Remember!

Dalia Mazouri
Maariv, April 15, 2007

Six survivors were chosen to light the six memorial beacons on this year's Holocaust Memorial Day. They were young when they parted with their parents and siblings and were left to deal alone with the Nazi war machine. They acted with great valor. These are their accounts:

David Gur was born to a family of four in Okany, Southeastern Hungary, in 1926. In 1938 the Hungarian regime began to implement anti-Jewish laws. Imbued with Zionist ideals, David decided to move to the Land of Israel. But first he had to travel to Budapest and learn a useful trade. He was apprenticed by a master builder and also became a member of the "Young Guard" (Hashomer Hatzair) underground movement.
In March 1944, Hungary was occupied by the Germans. David joined the underground movement and was put in charge of forging documents. One day he and his friends were caught by the Hungarian security services. They quickly swallowed the forged documents, but the equipment their were carrying gave them away. During the interrogation one of them died, and the rest were taken to a military prison in Budapest to be executed. However, instead of being march to the execution site, they were taken to the Swiss consulate where they were released. David discovered later that the resistance had bribed a senior officer in echange for their lives.
When the war ended, David found out that his father had been murdered in Auschwitz, but his mother and sister had survived. David resumed his activities for the Hashomer Hatzair. In 1949 the communist regime in Hungary outlawed the Zionist organization, so emigrated to Israel to smuggle Zionist youths into the State of Israel.
In 1985 David was one of the founders of the Association for the Research of Zionist Youth Movements in Hungary, and he is still an active member. He and his wife Naomi have three daughters and ten grandchildren.

Zanne Farbstein was born in Bardejov Slovakia in 1926. She was the seventh child of a religiously observant family. Her first memory of the war is of group of German soldiers breaking into her parents' home one Shabbat eve (Friday night). Her father's business was confiscated and her two older brothers were taken to a forced labor camp.
In March 1942 all girls below 25 years of age were ordered to report to the local school. Zanne and two of her sisters, Edith and Sarah showed up together with about one thousand other girls. Their father walked them to the school, and when they arrived, he burst into bitter tears and gave each one of his daughters a korona coin for luck. The three sisters were part of the first transport to Auschwitz. When they arrived, they were ordered to leave their possessions on the train, including their father's good-luck coins. After a few months in Auschwitz, they were taken to Birkenau for forced labor.
Thanks to her Aryan looks, Zanne survived several selektions and even managed to be assigned "desirable" jobs, such as clothes sorting or unloading luggage from the trains. One day she found her father's prayer shawl among the luggage she was unloading, and later she learned that he had been taken to the crematoria. The three sisters never missed a day's work, because they knew that the weak and the ill simply vanished without a trace. One day, Edith, the eldest, was weak and weary to go to work, and offered her good shoes in exchange for Zanne's worn out ones. The three of them knew what it meant. Edith was never seen again.
On January 18, 1945, Zanne and Sarah were forced to join the death march to Germany. But in one of the villages the German guards disappeared and the haeftlings were left on their own. Learning that the war was over, Zanne and Sarah went on to Prague and Bratislava, where they discovered that two of their brothers had also survived. They went back to their hometown for the emotional reunion of what was left of their family.
They remained in Bardejov and tried to go on with their lives. In 1949 the extended family was brought over to Israel aboard the Independence. Zanne is married to Moshe and they have two children and five grandchildren.

Yaakov Janek Hollander was born to a family of five in Krakow, Poland, in 1929. In 1942 the family was taken to the Krakow ghetto where Janek and his parents were separated from the other children.
The family was deported to a work camp and from here to Plaszow concentration camp. Janek remembers Plaszow as hell on hearth, because of the terror reigned on the inmates by camp commander, Amon Goeth, who was madly shooting at whomever he pleased. From Plaszow, Janek and Benek, one of brothers were taken to Starachowice and eventually to Auschwitz. There they survived a number of selektions, and were eventually taken to forced labor in a coal mine in Rideltau, where Benek severely hurt his leg. In March 1944 they were forced to march to Mauthausen. Benek could hardly walk because of his injured leg, but Janek begged him and urged him to go on. They reached the camp, but Benek didn't make it further. They were separated for the first time. Janek was assigned to a work detail and never saw Benek again.
In April 1945 the camp inmates were forced to march to Gunskirchen. Many died on the way. Rumors in the camp had it that the Germans had fled. Janek, weighing 33 kg (thirty three kilograms at age 16 !!!!!!!), barely able to stand or walk, managed to crawl outside the camp. He was found by the Red Cross and taken to the nearby hospital where he met soldiers of the Jewish Brigade and decided to join them and fight in Italy. But a group of Jewish war orphans was formed in Selvino, Italy, looked after by the Youth Aliyah in order to be relocated to Israel. One year later the children were put aboard the Catriel Hayaffe ship, but the British intercepted the ship and ordered her to Cyprus. In 1947 the children arrived at the Mishmar Hasharon kibbutz. Janek joined the Palmach Harel Brigade. He fought in the War of Independence and went on to found the Zeelim kibbutz in the Negev, together with other orphans he met in Italy.
After WWII, Janek learned that his father had been murdered in Auschwitz, his mother had been brought down by illness in Plaszow, his bother Dolek had been shot in Bergen-Belsen three days before the end of the war. In 1953 Janek married Dvora. They have two children and one granddaughter.

