LIVE! REMEMBER! TELL THE WORLD! E-Book

Leah Kaufman

• Herausgeber: BooxAi
• Kategorie: Religion und Spiritualität
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

At the age of ten, Leah found herself alone in the world in the frigid wastes of Transnistria - Nobody's Girl. Her mother's last words to her - "You must live! You must remember! You must tell!" - somehow gave her the strength to survive the terrors of death camps and orphanages and to rebuild her life as a refugee in Canada. Leah remained silent for fifty years while she raised a fine Jewish family and educated generations of Jewish children. Until the fateful phone call came that gave her no peace and forced her to go out and tell the world.

Leseprobe

Leah Kaufman

Live! Remember! Tell The World!

© 2023 Leah Kaufman

No part of this book may be reproduced IN ANY FORM, PHOTOCOPYING, OR COMPUTER RETRIEVAL SYSTEMS

— even for personal use without written permission from the copyright holder, Mrs. Leah Kaufman

except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in magazines or newspapers.

THE RIGHTS OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER WILL BE STRICTLY ENFORCED.

Published by booxai

ISBN: 978-965-578-265-3

LIVE! REMEMBER! TELL THE WORLD!

LEAH KAUFMAN

CONTENTS

Introduction

Acknowledgments

Jews being expelled from Transnistria (illustrative, USA Holocaust Museum)

Glossary

Foreword

Preface: Leah, You must Speak for Us

1. Life at Home

2. The Death March

3. Lydia in the Lion’s Den

4. Survival after Survival

5. On Canadian Soil

6. A Born Teacher

7. The Silent years: Protecting Myself From Myself

8. You Must Remember

9. Tell the World

“Dear Leah”

Leah’s Afterword: Live Your Mission!

Bibliography

Notes

Appendix

לזכר נשמות הורי אחי ואחיותיי וכל יהודי רומניה שנהרגו בדרך צעדות המוות ובטרנסניסטריה בלי קבר ישראל

In memory of my parents, brothers and sisters and all Romanian Jews who were killed in the death marches and in Transnistria without a Jewish burial

“Behold the ember saved from the inferno.” (Zecharia, 3:2)

“Even if a sharp sword is upon your neck, do not despair.” (Tractate Brachot, 10)

Remember to tell your children about the unknown holocaustof half a million of our Jewish brothers and sisters who were driven from Romania to the territory of TRANSNISTRIA. The death marches and destruction through the roads of thick mud, surrounded by death. The many thousands of young helpless orphans; in extreme cold with no protective clothing, shelter, or even food and water.

Carry on their spiritual heroism through the ultimate “revenge” of establishing Jewish families filled with Torah values.

Am Yisrael Chai!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the Universe,Who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this season.

You have changed for me my mourning into dancing; you undid my sackcloth and girded me with joy. So that my soul might sing to You and not be silent, Hashem, my G-d, forever will I thank You. [Psalm 30: 12, 13]

To Hashem for allowing me to Live, Remember, and Tell. I hope that my words will, in some small way, inspire others to help make this world a better place.

To my parents, brothers, sisters, and all the Jews who perished during the Holocaust in Romania and on the Death March to Transnistria.

To the Righteous Gentiles without whose courage I and countless others would not be here today.

To Pinchas and Chaya Hubberman, my foster parents, who, along with the Canadian Jewish Congress, the Canadian government, the people of Calgary, Alberta, and the Canadian citizens, who welcomed us, the needy Jewish orphans of the Holocaust. Your humanitarian act empowered us to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and for the country we love.

To Dr. Seth and Lisa Kaufman for underwriting this book, your encouragement, and your constant support.

To Rabbi Baruch David and Rachel Kaufman, “our first olim,” for their love and devotion, for always understanding our needs, and for organizing the technical side of publishing this edition of the book.

To Yossi and Chaviva Kaufman, for always being there for us, for making our aliyah to Israel easier, for opening important doors for us, and for introducing us to the Beitar community who became our friends, and for the endless dedicated love and care that they and their children shower on me 24/7 at this stage in my life when my strength is dwindling.

To our proudly Jewish grandchildren and the growing families of the married ones, and great-grandchildren, bli ayin hora – the fourth generation, our pride, and joy.

