Category Archives: Mom

Here is the fifth and final installment of my Mother’s travelogue. Feel free to ask questions. I will try to copy and post her published chapter from the book “We Survived” in about a month from now.
Family
Tuesday, November 13th
A beautiful, sunny day. I am trying to make myself look nice for the re-union with eight members of my family. They are coming from different parts of the country . We are meeting in the restaurant “London” at 10.30. A couple is coming from the North – a far-away kibutz – but that has not prevented them to be the first to arrive. I invited Isabelle to meet them all as well as my friend, Ana Somlo, the writer, translator and the author of the Hebrew-Serbo-Croat dictionary, that has just been printed in Belgrade. This was a good oportunity for her to meet my family, who are slowly but surely starting to forget their native tongue. Ana’s dictionary is just what they need now.
It was a wonderful time we spent together. We talked, asked hundred of questions, some were taking photos. There were old stories to repeat again and remind us of our childhood. The oldest generation was not with us – but we remembered them and talked about them. Time passed quickly and we were not able to tell all we wanted. Still, we were happy to embrace and kiss each other.
In the evening came my cousin from my mother’s side, Sonja. She brought photos of her four children and twenty grandchildren! She is young and strong and full of energy and happy to help whenever any of them needs her. There were so many things we talked about and we both were only too happy to see each other.
Wednesday, November 14th
It is time to pack. I did some shopping and paid a short visit to Ana Somlo – just to see where she lives. We see each other in Belgrade at least twice a year and now there was no time for long talks.
Beti, who comes from Sarajevo and who went through the same expeerience as I did, with whom I was in the concentration camp with and who was taken from it by the Schmucklers, wanted to see me. That was a warm and moving meeting. It meant much to both of us. So many memories we share. I was glad Isabella’s son came to greet me. Although I was in a hurry the short conversation means much to me. My relatives came to take me to Tel-Aviv. After a short meeting with their children we set off for the airport. I had a night flight, which I hate.
I am arriving in Belgrade, back to my old life in the middle of the night, better to say at the break of the down.
The author is a retired professor from Belgrade
Printed in the Weekly Supplement of the daily paper Danas (Today) (l7-18,nov.2007) in the popular column “Diary”.
Previously:
Holocaust Children, part I (guest post by Mom)
Holocaust Children, part II (guest post by Mom)
Holocaust Children, part III (guest post by Mom)
Holocaust Children, part IV (guest post by Mom)

Here is the fourth installment in the series – the fifth is coming tomorrow. Please comment and my Mom will respond.
Fulfilled lives of Dina and Jovan Rajs
Sunday, November 11th
The Hotel Dining room could accomodate all 800 participants. Members of the Conference Committee used the oportunity to let Israeli officials, polititicians and scientists address the audience and point out the significance of our gatherings. To me it was an oportunity to watch them all and imagine them as children, like me, who were lucky as I was, to stay alive in spite of all that could have happened to them and to me. We were all rescued. Today we have our fullfilled and fruitful lives, our families, professions and careers. Some of them come every year to keep memories of six million Jews killed in Holocaust. The goal of such gatherings is to leave our memories to the young. It could be done only by telling them our stories and teaching them.
As far as former Yugoslavia is concerned, only two people came from Serbia and three from Croatia. At the Galla Dinner some other people of Yugoslav origin who live in Israel joined us for the occasion. I was extremely happy to spend some time with Dina and Jovan Rajs [Reiss], my old friends who now live in Sweden. We have not seen each other since the 60s. Dina is a successful architect and Jovan is a doctor and a retired professor of the Stockholm Medical School. Jovan was born in Zrenjanin (a small town not far from Belgrade – in the Province of Vojvodina). He was in Teresienstad and Bergen-Belsen. He is one of the few memebers of his family who survived.
I was happy to be with old friends. It seemed it was not long ago when we walked our children in Karadzordjev Park. The internet did a lot. We keep in touch and that is what we are going to do in the future.
Two tragedies of Isabella Schmuckler
Monday, November 12th
The Conference was aproaching the end. Some new friendships have been made, email addresses and cards have been exchanged.
My family, who arrived illegally in Palestine during the war have been living in Israel since war time. They came to see me in Nathania. Some of them used to come to visit us in Belgrade so we have seen each other several times in the past . Isabella Schmuckler is the only one I have not seen for more than twenty years and she never came to Yugoslavia from the time she left the country. Her husband died few months ago and she lives on her own. I specially wanted to spend a couple of days with her. I wanted to bring back our memories of war. I brought a dictaphone to tape her “story” for our series (edition) “We survived“. But, she was not able to talk and remind herself of things from long ago. She became too emotional after few first sentences. She took a pill to calm down. I put down the dictaphone.
Isabella went through a tragedy after the war. She married Nikola Bovan, an officer who spent some time in the USSR at a Military school. Quite accidentally, as it used to happen at those times, he asked a wrong question at a wrong place and was accused of belonging to a pro-Soviet group. It all happened in 1948. He was arrested and his fate is unknown. Isabella was left alone with a two months old baby. She decided to join her parents and left for Israel.
We walked the streets of Nathania, sat at the sea shore and enjoyed the open sea at summer temperature. The town is beautiful, full of flowers, tidy and neat. I felt so close to her as if we have always been together. We met some friends from my early childhood. I do not claim recognizing them but the names rang the bell.
Previously:
Holocaust Children, part I (guest post by Mom)
Holocaust Children, part II (guest post by Mom)
Holocaust Children, part III (guest post by Mom)

