They lived for years in fear of betrayal. They fought over a few potato peels and traded their dowries for bread, hid their children under hay bales and in earthen dugouts, forged documents, threw themselves over their children during air raids, or gave up their engagement rings to buy their freedom. Many of them gave their lives as martyrs—as witnesses of the God who chose one people above all others on this earth. Those whom the world was not worthy of—the mothers of the Holocaust survivors.
By Anemone Rüger
A trip to visit survivors in Ukraine is often marked by a special occasion, hinting at a specific mission. This time it was Mother's Day. It all started with the waffle hearts. My mother had some leftover fresh waffles and gave them to me as provisions.
Upon arriving in Ukraine, I decided to eat only the broken pieces and let the waffle hearts tell a story: a story of the love for the Jewish people that my parents had instilled in me from a young age during the darkest times of East German communism. From then on, my mother poured all her love into the bakery. Thus, the waffle hearts became carriers of a message that astonished and touched countless Holocaust survivors.
When my mother became critically ill in mid-April and was practically given up for dead, Holocaust survivors throughout Ukraine began praying for her. I had only vaguely sensed how much this simple gesture from a German mother had meant to the orphaned Jewish children of the war. They prayed as if for a close relative, and it soon became clear that God's way led my mother back to life.
When the opportunity arose to spend a week in Ukraine with my Ukrainian colleague Alina, I didn't hesitate – convinced that we are called to comfort those who have suffered so much more: with the comfort we ourselves have received in difficult times. My departure coincidentally fell on May 10th: Mother's Day. In the morning, I just managed to deliver peonies to the hospital. No sooner had I crossed the Moldovan-Ukrainian border into Odessa than divine encounters seemed to rain down from the sky. And: the conversation kept returning to the mother, the "Yiddish mamme.".
Moische alias Viktor
Viktor is the first person we visit right after arriving at the bus station. His Yiddish name is Moische, he tells me when I ask. Roman Schwarzman, who heads the Holocaust survivors' association in Odessa, keeps finding new survivors for us. Viktor lived so far away back then that the whole terrible story should never have happened.
As the weather improved in early summer 1941, his mother Meri took her four-year-old son Moishe on a long journey: to relatives in Tulchin near Vinnytsia. Overnight, Tulchin was occupied, and Viktor, along with his mother and all his relatives, was deported to the Pechora death camp – on foot. “Many who couldn’t go on were shot along the way,” Viktor recalls. “The camp was commanded by a German. A tall, blond man. He didn’t speak to anyone. The Ukrainians carried out his orders. There was only one building. We slept on the stairs; there was nowhere else to sleep. We children went in and out, begging for food; no one paid any attention to us.”
One day, Mom was there too
“A few times a month, a truck would come and take people to be shot. A Ukrainian man always chose them. I remember their screams, their cries. Then they were taken into the woods. We heard the shots. The dogs, too. One day, Mom was among them. She was shot.” Viktor tells the story calmly and almost emotionlessly, as if it were something he had read somewhere.
"So, at five years old, I was all alone. Dad was killed in action. I don't have a photo of Mom. I can only vaguely remember what she looked like. I ran away from the orphanage, took a freight train all the way to Crimea, and finally ended up in Feodosia. At the orphanage, they gave us 20 grams of butter on our bread on Sundays."
Then Viktor wants to show me something else: his boxing gloves. He proudly explains that he won many competitions in the USSR. We arrange to meet at the next celebratory meal in the community.
Only the bloody dress came back
We meet Vyacheslav, who went into hiding with his mother and was then betrayed; whose father received nothing back from the commandant's office except his wife's bloody dress and went mad because of it, so that Vyacheslav lost both parents in the same tragedy.
There are moments that bring you to your knees. This is one of those moments. "My mother passed on her good health to me, which is why I've lived so long," he says. "I've experienced so much, survived so much. I'll be 90 in September. I invite you all."