To Sheina Medwed for her assistance with the first edition of this book.

To Aaron z”l, and Helen Yermus of Toronto, for their friendship, love, and hospitality; they nurtured me during my most difficult times and during our times of joy. They will always be our children’s aunt and uncle.

To my beloved late brother and sister-in-law, Avraham and Betty Buimaz, z”l and our beloved nieces and nephews: Shmuel z”l, and Tzila Etzion and family of Netanya, Israel; Dov z”l and Yehudit Gofer and family of Kiryat Gat, Israel; Yuval and Sara Lampel and family of Hod Hasharon, Israel; Yehudit and Shmuel Hiley and family London, England; James and Sarah Bell and family, Toronto, Canada; Eleanor and Jeremy Zeid and family, London, England.

To Rabbi Naftali Shiff, Director of Aish HaTorah, UK and his devoted staff, who made it possible for me to speak to the thousands of students across England in schools and universities.

To Brian and Fiona Rabinovitch, our hosts for my first Aish HaTorah-sponsored speaking tour in England. To Rael and Lorne Gordon and their children, for the incredible warmth and love received during my second and third Aish HaTorah Universities and Schools speaking tour of England, and for sponsoring the Hebrew translation of this book.

To Rabbi Nechemiah Coopersmith, of Aish HaTorah, Jerusalem, for his encouragement and support and for publicizing my message.

To Mina and Yechiel Glustein z”l, our wonderful neighbors and loyal friends, who made us part of their family. Within their home, I learned how to celebrate life even while mourning. Their ahavat Yisrael knew no bounds.

To all the students of the international community who heard me speak at Yad Vashem, Michalalot, Yeshivot, Aish, Discovery, Fellowships, universities, and synagogues in Israel, England, the USA, and Canada, and Poland.

To Dr. Joshua and Gelle Fishman z”l, Riverdale, NY, for their friendship, love, and support at all times. They provided a home away from home for Seth, Baruch, and Yossi while they studied at Yeshiva University in New York.

To all my hidden child survivors and adopted siblings, especially Renata Zajdman, Prof. Yehudi, and Francoise Lindeman, my sibling of the Shoah, Marcel and Marilyn Tannenbaum, Bela, and Herschel Teichman.

To all my wonderful friends who helped me reach this point in my life, my students, parents, and co-workers; Beth Zion Ladies Torah Class; Eleanor Birenbaum; Mr. and Mrs. Fred Bettman; our beloved machutonim, Prof. and Mrs. Cyril Domb; and Dr. Larry and Diane Wruble; Sylvia Weiss z”l; Rita Bosin; the late Dr. and Mrs. Lou Boxer; Mr. and Mrs. Zvi Feldman, for our friendship of 56 years; the late Mr. Myer Fenig; Mrs. Bina Fenig; Dr. and Mrs. Quentin Fisher; Rabbi Pinchas Kantrowitz; Dr. Irene Kuphersmidt; Ben and Chana Marmor; Mr. and Mrs. David Saxe; Rabbi and Mrs. Sydney Shoham; Mr. and Mrs. Neil Tryanski; and the late Mrs. Toby Verblunski.

To Sandy Leibowitz and the ladies of our parsha shiur in Beitar, to Dr. Bella Kisselman, Naomi Holtzman, and the amazing staff at Kupatt Holim Leumit for taking care of my family and me for decades with love and devotion. To Heidi Baker, who has served as my medical manager for many years.

- The last is the most precious. חביב אחרון אחרון

To my husband Mark, of blessed memory, my beloved companion of 57 years, my best friend who was a constant source of encouragement and support. Mark meticulously recorded all of my presentations. Without his help, I couldn’t have gotten this far.