This is the second part of my Mom’s travelogue from Israel last month:
Trauma of baptized Jews
Friday, November 9th
The Conference continues to work in groups. The topics are interesting but I had to choose one for the morning and one for the afternoon. The first group summoned together the people of the same age as me. I believed I had known much about the war and suffering. In the group of about 30 participants from different countries I realized how little I had known. Better to say, I knew quite a lot about what had been going going on here, in our country, but not much about the events elsewhere.
People from Germany, France, Holland and Belgium had, in a way, rather similar experiences as we had had. Brave people rescued children risking their own lives, shared the last piece of bread with the hidden child. Who could save and hide a Jewish child? Catholic monasteries hid a number of kids. They baptized them and made of them devout Catholics. That was one of the ways they could rescue them from the Germans. Families, usually from villages, would take a child or two and shared with them the good and the bad and turned them into good Catholics. They became regular church goers.
After the war was over – some people told us their stories – they became confused. They did not know what they really were. They did not understand where they belong. When they were found by the Jewish organizations and taken to orphanages after the war the children became confused and their dilemmas started.
In the afternoon I participated in the session led by the president of the Federation, Mrs.Daisy Miller. From her biography I found out that she was born in Zagreb. The topic was: Did Holocaust survivors differ from non-survivors and in which way? Those who survived, we agreed, have been deprived of their childhoods. Some take facts of life differently. Individual experiences were discussed. Some were angry and accused themselves for being rescued while all the other members of their families perished. There were opinions that some of us had an urge to catch up for the lost time and destroyed childhood. Others addmitted never to have told their children what had been going on during the war. They tried to hide it from them or did not want to remind themselves of the past. Some did not want to burden their children with their stories. Some claimed to be emotionally crippled and unable to create tight connections. However, the majority were optimistic. They insisted on one point – be happy and make most of your life, use it as much as possible: make your life beautiful, both for yourself and for others.
Previously:
Holocaust Children, part I (guest post by Mom)

A few weeks ago, my mother took a long trip to Israel to attend a conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. She wrote a diary of her trip and it was, in a slightly edited form (omitting most of the recounts of family gatherings), published in the Serbian newspaper Danas (Today) in its popular weekend column. If you click on the link, you can read the diary in Serbian language. She then translated her travelogue into English and asked me to publish it here, on my blog, for everyone to see. I will do this in a few installments, starting with the first one today and the rest will appear here over the next few days.
About 40 members of our family perished in the Holocaust. My mother is one of the few lucky survivors. She was taped by the Spielberg’s Shoah foundation, telling her story (I think all the tapes are now deposited in the Holocaust Museum in NYC).
She also wrote her story and it appeared in the first volume of the series “Mi Smo Preziveli” (We Survived), published both in Serbian and in English by the Jewish Museum and the Jewish Council of Belgrade. The books are collections of war-time memories by the Holocaust survivors from the Balkans. The fifth volume (in Serbian language) is in preparation, and the third volume is about to be released in the English translation. The book is not available online for ordering, but if you e-mail the museum (muzej@eunet.yu), they will tell you how you can obtain a copy for yourself. All the accounts are riveting.

So, here is the first day of my Mom’s trip, and come back for more over the next few days:
Lights of Yad Vashem
Thursday, November 8th
A convoy of buses was waiting in front of the Renaissance hotel in Jerusalem to take 800 participants of this year’s International Conference of Holocaust Child Survivors. This is the 19th annual Conference “Together in Israel” of the Federation.
Today we are visiting The Memorial Museum Yad Vashem. We are all aware that this will not be an easy and pleasant visit. We knew it would be hard, touching and moving.
Yad Vashem is the First Memorial Center of such kind and was open in 1953. Today, there are 250 such places all over the world. We are visiting the modern part opened in 2005. We are divided into groups and got an excellent guide. The guides are all volunteers, enthusiasts and well acquainted not only with the displays but also with all the important events. It was a short time and we could not see everything, but the experienced guide knew how to point out the most impressive and most significant and moving things. She drew our attention to the most striking photos, testimonies and objects.
The Museum came into being to remember the six million killed Jews in the Holocaust. What has remained? Testimonies of the survivors, objects and stuff people took with them leaving their homes – one could see toys, models of gas chambers, original cobblestone and rails from the Warsaw Ghetto, parts of the railway wagons the Germans used to take hundreds of thousand women, children and old men to places of death. Many remember the days spent in camps and long journeys is such wagons.
In the Hall of Names, the victims got their identity: faces and voices. Thousands of photos are placed in the dome and three million names are inscribed. The photos reflect themselves in a deep well and symbolize another three million victims whose names remain unknown.
The strongest impression for me was an underground hall in complete darkness. We were holding our hands on rails next to the wall to be able to move. We were looking up. Little lamps glittered twinkled like stars – some bigger, others smaller. All the time we were listening to a voice pronouncing a name, the age of a killed child. Shiny lamps reflected in the water deep bellow. What are those lights? Are they souls of innocent children?