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Sent to me by my friend Kitty.
*The Girl With the Apple* One of the world's most incredible--but true--love stories began in the worst place imaginable.* By Herman Rosenblat *Reprinted with permission from* http://guideposts.com/
August, 1942. Piotrkow, Poland. The sky was gloomy that morning as we waited anxiously. All the men, women, and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My father had only recently died from typhus, which had run rampant through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that our family would be separated. "Whatever you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell them your age. Say you're sixteen." I was tall for a boy of 11, so I could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a worker. An SS manapproached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up and down, then asked my age."Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left, where my three brothers and other healthy young men already stood.My mother was motioned to the right—with the other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I wanted to stay with her. "No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had never spoken so harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me. She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to. It was the last I ever saw of her. My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany. We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barracks.
The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers. "Don't call me Herman anymore," I said to my brothers. "Call me 94983." I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead onto a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened. I had become a number. Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben, one of Buchenwald'ssub-camps near Berlin. One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice. Son, she said softly but clearly, I am sending you an angel. Then I woke up. Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels.There was only work. And hunger. And fear.A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp, behind the barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see. I wasalone. On the other side of the fence, I spotted someone —a young girl with light, almost luminous curls. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree. I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I
called to her softly in German, "Do you have something to eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated the question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl lookedunafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."I didn't believe she would come back. It was much too dangerous. But I returned anyway, the same time the next day. And there she was. The same girl. She moved tentatively from behind the tree, and once again threwsomething over the fence. This time, a small hunk of bread wrapped around a stone. I ate the bread, gratefully and ravenously, wishing there had been enough to share with my brothers. When I looked up the girl was gone.
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat—a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her—just a kind farm girl—except that she understood Polish. What was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped to the Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia. "Don't return," I told the girl that day. "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples. We were at Theresienstadt for three months. The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet my fate seemed sealed.
On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in the gas chamber at 10:00 A.M. In the quiet of dawn, I tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited. At 8:00 A.M., there was a commotion. I heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did too. Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived; I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had been the key to my survival. In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place wherethere was none. My mother had promised to send me an angel, and the angel had come.
Eventually, I made my way to England, where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hostel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to America, where my brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair shop. I was starting to settle in.
One day, my friend Sid—whom I knew from England—called me. "I've got a date. She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date." A blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his date and her friend Roma. I had to admit, for a blind date this wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital. She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with life. The four of us drove out to Coney Island. Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner by the shore. I couldn't remember having a better time. We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat.
As European Jews who had survived the war, we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject. "Where were you," she asked softly, "during the war?" "The camps," I said, the terrible memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to forget. But you never forget.She nodded. "My family was hiding on a farm in Germany, not far from Berlin," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us Aryan papers. "I imagined how she must have suffered too—fear, a constant companion. And yet here we were, both survivors, in a new world.
"There was a camp next to the farm," Roma continued. "I saw a boy there, and I would throw him apples every day. "What an amazing coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look like?" I asked. "He was tall. Skinny. Hungry. I must have seen him every day for sixmonths. "My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it…this couldn't be.… "Did he tell you one day not to come back because he was leaving Schlieben?" Roma looked at me in amazement. "Yes." "That was me!" I was ready to burst with joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it. My angel. "I'm not letting you go," I said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her. I didn't want to wait. "You're crazy!" she said. But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week.
There was so much I looked forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her go. That day, she said yes. And I kept my word: After nearly 50years of marriage, two children and three grandchildren, I have never let her go.
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Here's a post script . . .
Survivor adds bar mitzvah to amazing life story by Frank Eltmanthe associated press.
At 76, Herman Rosenblat has finally become a man. The Holocaust survivor and his wife — who met as children in a concentration camp — were honored at his bar mitzvah last month at the Beth Shalom Chabad synagogue in Mineola, N.Y. "We live in a time where we need hope and a positive outlook in life, and Herman's story reminds us that goodness will always overcome badness, and light will overcome darkness," Rabbi Anchelle Perl said after the service. "When you listen to the story of Herman, he was always bar mitzvahed inside and today just brought it out. "Herman and Roma Rosenblat, now of North Miami Beach, Fla., and formerly of Queens, N.Y., met as children. He was a 12-year-old in a Nazi concentration camp and she was a 9-year-old who for months tossed apples and bread across a fence to help that little boy survive. "I'm very happy, I'm very proud of him," Roma Rosenblat said of her husband's bar mitzvah. He explained that after missing his bar mitzvah while being held by the Nazis, he simply got on with living life after his release, raising afamily, and never got around to it. He'd think about it while attending other ceremonies over the years, but figured he had missed his chance. When the rabbi learned of the Rosenblats' love story from a mutual friend and television news producer who had featured the couple in a Valentine's Day feature this year, he contacted Herman Rosenblat. "I said, 'Let's make a bar mitzvah," Perl recalled. "His whole story is about how the hand of God brought him and his Roma together after many years, and I felt the hand of God continued with him now and we should bring him this bar mitzvah.
"Rosenblat retired as an electrical contractor in 1992 after being shot in his store in Brooklyn. He later was inspired to write a book about his experiences, including his encounters with that little girl who tossed him apples across the concentration camp fence. Although the book has yet to be published, Rosenblat said there has been interest from Hollywood producers who want to turn the story of his life into a film titled "The Fence." "His life story and his bar mitzvah today is giving us hope that ultimately the destroyers won't have the last say," the rabbi said. "Good people of all faiths will overcome."
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