Yaakov (Jacki) Handeli was born into a wealthy family in Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1928. In 1941 German troops marched into Thessaloniki and established the Jewish ghetto in the Baron de Hirsch neighborhood. The Handeli were also forced into the ghetto, in a humiliating display of Nazi force. Two weeks later Jacki's family was deported to Poland. Over 80 persons were forced into each car and travelled without food or water. Jacki learned his first German words on the train: "You won't need this any more!"
One week later the train arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the passengers were thrown out of the cars and underwent their first selection. After the selection Jacki never saw his parents and sisters again. He and his brothers were assigned to different work details in the camp. In addition to the harsh living conditions, Jacki and his brothers along with the rest of the Thessaloniki Jews suffered from isolation, because they didn't speak German, Yiddish or Polish and therefore couldn't communicate with the Germans or with the other Jews in the camp.
After his brothers died, Jacki remained on his own, until Thessaloniki boxer Jaco Razon took
him under his wing and helped him get more food and survive the terrible conditions in the camp.
In January 1945 the prisoners were sent on a death march. Jacki recalls the snow-covered road stained red with the blood of those who had been shot on the long march to Gleiwiz camp and riding towards Dora Mittelbau in open coal cars in the freezing rain without food or water. The journey ended in Bergen-Belsen where they remained until their liberation by British troops.
Jacki came to the Land of Israel in 1947 aboard the Pan York carrying South African volunteers, and fought in the War of Independence. No other member of his family survived the Holocaust. Jacki and his wife Rachel have two children.

Manya Brodetzky-Titelman, an only child, was born in Zhabokcrich, Ukraine in 1932. In July 1941 German troops marched into her hometown, followed by Romanian troops. The Jews were ordered into five cellars, where Romanian soldiers opened fire on them. Manya passed out and when she regained consciousness, she saw that her mother had been killed in the massacre. Her father also fainted and fell to the ground before the shooting began, and was also saved. Manya and her father remained hidden among the corpses until it nightfall. Then they went back to their house only to discover the neighbors had looted everything. They fled to the woods where they hid, hungry and thirsty, in the rain and the cold for a week. Eventually they decided to go back to their house.
A week later they were sent to the ghetto where they shared an apartment with several other families. They were hungry and cold all the time. There they found out that the bodies of their massacred relatives and friends were decomposing in the cellars where they had been shot. The local police ordered a number of adults and children to carry the bodies out of the cellars and bury them in mass graves. Manya recalls how she identified her mother's body by the red boots she had been wearing. She and her father hid the body and buried it near their home.
Towards the end of the war, the Romanian soldiers took all the Jews to the main square of the town to shoot them, but the German troops arrived unexpectedly and warned the Romanians that Russian troops were coming. The Romanians fled and everybody was surprised to find out that the German troops were in fact partisans in disguise.
After the war Manya went back to school and remained with her father in her hometown. The family immigrated to Israel in 1980. In 2003 Manya was part of a group of survivors who erected a memorial tombstone on the mass grave in her home town. Manya was widowed last month. Her husband, Boris, was also a Holocaust survivor and a Red Army veteran. Manya has two daughters, five grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.

Mordechai (Motke) Wiesel and his twin brother were born to a Haredi family of eight, in Szatmar (Satu Mare), Transylvania, in 1929. Nazi racial laws were enforced as soon as Germany invaded Hungary in 1944. Fearing for his childrens' lives, Motke's father sent three of his sons including Motke to work on a farm. A few weeks later the three brothers were sent to the town ghetto where they were reunited with their parents. Motke's family was part of the second transport to Auschwitz. He and his twin brother Meir managed to sneak close to a crack where they could breathe. They arrived at the camp on their 15th birthday. He remembers asking his mother why there were women along the tracks and what they were doing dressed in striped jackets and with their hair shaved off. She replied: "This must be a lunatic asylum sort of place."
During he first selektion Motke and Meir were separated from their parents and siblings whom they never saw again. When they went through the gate and read the "Arbeit macht frei" sign, Meir asked candidly: "How long do you figure we have to work here to be freed?" A week later the twins were dispatched to Krakow-Plaszow, to work on Schindler's pig farm and as
apprentice builders.
Later they were transferred to Gross-Rosen and from there to Langenbilau Sportschule near Reichenbach. Motke was burning with fever and barely made it to the train. On May 8, 1945, a Russian tank found its way into the camp. Motke and his brother moved into a vacated house in Reichenbach and stayed there until they regained their strength.
When they returned to their home town, they discovered that only their eldest brother had survived. The "Hagana" organization helped them flee to Italy via Austria, where they waited to be smuggled into the Land of Israel. In 1946 Motke boarded a ship, but it was intercepted by the British and forced to sail to Cyprus. He reached Israel in 1947, and joined his brother Meir who was waiting for him in kibbutz Sde-Nahum.
Motke joined the army and was wounded in the battles to open a route to Makor Haim. Later he fulfilled his dream to become an officer in the Jewish army. In 1952 Motke married Esther and they have two children and eight grandchildren.