Hidden in the tiled stove
We meet Alexander, of the same age, who was born Adolf into a Jewish family but changed his name for obvious reasons. His mother, Leah, herself grew up as an orphan – her parents were murdered in a pogrom. At the outbreak of war, she worked until the very last moment in a sewing factory that produced uniforms.
“Then it was too late to escape,” Alexander recalls. “Mom hid me – here and there. The old houses still had tiled stoves. When there was a raid, Mom would put me in there from the top. I just barely fit. Luckily, they never came with the dogs; that saved us.”
Rescue with Mom's golden watch
Then we come to Adolf Naumovich. He has kept his name. He tenderly kisses his wife's hand as he explains to us that he has been married to Lubov for 63 years. It was love at first sight, he says, back then at the dance in Odessa. He, too, narrowly escaped death. "When the Romanians invaded, they went from house to house looking for Jews," Adolf recounts. "They found us children and took us to the police station. Mama had a gold watch. With it, she bought our freedom."
Hidden in the water
“We hid in the water,” says Lilia. Her Jewish father, Iosif, was killed near Smolensk. “A neighbor betrayed us. We had to hide. Whenever there was a raid, we went to the river. There we hid in the cold water, under the bridge in the dark. My mother carried me when I was little. She paid for it with her joints her whole life.”
A heart for Antonina
Antonina is alone in the world. The most important thing about our visit for her is that we try her homemade varenyky. Only after a while do I notice a familiar little bag among all the wall decorations – my mother's waffle heart. Antonina has kept it for three years.
“Mama’s name was Ester. Ester Lejbowna, after her father Lejb,” says Sinaida, who immediately invites us to sit at the table in the courtyard; the sun has come out here on the outskirts of Odessa. “When the Romanians marched into Odessa, the Jews were told to assemble at the sugar factory. We went too. But it was a trap. Only Papa was allowed to return; he was Russian. When his mother found out they had kept us, she gathered her valuables and went to the sugar factory. She begged the Romanian guard to release us and offered him her gold in return. Then he let me go. Grandma demanded that he release Mama as well, but his answer was: ‘No. Come back tomorrow morning.’”
Grandma Natasha had no choice but to return home with little Sina. She set off again before dawn. But when she arrived at the sugar factory at five o'clock, no one was there. "In the middle of the night, at three in the morning, they had taken all the Jews away," Sina recounts. "They were driven across the fields to the train station and deported in cattle cars. We never found out where."
After a while, Sina finds the small portrait photo of her mother. "Grandma has become my surrogate mother. For 53 years I have gone to her grave and laid flowers." For Sinaida, the verse from Isaiah 43 on the handwritten card from Germany has a literal meaning: "I have redeemed you, you belong to me."
A difficult life, yet grateful
“Mama came from a wealthy Jewish family in Belarus,” Nina tells us as she pours us tea. “In Malyn, a Jewish shtetl near Zhytomyr, she worked in the paper mill. Mama narrowly escaped death. She was supposed to be shot three times. The neighbors betrayed her. The first time she was taken away, Mama was pregnant with me. My Ukrainian grandmother went to the police station and appealed to the Ukrainian guard's conscience. ‘Shooting a pregnant woman is a great sin. God will punish you!’ That's when he let her go.”
Nina's mother went into hiding but was captured by the Gestapo. She managed to escape again. The Jews of Malyn were buried alive in a mass grave; her parents and two of their children were shot in Belarus. "After the war, Mom and I were always together," Nina says, sitting across the kitchen table. "I miss her so much! Towards the end, I cared for her like a child. Once I said to her, 'Mom, what a hard life you had!' And she replied, 'Yes, but today I'm happy. I'm happy to have such a daughter!'"
We still have the opportunity to mend the broken hearts of Holocaust survivors whose Jewish mothers were brutally murdered and whose non-Jewish mothers risked their lives to save their children. Thank you for supporting us! Read more about our sponsorship program and assistance for Holocaust survivors here.
This article first appeared in our newspaper "Israelaktuell," issue 145. You can order the newspaper here . We would also be happy to send you several copies for distribution.