Leah Kaufman

Nissan 5782 - April 2022

Note: To contact Leah Kaufman, send an email to [email protected]

JEWS BEING EXPELLED FROM TRANSNISTRIA (ILLUSTRATIVE, USA HOLOCAUST MUSEUM)

GLOSSARY

List of selected Hebrew terminology used in the book.

aliyah

Immigrating to Israel

Baruch Hashem

Thank G-d

Bli ayin hora

"Without an evil eye" - an expression used by Jews to protect from harm caused by jealously

Chanukah (Hanukah)

An eight-day “festival of lights,” celebrated with a nightly menorah lighting

Chol Hamoed

The “intermediate period” of the festivals of Passover and Sukkot, between the beginning and end of the holy days

Eretz Yisrael

The land of Israel

Hashem

A title used to refer to G-d, literally “The Name”

Kiddush

A blessing recited over wine or grape juice to sanctify the Shabbat and Jewish holidays

Lag BaOmer

A minor festival falling between Passover and Shavuot

Mitzvah (plural: mitzvos)

A Torah commandment

Pesach (Passover)

Festival commemorating the anniversary of our miraculous exodus from Egyptian slavery

Purim

Festival commemorating Divine salvation from Haman, who plotted to annihilate the Jewish nation

Rosh Hashanah

Jewish New Year

Seder

Ritual meal at the start of the Passover holiday

Shabbos (Shabbat)

The Sabbath, the Jewish day of rest on Saturday

Shavuos (Shavuot)

Festival commemorating the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people

Shema Yisrael prayer

The first two words of an important morning and evening prayer that is also said before one's expected death

Shofar

A ram's horn blown before and during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur

Simchas Torah

Festival that celebrates the conclusion of the annual cycle of public Torah readings, and the beginning of a new cycle

Sukkah

Hut or booth in which Jews live during the festival of Sukkos. It is covered with foliage called s'chach

Sukkos (Sukkot)

Festival of Tabernacles

Torah

The Bible

Tu B'Shevat

The New Year for Trees

Yom Kippur

Day of Atonement

FOREWORD

This book is part of our commitment to our mother, our people, and humanity to learn from the lessons of the Holocaust.

Yet another book on the Holocaust?

Why relive the trauma by writing and publishing a book? 

Why should you want to read this book? 

“Live, Remember, Tell the World” is the story of our mother, Leah Kaufman, who was raised in a vibrant and profoundly religious home, lost her faith after the war, and returned to her Jewish roots. The focus is not one of revenge or anger. Our mother encourages her audiences to understand their heritage and to endeavor to be better human beings by striving to reach their potentials and by being guided by the wisdom of those who preceded us.

“Live, Remember, and Tell the World” is the charge our late grandmother Bracha gave to her nine-year-old daughter. This book will show you how this also appears to have been a blessing (Bracha). After experiencing tremendous cruelty directed at the Jews by the Romanians, Leah Kaufman was one of the few survivors of a Death-March to Transnistria. It is an additional tragedy that this region of the Holocaust and its unique horrors are relatively unknown. This book is also a memorial to the hundreds of thousands who perished under the cruel and brutal betrayal of the Ukrainians local to that region, many of whom also cooperated whole-heartedly with the Nazis. Leah Kaufman survived because of her remarkable determination, faith and a series of events that are best described as miraculous. This book has many page-turning segments. 

Writing, speaking, and thinking about the Holocaust is stressful for survivors. You will learn why Leah put herself through not just writing this book but also repeatedly telling her story to thousands of people, young and old, Jewish and non-Jewish, Ultra-Orthodox to Secular (Tzitzit to Tattoos), members of the IDF to Anti-Zionists. 

Our mother has spoken to many of the same groups annually for years. Despite their limited resources, these groups repeatedly invited her to talk due to the power of her message. She has received thousands of favorable letters from audience members over the years. Her message continues to inspire both Jews and non-Jews around the world. Aish HaTorah features her story and videos on its website.  

Despite all this, she managed, together with our late father Mark (of blessed memory), to raise three (relatively) well-adjusted sons who are raising proud Jewish families in the US and Israel.  

Leah Kaufman has spoken to many branches of the IDF and is a sought-after speaker by the Police in Israel as well. Amid Corona in 2020, the Israeli police saluted her on Holocaust Memorial Day in front of her home as the siren wailed in memory of the 6,000,000 murdered. A video of this went viral across the globe and had a worldwide impact.

https://vinnews.com/2020/04/21/watch-police-salute-holocaust-survivor-during-siren/

We are confident you will want to share this book and her story with your friends and family. We welcome your feedback, and our mom would be thrilled to hear from you (email [email protected]). Her drive to spread her message is a big part of what keeps her going.  

