Photo Credit: Courtesy
The fate of the nascent Jewish State was inexorably tied with those of the heroic refugees arriving on the shores of Israel in the years following the Holocaust. They built their dreams while enduring their nightmares. At the time, everyone was in survival mode, and neither the British nor the Israelis gave the remnants of Jewish Europe the heroesâ welcome or the support that they needed. It was the partisans and the rebels who were celebrated, not the remnant sheep who had narrowly escaped slaughter.
Today, the Jewish Agency welcomes new immigrants with every amenity and support system. What awaited the Jews of Europe who had survived the Holocaust in Israel was more hardship, struggle and war. That makes them heroes twice over. Also the vibe of the about to be new State of Israel was decidedly secular, which was another challenge for a religious girl, who had miraculously emerged from the Holocaust, with her faith intact.
When 15-year-old Yehudit Freedman, from Zadna, Czekoslovakia, separated from her parents on her way to Auschwitz, her father told her and her sister Chaya, that if they survive, they should go to Eretz Yisrael. In Auschwitz, she was separated from her sister. She located her in a different barracks. She had no number on her arm, as in 1944, the Nazis imach shemam, were already starting to lose the war and had started to save on ink. This helped her reunite with her sister as, in a split-second covert operation, she arranged for her sister to switch shirts (which did have a number) with another woman in her barracks, who also was trying to reunite with her sister in Chayaâs bunk. Later, she and her sister were transferred to Stutthof.
On a dreaded Death March, the sisters threw themselves into a ditch and escaped. In December of 1946, 17-year-old Yehudit and 19-year-old Chaya fulfilled their fatherâs directive and landed in Haifa. Two of their brothers were already in Israel, the four of them the only survivors of the 10 siblings.
Israel was on the brink of war and Yehudit served in the Haganah as a medic. She would have liked to have become a nurse but that was impossible in her circumstances.
She got a job working in a store. Someone wanted to fix her up with their son, but his wife said, âIâm not marrying off my son to someone from the camps.â Yehudit eventually married Yitzchak, a survivor from Transylvania, and they lived in Ramat Gan.
Yehudit rejoiced when the UN voted on the partition plan. She danced in Dizengoff Square with everyone else when Ben-Gurion declared the State of Israel.
Yehudit retained her faith and her religious lifestyle because for her, she says, there was no other way to live. Today, the 96-year-old Yehudit is grateful for her three children, her three grandchildren and her great-granddaughter. Like many Holocaust survivors, she says it is her revenge on the Germans.
She lives on the third floor of a walk-up, with one of her children, and goes to a seniorsâ club every day, where she still exercises.
Yehudit has given her testimony to Yad Vashem and the Atlit Holocaust Museum. She has also published a book of her poems, and another of her war experiences, for her family. Her family and friends celebrated her 96th birthday at the National Library in Jerusalem because of her love of words and reading.
For Yehudit, as well as other Holocaust survivors, each war brings painful memories and reawakened traumas. As their numbers diminish, we lose a connection not only to the most bitter chapter of Jewish history, but also the most hopeful, as we wait for complete redemption.