The Daughter of Auschwitz. My Story of Resilience, Survival and Hope

Chapter Twenty-One. Israel

Warm, dry air enveloped me in a welcoming embrace the moment I stepped through the door of the El Al airliner and down the steps onto Israeli soil. It felt good to be back — this time with my husband, Maier, and two young children. I’ll always remember the date — May 3, 1967.

All the windows in the car were wound down as we headed northward along the coast on a thirty-minute drive from Ben Gurion Airport to Netanya. Squeezed together, our children, Risa and Gadi, leaned out the windows as far as they could, like flowers, turning their faces toward the sun. The heat was a balm, easing away the aches of a long flight and residual tensions of New York life. Already, the sensory contrasts between the Big Apple and Tel Aviv were impossible to ignore. We were blinded by the glare of the sun bouncing off white stone houses. The breeze carried the perfume of blossoms and the salty tang of the Eastern Mediterranean.

I could get used to this, I told myself.

Netanya was much smaller than Tel Aviv, but just as inviting. As part of our introduction to this young, developing country, we stayed in a uniquely Israeli educational institution called an ulpan, which immersed immigrants in the Hebrew language, along with the culture and customs of their new homeland. We registered for six months, which we thought would be sufficient to acclimatize and establish a solid grasp of the language.

Our ulpan’s compound was geared toward young families, and I was touched that a doll and a ball were waiting on the children’s beds. The gesture made us feel very much at home. Mealtimes were communal affairs, and the dining hall was filled with a competing chorus of different languages, including Russian, Polish, Spanish, French and English. Our instructor constantly tried to inject Hebrew into our conversations. I decided to change my name to Tova to sound more Israeli. I also chose it because it was close to Tema, the name of my maternal grandmother.

Initially, life was predictably routine and comfortable. Every morning, we’d take the children to nursery and then head to class for Hebrew lessons. We settled into the subtropical rhythm of resting in the afternoon while the sun was at its hottest, and we’d socialize and do homework in the cool of the evening. We loved Israel’s outdoor lifestyle and spent endless hours on Netanya’s pristine sandy beach.

Our soft landing in the Middle East didn’t last long, however. In the middle of May 1967, we were visited by an Israeli army officer from a nearby base, who announced that war was imminent and that in all probability we would find ourselves on the front line. This shouldn’t have come as a major surprise, but somehow it caught both Maier and me off guard.

We were conscious of sporadic cross-border Palestinian guerrilla raids and the warmongering rhetoric of Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser. But despite a mutual defense accord signed by Egypt and Syria in late 1966, the perceived threat seemed rather distant. If anything, Israeli towns near the borders of Egypt and Syria appeared most at risk. However, the army officer’s visit forced us to focus on potential conflict in our neighborhood. We lived in one of the narrowest slivers of Israeli territory. Our compound was just eight miles from the Jordanian border. The Israeli army was afraid that when war came, Tulkarm, a predominantly Palestinian town just across the frontier on the West Bank of the Jordan River, would be used as a fire base.

The officer gave the ulpan’s director specific instructions on how to construct rudimentary defenses. There was no time to lose. We had to start digging foxholes and trenches immediately. It wasn’t a request; it was an order.

“I’m sorry. I can’t spare any soldiers to help you”, he said, before returning to his base.

Most of our motley group were originally city dwellers who had never handled a shovel. Not only that, but without a common language, we had trouble communicating. It was a daunting time, but Maier rose to the challenge. He had never experienced war but faced the looming conflict fearlessly.

Big or small, Maier dived into every project as though it was his puzzle to solve alone. With his engineering mind, he supervised the digging, organized a schedule, taught safety measures and made sure the bomb shelters were reinforced and fully stocked with supplies, in case we were forced to take cover for an extended period.

Maier’s upbeat determination was in stark contrast to my mood. For the first time in over twenty years, since the Nazis’ liquidation of Birkenau, I was truly petrified. My nightmares had receded again because life kept me engaged. But now they haunted me once more. I was tormented by visions of naked bodies, homeless children, starvation and torture, which robbed me of my sleep. I refused to get undressed at bedtime. I was afraid we’d be invaded during the night and I’d be caught naked by Arab soldiers.

Back in America, my father’s wartime nightmares were also resurfacing. He called daily, begging us to fly the children home to him while the borders were still open. When we refused, he bombarded the US Embassy in Tel Aviv with pleas to convince us to send the children to nearby Cyprus for safety, as so many were doing. Papa’s entreaties worked. A consular official came to see us.

“Your father has been calling us several times a day”, said the diplomat. “He made me promise to try to persuade you to evacuate the children”.

We politely declined his offer.

“What will happen to other Jewish children will happen to ours”, Maier said. Principled to the core, he was always an idealist and an unwavering Zionist.