Thank you for taking the time to read this intro (and hopefully the book).

Seth, Baruch David, and Yossi Kaufman, and our families

P.S. Here are some links to sites where Leah Kaufman is featured:

Aish Hatorah https://aish.com/choose-life-a-documentary-about-leah-kaufman-/ (English)

And https://aish.co.il/48857027/ (Hebrew)

Hidabroot https://www.hidabroot.org/article/1168062

Ynet https://www.ynet.co.il/articles/0,7340,L-4610491,00.html

Orot TV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGexL-rFeWk

PREFACE: LEAH, YOU MUST SPEAK FOR US

It was a late November afternoon in 1993, and I was on my way home from teaching at the Peretz School. My fourth graders were excited about their learning. The Sukkos party in my garden was a great success. Parents still called to thank me for helping their children develop a love of Hebrew and Yiddish and intense feelings of Jewish pride. My heart was always with my students. I carried their names and faces with me wherever I went.

Walking along Montreal’s Leger Avenue towards my home, I noticed the maple trees in our Côte St.-Luc neighborhood arched their autumn branches in a red-golden hue above my head. The Montreal sky was turning blue-gray, an indication of the coming winter. As I looked up, a familiar feeling of foreboding and uneasiness gripped me as the haunted past I carried daily bore witness to my quiet, inner life.

I looked down at my feet, warm in new fur-lined winter boots, but the feet that I saw were bare, red, bruised, and frozen from the cold. It was right around this time of the year when I was a little girl of nine, that the Romanian soldiers had forced me, along with my family, out of our home to begin the Death March. We left with the remnants of the Jewish community from our town of Herta, in Dorohoi county, in the Moldova region of Romania. We were brutally driven, in sub-freezing temperatures, on the Death March to Transnistria, that forgotten cemetery, that piece of land designated to make Romania Judenrein (free of Jews).1Most people were ignorant of Romania’s support of Hitler. Romania joined the Allies only in the summer of 1944 when it was clear that Hitler was losing the war.

I turned my key and heard the familiar sound of the lock clicking open. As I walked into the entranceway of my home, I noticed the red message light flashing on the answering machine. I pressed the button and listened to the recording. “Hello, Mrs. Kaufman; this is Gisela Tamler. I’m putting together a group to help publicize and memorialize what happened in Transnistria, and I need you to help me.” I stood there immobile, with a deep chill spreading throughout my body. No, I thought, I can’t get involved in this. I’ll call her right away and refuse. I dialed her number with trembling fingers. “Mrs. Tamler, this is Leah Kaufman. Yes, I am a survivor, but please — I don’t want to discuss it. I don’t even want to think about it. The pain is always in my heart, and I will never forget it, but I don’t want anybody to know. My husband doesn’t know the full extent of my pain, and my children don’t know either. I’m a teacher here, known in the community, and don’t want to go public.”

The next call came the following week. It turned out that Gisela Tamler had known my parents. Our families had lived opposite each other on Peacock Street in Herta.

The year that I was born, Gisela got married and moved to the home of her husband’s parents in Czernowitz, a neighboring town. At the beginning of her marriage, Gisela recalled, she used to come by bus to visit her parents, and she would often see a little blue-eyed girl with long blond braids playing outside. “I thought,” Gisela confided, “that you must be a servant's child since your brothers and sisters were all dark-haired! One day, I finally asked my mother, ‘Mameh, who is that little Romanian girl always playing in front of the Buimaz house?’

“‘That’s Lea’le. She’s their seventh child.’

“‘Mameh, she’s so fair-skinned.’ I couldn’t believe that you were your parents’ child.”

Gisela had recently heard my name mentioned by a child survivor in Toronto, who somehow knew that I had lived through Transnistria. Still, despite our close connection, I repeated my staunch refusal. “Gisela, I’ve managed to build a normal life and don’t want to go public.” I knew that as a survivor, Gisela had the quality of persistence, but I was unprepared for her response:

“Leah, there is no way that you will escape me! I’ll call you day and night until you give in!”

