Judith Becker,
a Holocaust survivor, was born on September 11, 1928. She was born in the main city of the province
of Pomerania located in Germany (after the war, it is what’s now Poland). Becker’s life before the war was centered heavily
around the family structure. She shares
a wonderful, yet tragic story regarding a tradition she once upheld; every
Thursday she would visit her aunt in order to retrieve a potato cake. However, on her last departure, Becker
arrived in time to see Gestapo men at her aunt’s house. Her aunt asked her to deliver a message to
Becker’s parents, “Tell them we have visitors.”
With that instruction, she was curious, but not afraid of the men of
authority. When she made it back home,
the Gestapo men were waiting. Due to the
fact that her parents were not yet home, her baby sitter asked for her (along
with her siblings) to go to bed. While
she was in the comfort of her room, her mother finally arrives in the early
morning.
At this time,
the Gestapo men ask that the children wake and go to the station with the
men. Judith Becker recalls that the day
before this took place, that was going to be the last time she would see her own
father; she believes this might be due to the fact that the Gestapo men were
rounding up men. The men were targeted,
as Becker explains, due to the fact that ancestry was being traced—any ancestry
prom Poland was a sure ticket into the hands of the Nazis.
Once her family had been shipped off to
a Ghetto, her mother became a corset maker.
Becker would lend a helping hand, bringing in food and material as
profit. Eventually, after being
separated from a few of her siblings, she was sent to stay in a camp (her
brothers became ill, or died in the last camp occupied by the family). As the camp was, later on, turned over
(individuals ran after the final clearing of the camp) Becker ran into a ditch. There, she landed on an American
soldier. She fell into the hands of
survival. This is something she said she thinks about daily--memories that are sad, yet full of inspiration and hope.
“I just hope
that my blood goes to the most important ‘hero’ that you have on that front,
because he will be dead before you even get the transfusion into him…” Becker
stated as she tells of a time her brother informed her that the medical team
will draw blood in order to provide for the German army.
As Judith
Becker reiterates the story of Jews running from the [last] camp, she anxiously
states, “Whoever could, ran.”
Edith
Coliver, spelt “C-O-L-I-V (for victory!)-R.”
This woman gave a testimony in regards of the Germans, and the
Jews. She begins the testimony by
announcing she was born “a long time ago” on July 26, 1922 in Karlsruhe (Germany). Coliver states that this part of the town was
known as the seat of Grand Dukes. In
this town, the place of her childhood, she notes that she was a part of a very
peaceful life—standing in the middle class.
She shared this childhood with parents, and two brothers.
One
event Coliver explains focuses on her gym teacher that lived in the house above
her. She remembers that he would visit
her family in order to discuss the wrong doings of the Nazis, or German members. The irony in her story is that this man came
to the family one day, and said in regards of a Nazi, “You know, he keeps
saying it (speaking of a newspaper that distributed lies about the Jewish
people), and nobody is challenging him—there must be some truth to it.” Coliver sadly replies to such memory, “I
never saw him in a Nazi uniform, and I hope he didn’t get one.”
Once
the sides seemed to be turning, her parents began to worry about the situation
for Coliver. They asked her to move to
America with them in order to avoid a great war. Applying for visas, she was quickly accepted,
remembering the consol say, “We Americans have no interest in separating
parents from their children.” In
response, her father told Coliver, “There’s a war coming, and I’m not going to
be separated by an ocean…I want you to come along.” And she stayed in America for quite some
time, in order to return a few years later (visiting once it was safe). On this visit, she ran into an old school
friend, in which they discussed their classmates. Her friend asked her about a Gertrude Marx
(Coliver’s best friend): “And then she asked me about Gertrude Marx. And I said, ‘she died in an extermination camp.’ And we had nothing more to talk about.”
Her
message to future generations is “Get involved, and stay involved…particularly
in human rights.”
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