I was in the Vilna Ghetto with my parents and family.  My brother was the first of my family to be called up to work in a labor camp.  At that time, the Germans weren’t apparently particular about the names of who was called up, just that people showed up for the labor camp from the families.  I considered myself to be strong and resourceful.  I admired my brother very much and decided that I would go in his place.  As it turned out I was the only one from the immediate family who survived.  I had hoped that someone from our large family would survive.

 

I later learned from eyewitnesses that my sisters were lined up in the ghetto and shot in front of my mother’s eyes.  

            

In Stutthof concentration camp, the Germans knew that the end of the war was coming.  I learned from one of my cousins who survived that the Germans burned down the barracks where my mother lived with the other prisoners.  It is not clear what happened to my father.  

 

I ran away from the labor camp and later wound up in the Kovno Ghetto.  It was there that I met and married my first husband.  After six months, we were separated.  I was sent to a labor camp where the women crushed stones and built roads.  It was described as heavy, heavy work.  

 

My parents found out where I was and sent me a ring, wrapped with a message, “We are alive” in Hebrew.   I kept that ring with me always.  Once in a labor camp, the Germans had everyone take off their shoes prior to a Selection.  My ring was in the shoes.  Later, those who survived the Selection went back and got shoes, typically people looked for the best pair of shoes they could find.  I found the old ratty pair of shoes that had my ring in it. 

 

Toward the end of the war, I witnessed a horrifying Kinderaktion that has haunted me the rest of my life.  The Germans were extremely cruel in the way they got rid of people.  I remember how they took babies and young children and actually fed them to their German shepherd dogs.  I always say that this is the one memory that I wished I could get rid of, seeing what happened that day.  It has been hard for me to look at German shepherds since then.   

 

At the end of the war, I was with 500 women and we were put into a barn with the doors locked with guards.  We had no food or water, and the women were dying.  That was when we were liberated by the Russians. The Germans ran away or were killed by the Russians.  That is when I was liberated.  

 

People need to know that it was that bad, that people were capable of behaving so inhumanely in so-called civilized society.

 It is important to be kind to one another.  She was an automatically kind person.  Even cruelty didn’t change her ability to be kind, to do mitzvahs, for others.  She embraced people who showed kindness to her.  Isn’t this what we are all about?