Gisela Tamler was true to her word. But after that, I didn’t return her calls. I didn’t want to speak to her, to be convinced to go through hell again. Although I felt harassed, I was amazed by her perseverance. She left me messages in the morning, noon, and night, day in and day out. “Leah, I will not let you rest. You cannot allow those martyrs to be forgotten. You have an education; only you can help me.” Gisela repeated my name, her voice becoming almost shrill: “Leah, you must speak for us!”

For one year, I refused her requests and ignored her incessant messages. Yet her pleas now haunted me. How could I relive the torture and death of that horrendous time of my life and share my experiences with the public? I knew that I was living with a monster inside of me, pretending that it didn’t exist. I chose to live in a different kind of hiding, to become Canadian and pretend things hadn’t happened. I wanted to give my children the best Jewish education and raise them to have an everyday life. I tried to shield them from the trauma of knowing about my pain.

It took almost fifty years of silence before Gisela made me realize the urgency of testifying as a witness who had experienced the hell called Transnistria.

Transnistria means the other side of the Dniester River. It bordered a 24,840-square-mile piece of fertile land in southwestern Ukraine. In August 1941, as a reward for the “splendid military operations and the extraordinary spirit of sacrifice demonstrated by the Romanian armies” against the Soviet Union, Hitler gave the Romanian dictator, Ion Antonescu, governmental control over this piece of land.2

Structured according to the Fuhrerprinzip (Fuhrer principle), Transnistria’s civilian governor was Professor Gheorghe Alexianu, whose reputation as an extreme nationalist descended from a family of anti-Semitic jurists was well known. Before leaving his province in Romania, Alexianu met with a German delegation sent by Heinrich Himmler to discuss the structure of the government and to request that Germany be granted permission to “handle” Romania’s Jews. But Romanian Marshal Antonescu didn’t want to hand over “his” Jews to Nazi Germany. He preferred to capitalize on the ancestral anti-Semitism that simmered in the hearts of the local populations. From uncouth villagers to the cultured elite, everyone joined the brutal persecution and murder of the Jews.

Centuries before the German gas chambers, “Anti-Semitism, as a form of social expression … always existed in the life of Romanian society.”3 Romania was a country whose vile and bitter anti-Semitic history created a national furnace of hatred towards the resident Jewish “aliens.” The construction of this furnace spanned the centuries. Its smoldering layers were composed of religious, legal, economic, intellectual, social, political, and cultural coals, which ignited the ancient flames of Jew hatred in the hearts of Romanians in every single stratum of the society.

Romanian children were born and bred in the cradle of hatred. This feeling was fed to babies with their mother’s milk, to children in the public schools that banned Jews, and to the students in universities that allowed only 15% of the Jewish applicants to pass the entrance exams and then to enter at exorbitant fees and to study under abusive, oppressive, and often physically dangerous conditions. With rare exceptions, Jews were legally prohibited from entering the legal, medical, and tobacco industries. Most were forced to earn a living as merchants, tailors, shoemakers, blacksmiths, water carriers, and other occupations. Romanian soil had often borne witness to spontaneous pogroms and blood libels. In the late 1800s, the coals of this furnace were stoked by King Carol in his “Law of Aliens.” Fueled by the fierce opposition to the Berlin Laws mandating Jewish citizenship and by the anti-Jewish propaganda that the Romanian government circulated at home and abroad,4the Antonescu regime needed only to “strike a match” for the entire country to ignite into raging flames of Jew-hatred that resulted in brutality and violence that equaled and at times surpassed that of the Nazi beast.

Romania was unique among the European countries. With Hitler’s rise to power, Romania began formulating its structured plan to exterminate the Jews.

Initially, Romania embraced Hitler and did its best to duplicate his barbarism with less sophisticated means. Romania was a country primed for Hitler. Romania was not invaded by the Germans but invited them in! The Nazis were welcomed into Romania to help make Romania Judenrein.

A proclamation by police in in the Romanian city of Bacau ordering every Jew to wear a Yellow Star

Transnistria is not found on a normal map, only on a Holocaust map. Each of Transnistria’s villages became either a death camp or a labor camp. Shrouded in silent mystery, very little was known, and less was recorded about these mass burial grounds.

