Holocaust Survivor Services offer a vast array of support services arranged by a Jewish Community Services case manager. Assistance may include counseling and support groups, food and housekeeping, transportation, emergency funds, respite services, and socialization events that will help survivors of the Holocaust to live safely and independently in their home with dignity and respect.
Rachel
“Some of us had to live to defy them all
and one day tell the truth to the world.”
There was a time in our history—the history of mankind—that defiles who we are as a species. There was a time when man turned against his fellow man, black-hearted and venomous with hate. There was a time when death was both a punishment and a reward, an escape.
From 1933 to 1945, millions of people were led to huge, organized slaughterhouses called Death Camps. Millions of people were ripped from their homes, humiliated, and tortured. In a day, a close family could become corpses scattered throughout Europe. Generations and lineages could come to an end—a name extinct—in the blink of an eye. Yes, there was a time.
But there are people. People who have gone to the deepest trenches of hell and returned. People who have experienced what no living creature ever should. These people are Survivors. Rachel Zysmanovich Nurman is one of them.
Rachel was just 14 years old. She was having a picnic and reading a book with her friend in the countryside of her small resort town outside of Warsaw, Poland. Beautiful forests and waterfalls shaped the area. Suddenly, Rachel thought she heard thunder in the distance. She asked her friend if she was listening. “It may be rain,” she said, “but that is not thundering.”
Germany was invading Poland. They were dropping bombs.
Rachel and her friend ran home to the pandemonium of their town. People were dashing from their homes and calling out orders to run to the highways. The roads were jammed with people. Rachel hid in a ditch on the
side of the road. German soldiers marched into Rachel’s town, demanding where they could find Jews.
The German soldiers issued orders that all Jewish children and women wear an armband displaying the Jewish Star. They were not to walk on the sidewalk; only in the street were they allowed. Sidewalks were reserved for Germans and Poles.
After the Germans had occupied the town for a short while and had taken all of the Jews’ money and possessions, they ordered all Jewish people to report to the marketplace with their belongings. They were being resettled to the Warsaw ghetto.
The conditions of the ghetto were miserable. People were poor, food was scarce, staying warm and fending off typhus was an everyday battle. Rachel escaped the walls of the ghetto and returned, many times, in order to bring in food, supplies, and information.
When she was outside she worked on a farm called Ozerniakow. During her absence, the Germans would “resettle” people out of the ghetto. This, of course, meant sending families to labor and death camps. Her family became separated. After enduring weeks in the soul-crippling conditions of the Warsaw ghetto and the backbreaking work on the farm, Rachel came to discover that her youngest brother, mother, and father met their ends together in the gas chambers of Treblinka. Eventually, Rachel would be resettled too. She would be sent to the camp Majdenek. Then, in 1943, she would be stuffed into a boxcar and taken to Auschwitz.
When Rachel arrived in Auschwitz, she was promptly ordered to strip off her clothing and go through delousing. Naked and vulnerable, she moved on to the hairdressers who shaved all the hair from her body. When she saw herself, she couldn’t believe how strange she looked; how strange everyone and everything looked. Because her own clothing was discarded, she was issued new clothes that were much too big and hung from her body like dirty sheets.
Rachel was then directed into a line to speak with a clerk. At the front of the line, she was questioned about where she came from, while a five-digit number was tattooed on her forearm. In an instant Rachel became #47395. When she asked the clerk what the camp was like, she was told that the average lifespan of a prisoner is three weeks. “She did not give me too much courage,” Rachel said, “but I was determined to fight for my life.”
Rachel knew she had to survive. “I kept telling myself that I had to live,” she remembers, “never obey, never give in. Some of us had to live to defy them all and one day, tell the truth to the world.” Somehow, Rachel gleaned strength from the pit of despair that was Auschwitz. Her fellow prisoners tried to give her advice. “Remember”, they said, “you must never lose your will to live. Fight for your life or be finished”.
But sometimes, the conditions became too unbearable. The death camp so warped the mind of its inmates that death became the only release. Some prisoners threw themselves onto the electric fences. “I envied them,” said Rachel. “I envied their eternal peace.”
Still, Rachel endured beatings, lashings, and even vicious attacks by dogs. She starved, she froze in the night; she could go nowhere without the acrid stench of burning bodies wafting out of the crematorium. She saw hell with her own eyes every single day. Auschwitz was a factory designed for breaking the human spirit, and though Rachel’s would often waiver, it never shattered. “It was essential not to lose the will to go on,” Rachel said. “Giving up was the first step to self-destruction.” She forced herself to find inner strength. She had to find ways of keeping her spirit up, so she made friends.
Friendships in Auschwitz were closer than families. “You had your enemies and you had your friends,” said Rachel. “I miss the sort of friendship I had known in Auschwitz. I never realized how strong these bonds are. We were direct and more honest than the people you would find in the outside world.” The camps brought out the best in some and the worst in others. Differences between people vanished—they were united by their shared tragic fate. They became one great family.
Rachel narrowly escaped death many times. She even managed to avoid Dr. Mengele’s selection—a process that would have ended with her in the gas chambers. One day, she would wake up to hear that the Germans were losing the war. It was rumored that British soldiers were coming. No one could believe it. It was merely fantasy. The rumor turned into reality in April 1945. Rachel and the other residents of the camp were liberated.
Rachel will never understand why her life was spared while so many others perished. “My experience left me with a great love for life. I place great importance on the meaning of life. Why am I here while my relatives and friends are lost?”
Rachel wants her experiences to be known. She wishes for these events to never be forgotten, and to never be repeated.
Her experience in the Holocaust gave her a tremendous sense of value—a feeling about what is important and what is unimportant in life. Nearly 70 years later, Rachel Nurman continues to tell her story while still picking up the pieces of her shattered childhood.
The Holocaust Survivors Program provides an outlet for Rachel and other survivors to share their grief, their happiness, and their stories with each other—others who truly understand. They bear witness to each others’ lives. That yes, they made it through hell and back; that yes, they are still alive; that yes, their pasts are real.
The monthly meeting of the Holocaust Support Group gives these survivors a unique opportunity for catharsis. But most importantly, this group allows them to acknowledge each other, to never forget, and to will each other to live their lives—not emotionally crippled; not spiritually down-trodden—but as human beings.
