| |
|
|
A day of joy and untold sorrow
BY LIZA WEISSTUCH
|
|
|
|
|
As a young child, Roman Frayman, who lives in Ohio, spent four weeks hidden in a suitcase in a Polish ghetto shoe factory. Leon Shear, also from Ohio, says he survived Auschwitz because he had a "good" job with the Canada Kommando, cleaning out the cattle cars as loads of Jews arrived from all over Europe. He could snatch morsels of food from their suitcases before sorting their belongings, and he still remembers when the Hungarians turned up because they often carted meats. Lisbeth Malkin of Tenafly, New Jersey, still wonders what happened to her parents after she was taken from them in Vienna. An elderly man with a bushy head of white hair and piercing blue eyes remembers grabbing the first Russian soldier who marched into his camp and telling him, "Thank you, you saved my life, I am Jewish." The soldier pushed him away and sneered, "Of all the people I saved, it had to be a Jew." So many chapters of so many stories were told, but at the 10th anniversary of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, perhaps it was more significant that these experiences were inquired about, encouraged, and listened to with undivided attention, with urgency.
|