Gisela was asking not only for my historical testimony but for much more. I shuddered to think that I would have to recount the death and brutality that my nine-year-old eyes had witnessed. Although I had nightmares every night, I had never been compelled to speak about the horrors I had experienced or the images that haunted me. How could I endure the torture of remembering and talking about my past?

Yet a voice within me presented an opposing argument. I had survived in such miraculous ways. Did G-d keep me alive so that I could hide behind a nice, quiet personal life?

Or did my moral imperative to confront my past place me in a framework of collective history? I had given my children a solid Jewish education, religious training, and a deep sense of Jewish pride. Perhaps now I was being given another task: to contribute to world memory a firsthand account of man’s capacity for evil and testify to the human soul's ability to transcend it.

One night, during Pesach (Passover) of the year of Gisela’s constant phone calls, unable to fall asleep, I had a particularly vivid recollection of my first anti-Semitic experience. It was not unusual for me to be tormented by the images of my past before I fell asleep, but this time, the force of this memory shook my conscience. It was as though my memory itself were pleading for a voice.

Although I was allowed to play outside my home, I learned at age four-and-a-half that the Romanian children, some of whom were my friends, reflected their parents’ deep historical hatred towards the Jews. This is what happened:

My mother had finished braiding my hair, as she or one of my sisters did every morning. “Lea’le,” my mother whispered as she tied the pink ribbons on the ends of my braids, “today, you must stay home.” It was the beginning of springtime, when the days were getting warmer, and the new blades of green grass pushed their way up through the last remaining patches of snow.

I stamped my foot near the wood-burning stove in the middle of our kitchen.

“But Mameh,” I whined as I pulled on her blue wool dress pockets, “I want to play with Vera.”

“Vera has a holiday today and can’t play with you.”

I stood in the warm kitchen, looking out the window. The shaft of sunlight shining in seemed like an inviting hand to the world of the large yard that surrounded our house. As I looked outside, I wished I could run off to school as usual, to my kindergarten, where I was already learning the Hebrew and Romanian letters. My teacher said that I would learn to read quickly, and then I could help the other children.

“I know, Mameh; she told me she has a big party. I won’t stay a long time.”

“Listen to me, Lea’le; stay home.”

Undaunted by the firm edge in my mother’s voice but outwardly obedient, I reached for my school bag under the table and took out the pages with the capital letters. As the day progressed, my mother, a midwife, and healer, became busy preparing herbal tinctures. I waited for an unsupervised moment and quickly sneaked out the door to our front yard. The frozen winter earth was beginning to thaw, and the bare branches bore tiny buds coiled tight with the promise of new life. I looked up and down the street, and then I saw them.

“Vera!” I called as I ran toward my friend and her brothers. They were dressed in holiday clothing and walking down Peacock Street towards their neighboring house. After my exuberant greeting, Vera and her brothers pounced on me like wildcats, beating me and pounding my head and feet against the cold earth. “Killer! You killer!” they screamed over and over. I do not know what finally made them stop.

Somehow, gathering my strength, I managed to stand up. Bleeding, limping, and crying hysterically, I returned home straight to my mother’s arms.

“Who did I kill, Mameh? Who did I kill?”

Holding me tightly, she reassured me in a choked voice, “You didn’t kill anyone, my precious child. Please, next time you are told not to go out, please stay home.”

My mother held my bleeding face in her hands and studied my eyes, trying to discern how dark the shadow had formed in them. Until that moment, my mother had successfully shielded me from the occasional anti-Semitic outbursts of our neighbors. But now my eyes had seen their first act of cruelty, of my friends turning against me.

Vera was my friend. We played in each other’s yards. We shared dolls and fed the ducks. We walked in the same direction to school every morning. Why was this morning so different?

My mother’s hands were firm yet gentle as they cleaned the blood off my bruised, swelling face. As a midwife and healer, her hands were used only to heal, comfort, and bring life into the world for Jews and gentile alike.

“Lea’le,” she repeated as she hugged me, “we live in difficult and terrible times. But you must know that everything Hashem does is always for the best.” My mother’s voice was soft and gentle, with no harsh edge of hatred towards the children who had beaten me. At this tender age, I internalized my mother’s love for humanity. It was then that I learned not to hate. People who succumbed to subhuman brutality were to be pitied but never imitated. I was taught to aspire to a lofty and exalted character with an eternal purpose.

