to my other two sisters. My middle sister, Neja, was a rebel, she didn't stay with the family she was with, she went back to the ghetto and was annihilated together with my parents when the Lida ghetto was eliminated and they were all sent to the Majdanek extermination camp".
Andre Gategno (Argentina 2023): He was born in Paris, France on February 4, 1940. At the end of April in 1941: during a raid, the police arrive at the Gattegno's house. His father, who had put the Spanish flag on his balcony, shows his Spanish papers, which saves them from possible arrest, but it is a sign: they must think about leaving Paris and go underground. That same year they made all the necessary arrangements, but the application of Circular No. 11, which prohibited Argentine consuls in Europe from issuing visas to Jews, had become so strict that they decided to try to emigrate to Uruguay, from where, once they had obtained the identity card, it would be easy for them to enter Argentina legally. In May 1941 the family leaves by car from Bécon-les-Bruyères to Le Mans. In June they moved from Le Mans to Perpignan. When they arrive in Perpignan, André, in poor health since birth, is seriously ill. His grandmother, a connoisseur of the secrets of Sephardic folk medicine, cures him of an acute intestinal intoxication. The family leaves Perpignan for Spain, crossing the border without any problems thanks to the Turkish passports of the grandparents and Diane, and the Spanish passports of the Gattegnos. Approximately September 15, they arrive in Barcelona and a few days later take the boat to Montevideo. The family stays in Montevideo for a year with their Uruguayan identity card. January 11, 1943 the Gattegno family leaves Montevideo for Buenos Aires. / Testimony: "At the beginning of the persecutions we were living in Paris and thanks to the Spanish passports we got, me and my family were able to get to Argentina."
Claudia Piperno (Argentina 2023): She was born in Rome, Italy in 1938. His father was the first Jewish engineer to join the state-owned Rome tramway company. When Hitler arrives in Italy in 1939, he gets Mussolini to create a law to throw all Jews out of any state employment. For this reason they must move to Milan where his father gets a new job. By 1941 their life was unlivable since in Milan there were many bombings by the Allies and they lived practically in the basement locked up. Claudia was very young at the time and became ill with pneumonia; if they continued in the cellar she would die. A colleague of her father's work offered them an apartment in Rome and they decided to return since the Pope had managed to avoid the bombing of Rome. They lived in hiding in that apartment with false documents until May 1944 when the first allied armies entered Rome. At the end of the war they returned to Milan. In the year 1947 after a series of discussions between the USA and Russia there was the fear of another possible war and they decided to emigrate to Argentina. / Testimony: "The last two and a half years we were in Rome were very hard. At the beginning people had a little money to buy food, but the last six months there was nothing left. The little that was sold was very expensive and we had run out of resources. We spent those 6 months eating a chickpea flour soup that my mother had gotten, nothing more than that. Water, salt and chickpea flour".