My husband loves to assign movies to holidays that impact us. For Fourth of July, we watched 1776; for Ground Hogs Day, we watch Ground Hogs Day; for Israel Independence, we watch Exodus; and for Yom HaShoah, we watch Schindler’s List.
I have known for several years now that one of my grandfather’s cousins, one of the very few who survived the Shoah, was on Schindler’s List and survived as a member of his work force. It made me think of this movie in a different light, because now one of those working and surviving was someone I once knew.
But this year, my view of the movie will change even more. For the first time, I now know that my grandfather’s cousin, Shalom, was one of the people who served as a pallbearer for Oscar Schindler at his funeral. And for the first time, I have found out that my distant cousin was one of at least 10 people from his community who were saved by Schindler.
(Many thanks to Izabela Sekulska and Mayn Shtetele Mielec for discovering this information.)
I had to wonder, did they know each other? There were about 5,000 Jewish souls who lived in the area of Mielec. Only 100-200 survived. Once they became part of the Schindler work force, of course they new each other. But did they work together to survive? Did they become part of this unusual group together?
I know of one other story like Schindler’s list. My good friend’s mother and grandmother survived the Shoah with about 100 other women who worked making clothes and shoes for the German army. The man who ran this factory saved them several times. Once keeping them at the factory even over night when there was typhus disease raging through the camp. A second time he actually went to the camp and getting his workers out from a transport to a death camp, saying he did not want to train new workers.
Did he do this because he was emotionally attached to his workers? Did he really work to save them? We will never know. But my friend’s mother and grandmother survived. I knew them as well. Their story can be found at the San Antonio’s Holocaust Memorial Museum.
So on this Yom HaShoah, I will have a small beacon of light thinking about my grandfather’s cousin, Shalom; my girlfriend’s mother, Anna, who were saved by their work in a factory. And I will have hope because people like Izabela in today’s Poland work to keep the Jewish cemeteries in good order and to find out what happened to the Jewish people who disappeared over 80 years ago.
zicharonot 