Until this point in my early childhood, I had been spared the brutal side of my community’s life. I lived in an almost idyllic world. My young mind, eager and quick to learn, was constantly questioning, absorbing, and searching for details.

As the youngest child, I was constantly cherished, nurtured, and educated by my loving and devoted parents and siblings: three full brothers, Nathan, Chaim, and Benzion; and three sisters, identical twins Rivka and Liebe, and Devorah, the youngest before me; and my two half-brothers, Avraham and Cesar, from my father’s first marriage.

I did not know when I stepped out of my house that day that I had entered a new world with my first encounter with open anti-Semitism. Now, with my first beating, I had acquired my place in the ancient story of my people. At that moment, when I greeted my friends, I stood at a meeting point of my personal life and our Jewish History.

Besides being the adored youngest child in my family, I was a Jew. I was a representative of the Jewish people. For that fact alone, I was beaten till I bled. My clothing was torn, my braids were ripped, and my leg was pounded so severely that I could only limp home. Thus began my education in the dark side of world history. At age four and a half, that venomous reality was beaten into my bones: "You are a Jew? I will kill you for that and for that alone."

After Easter passed, although I was hurt and confused by having been beaten, it was as though nothing had happened. Vera and I returned to being “friends,” and I heeded my mother’s warnings.

For the next five years, my life continued smoothly and peacefully until that horrific night that brought my childhood to an abrupt and brutal end. Until that time, unbeknownst to my innocent heart, this beating was but a foreshadowing of the evil to come upon my family and our nation. Yet my mother’s response taught me an eternal lesson. We must take revenge for the Master of the World. We have always been and must remain, a noble people.

These thoughts, memories, and emotions now pursued me as relentlessly as Gisela’s telephone calls. One day, upon my return from a trip to Memphis to visit my eldest son Seth, his wife, Lisa, and their children, Jonah, Talia, Elaina, and Ariana, I found my answering machine filled with one message after another from Gisela. Finally, still fearful,I agreed to meet with her, just so that she would stop hounding me. After meeting Gisela and speaking to her, I became convinced that she was right. I agreed to face the terrifying prospect of bearing witness to the horrors of Transnistria.

In 1941, as we trudged along on the Death March, starving and broken on the icy roads, my mother, of blessed memory, would say to me over and over: “Du muzt lebn, du muzt gedenken, du muzt dertzeiln der velt vos die Rumanier hobn tzu undz geton — You must live, you must remember, you must tell the world what the Romanians did to us.”

How did she know she should tell this to me? Did she know that I would be the only one of her children to survive? Did G-d grant her broken heart a hint of prophecy so that she could invest me with a larger purpose and charge me with a historical mission? “Live! Remember! Tell the world!”

Now, along with Gisela’s incessant pleading, I heard the lament of my mother’s command. I realized that I had to publicize my story no matter the sacrifice.

But how is one to say? How is one to communicate that which defies language by its very nature? I realized that to keep my memory in a vault was to grant victory to the deniers of the Romanian Holocaust.

Our identity papers were destroyed, but the Nazis and the Romanian gendarmes could never succeed in destroying my Jewish identity. Our killers tried to expel us from history or, worse still, deprive us of our history altogether. They tried to prevent our lives and deaths from becoming part of human memory. I finally realized that I was becoming the enemy's accomplice by trying to forget and then refusing to testify. It was vital that I testify the heinous crimes that I lived through to honor the memory of those who perished, the courage of those who helped me and others, and to teach others so that the world would learn from the tragedy of the Holocaust.

Gisela’s pleading, love, and encouragement started me on another journey. I was compelled to return in my memory to that forgotten graveyard called Transnistria. I traveled through the unbearable loss of my family and childhood. By being forced to face the demons of my personal past, I was reminded of the miracles that saved me and the prophetic mission of my mother’s words. I was not merely one child who had survived. I had to become the collective voice for the hundreds of thousands of Jewish children who were brutally murdered and perished on the roads, in the ghettos, and the labor camps of Transnistria. Their souls are crying out to us.