NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla., Oct. 12, 2008
Holocaust Survivors Share Their Love Story
He Was A Prisoner In A Nazi Death Camp, She Was A Young Girl In A Nearby Village
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Herman and Roma Rosenblat pose for a photo in their North Miami Beach, Fla. home, Sept. 25, 2008 as they talk about "Angel Girl," the book written by Laurie Friedman, about the beginning of their relationship during the Holocaust. (AP Photo)
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Interactive Lessons Of Auschwitz A look back at the notorious Nazi death camp where some 1.5 million people perished.
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Fast Facts Israel Learn about the people, economy and history.
He was a teenager in a death camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians. Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.
She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks. And so it began.
As they tell it, they returned the following day and she tossed an apple again. And each day after that, for months, the routine continued. She threw, he caught, and both scurried away.
They never knew one another's name, never uttered a single word, so fearful they'd be spotted by a guard. Until one day he came to the fence and told her he wouldn't be back.
"I won't see you anymore," she said. "Right, right. Don't come around anymore," he answered.
And so their brief and innocent tryst came to an end. Or so they thought.
Before he was shipped off to a death camp, before the girl with the apples appeared, Herman Rosenblat's life had already changed forever.
His family had been forced from their home into a ghetto. His father fell ill with typhus. They smuggled a doctor in, but there was little he could do to help. The man knew what was coming. He summoned his youngest son. "If you ever get out of this war," Rosenblat remembers him saying, "don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody."
Two days later, the father was dead. Herman was just 12.
The family was moved again, this time to a ghetto where he shared a single room with his mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins. He and his brothers got working papers and he got a factory job painting stretchers for the Germans.
Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. As the Poles were ushered out, two lines formed. In one, those with working papers, including Rosenblat and his brothers. In the other, everyone else, including the boys' mother.
Rosenblat went over to his mother. "I want to be with you," he cried. She spoke harshly to him and one of his brothers pulled him away. His heart was broken.
"I was destroyed," Rosenblat remembers. It was the last time he would ever see her.
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remarkable how these two met years later in the U.S.. it could only be the providence of God. Definitely material for a story and film to inspire people.
In 1935 a young Jewish couple fled Germany to live in London.
They lived in a two room flat in a pretty run down area of the city.
The husband worked as a clerk earning just enough money to support them both.
Late in 1939 the last of the Jewish children refugees from Germany arrived in London.
Their parents had sent them to England to be safe.
They all needed homes and an appeal was sent out to all the Jewish homes to take them in.
The wife of the clerk sent him out to the refugee centre to take one of the children in.
She asked him to get a girl if possible.
They had no children themselves.
The husband came back some time later with two young girls.
They were sisters, one was four years old and one was seven.
The husband said he arrived at the centre late. They had no girls on their own. These girls could not be separated as they were sisters.
The wife was furious, what had he done, how could they possibly look after two girls in their tiny flat.
He must bring them back immediately.
While they argued in the other room, they heard a cry, almost a scream from one of the girls.
They ran in and asked the girls what was wrong.
The older girl pointed at one of the photographs on the wall.
She then said in German "my mother".
The picture on the wall was of the wife%u2019s sister with her husband.
It was the sister she had not seen in 4 years who was still in Germany.
The modern day nuclear holocaust pushers like that maniac Ahmadenijad will fail as well.
God will protect His people Israel from it''s evil enemies, like He has been for the past 60 years.
So give it your best shot Ahmadeninutjob, because in the end: YOU LOSE, ISRAEL wins.
These people are heroes, their families are heroes, and this man''s father spoke words we can all apply.
- by sniper-john October 13, 2008 2:50 AM EDT
- Shalom.
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