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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It was in Schlieben, Germany, that Rosenblat and the girl he later called his angel would meet. Roma Radziki worked on a nearby farm and the boy caught her eye. And bringing him food - apples, mostly, but bread, too - became part of her routine.
"Every day," she says, "every day I went."
Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the apples and never mentioned a word of it to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed. When Rosenblat learned he would be moved again - this time to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic - he told the girl he would not return.
Not long after, the Russians rolled in on a tank and liberated Rosenblat's camp. The war was over. She went to nursing school in Israel. He went to London and learned to be an electrician.
Their daily ritual faded from their minds.
"I forgot," she says.
"I forgot about her, too," he recalls.
Rosenblat eventually moved to New York. He was running a television repair shop when a friend phoned him one Sunday afternoon and said he wanted to fix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unenthusiastic: He didn't like blind dates, he told his friend. He didn't know what she would look like. But finally, he relented.
It went well enough. She was Polish and easygoing. Conversation flowed, and eventually talk turned to their wartime experiences. Rosenblat recited the litany of camps he had been in, and Radziki's ears perked up. She had been in Schlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.
She spoke of a boy she would visit, of the apples she would bring, how he was sent away.
And then, the words that would change their lives forever: "That was me," he said.
Rosenblat knew he could never leave this woman again. He proposed marriage that very night. She thought he was crazy. Two months later she said yes.
In 1958, they were married at a synagogue in the Bronx - a world away from their sorrows, more than a decade after they had thought they were separated forever.
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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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