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"story and song about Jewish children in WWll." Dear Tracy Dee,
I cried and cried after reading your post and
listening to that song. I was one of those
children who was a second generation "Hidden
Jew" whose mother, whom had blonde hair and blue
eyes worked in a shoe factory for two Jewish
men. When Hitler took those men away, the
factory was taken over by the Father Land. My
mother continued to work there and I spent my
time in the Catholic Orphanage where all the
children were kept while their mothers worked to
make a living. I slept there in one of many beds
lined up in this big room where I befriended one
of the little girls who always cried and whose
hand I held through the bars to her
hand. She was taken home one
week-end and never returned. The nuns, later
that week, took all of us to the place where her
body was dressed in white, prompted up with four
candles burning at the corners, placed in front
of a large pane window. We were told to walk
single file to see little Hilde asleep. I don't
know what happened to her but knew it was not
good.
We had many happy moments there in the
orphanage, sad moments too and very scary ones
when we got herded down into the basement to
pray while the bombs were going off over-head. I
knew that the family home where my mother stayed
in a little room at the top level had it's roof
taken off and one of the brothers was killed as
he tried to seek shelter in a hole outside. When
I did get to go home for a week-end, I recall
many long, cold waits in the bread-lines with my
mother to buy some bread, often it was gone by
time we got to the front. When I did get some
bread, I would wad it up and hide it so I would
have it for later.
I have enclosed a picture of me standing
inside the Orphanage by the fence. At the end of
the war, I often spent time peeking out
through a hole in that fence to look over
to the river. I'll never forget the sight of a
ragged soldier, one leg missing hobbling with a
home-made crutch trying to get to his home. In
1948, my mother came to get me and told me we
were going to America. Before I left I promised
the nuns and all the kids in there that I would
return some-day with chocolates. Twenty-Five
years later I did return and brought a whole
suitcase full there. Course things were changed
because the nun I remember was dead and children
grown up just like I was.
I always had a connection to Israel, it
seems. After 3 trips to Israel which included
trips to the Holocaust Museum with the pictures
of the horrors of the concentration camps (taken
by the Nazis themselves) where I cried until I
couldn't cry anymore, I knew I would find out
who I really was. You see, I didn't know my
biological father and was told he died in the
war. I saw many pictures at the museum that even
resembled my own family in Germany.
To make a long story short, I found out that,
not only was my grandfather Jewish from
Czechoslovakia and a tall, blonde Grandmother
from Germany, also Jewish whose parents had
become Catholic in order to escape persecution.
To tell how it all came about would be a whole
different tale.
Not only is the holocaust real but also real
is that there were many good people among the
various countries that had the guts to help the
persecuted ones survive somehow, someway. They
are the ones that Jehovah God will bless and
that is a promise right out of scripture.
PS I continued to wad up bread dough
and hide it for a long time after coming to
America. My uncle asked why I did this
when they would find those wads of dough; I
never answered but I guess, finally I
realized there was plenty to eat..... But oh,
that dark, cold cellar held horrors for me a
long, long time whenever my step-father would
put me down there.
Bless you Tracy Dee for your story.....from
the bottom of my heart.
Love, Gerlinda
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