Its been a while….
As I have been settling into my job its been a while since I’ve been able to type an update. The job is going well and life as a sales person proves a challenging one and anyone that knows me knows I love a good challenge! I love it enough to arrive at work early and stay late oh and did I mention that I’m that eager that I love going in on weekends! Seriously!
Anyhow, back when I was 15 years of age in Island School I asked my grandparents from my dads side to hope on a plane to Hong Kong. Reason being, that as an Israeli and a jew I felt annoyed that what was being taught about world war two had made no impact on what my peers were studying. Though I ofcourse had knowledge first hand, I’m living and breathing because the fight my grandmother went through. Now my grandmother gave a talk to a room filled with all us 15/16 year olds and till today this specific chat is being taught and used in Art, English and Drama department in Island School.
Recently my old teacher that helped organise the talk to the students had arranged a poem reading to a very important pulitzer prize winner about my grandmothers story:
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 grandmother is my hero!
There is a saying in this life ‘Count your blessing day ina nd day out’ and this I do! Nothing in this world is not worth the fight, every fight to live and live well for what and who you are is important. My grandmother taught me that! She is an unbelivable humanbeing that taught me so much!
Just imagine the strength that comes from family history line
signing off ***