Peace ebbed further away with every passing day. In the middle of May, President Nasser demanded the United Nations remove peacekeeping troops from the Sinai Peninsula, where, for more than a decade, they had been a buffer between Israel and Egypt. The 1,400-strong UN force was only there by invitation, so it was obliged to withdraw as 1,000 Egyptian tanks, and 100,000 soldiers — a third of the entire Egyptian army — advanced through the Sinai Desert toward the Israeli frontier, just thirty miles from Tel Aviv.

Tightening the noose still further, Nasser ordered a blockade of the Straits of Tiran, where the Gulf of Aqaba meets the Red Sea. The blockade severed Israel’s access to the sea from the Port of Eilat, imperiling the nation’s oil supply and other key imports from the south. Of all the provocations, the blockade was the most potent. The Israeli government interpreted Nasser’s decree as an act of war and announced a full mobilization, which was a highly efficient process. Most civilians of fighting age were reservists and well drilled. Once the call was made, people immediately stopped what they were doing and reported to their military units.

Meanwhile, to the northeast, Syria deployed troops to the Golan Heights, overlooking the upper Jordan River valley. A week later, Nasser signed a defense pact with Jordan’s King Hussein. The Israeli army officer had been spot-on. The war was going to take place in our backyard.

Risa and Gadi were oblivious to the coming storm. We made up a game that delighted them. We would scan the sky for aircraft, and when one of us spotted a plane, I’d bang a toy drum and they’d dive beneath the bed, which I had turned into a den, full of other toys and snacks. We practiced the drill for days, until it was no longer a game.

Air-raid sirens wailed early in the morning of June 5, 1967. This was no false alarm. It was the real thing. I grabbed the children’s hands and we sprinted to our foxhole. I held them as tightly as I could and, like my mother before me, tried to shield them with my body. I couldn’t see what was happening. But the sounds of rockets and shells were terrifying. The percussive effect of the explosions seemed incredibly powerful and destructive. The children were crying with fear, and although I was terrified, I tried to soothe them. Maier was nowhere to be seen as salvos whooshed through the sky. He was leading other families to their foxholes, and once they were safe, he jumped in with us.

“It’s the ones you don’t hear you should worry about”, he said. “The ones you hear have already passed you by”.

His remark meant I was now frightened for my children by the silence in between the shell bursts.

Ranged against Israel, the Arab coalition had a combined force of 900 aircraft, 5,000 tanks and 500,000 soldiers. We, in comparison, had only 175 aircraft, 1,000 tanks and a standing army of 75,000 soldiers, which could be boosted by reservists. The sheer weight of numbers generated a state of high anxiety among the civilian population. It felt like a war between David and Goliath. We had no inkling that our generals were so confident.

In the opening hours of the conflict, I assumed that Israel had been attacked first and that Jordan, just eight miles away, had started the aggression. In such circumstances, amid the confusion and fear of an artillery barrage, it’s hard not to think you are at the epicenter of the action. It was several hours before news reports on Israeli radio filtered back to us and put our plight in perspective.

What had happened was a classic move out of The Art of War, the military playbook written thousands of years ago by Sun Tzu, an ancient Chinese general and philosopher. One of Sun Tzu’s principal exhortations is: “Attack the enemy where he is unprepared, appear where you are not expected”.

That is precisely what the Israelis did. Early on the morning of June 5, 1967, the Defense Forces launched a series of preemptive strikes to blunt the Arab coalition’s military threat. Israeli aircraft destroyed 90 percent of the Egyptian Air Force’s planes while they sat helpless on the ground. Israeli pilots then crippled the air capacity of the other Arab nations in the alliance. Control of the skies enabled ground forces to confidently advance on their objectives.

Despite the rapid successes of the Israel Defense Forces, we stayed in our shelters. As I clutched my children, I wrestled with guilt. After all my experiences in Poland, how could I put their lives in danger? Was I being irresponsible? Should our desire to live in Israel take priority over their physical well-being? After all, this conflict was only the beginning. They would be living in a country surrounded by enemies, facing a perpetual existential threat and struggling for survival. These doubts were in the forefront of my mind while the artillery exchanges continued. We surfaced from the shelter when the guns ceased firing. In the darkness, we could see flames rising from Arab villages across the border.

As the war quickly progressed, and victory was within grasp, my perspective changed. I became calmer. I realized I was providing Risa and Gadi with a gift. Being citizens of a Jewish nation meant they would never experience anti-Semitism, discrimination or shame. They would not have to endure the agonies that my family suffered. The physical danger they faced was transient, but their spiritual enrichment would be permanent. I convinced myself I had done the right thing by not sending them away. They belonged in Israel. Compared to everything I had been through, the risks were within acceptable limits. We had a country with an outstanding army and air force. We were far from helpless. We were strong and effective.

The war only lasted six days before Israel prevailed. The day after victory was declared, Maier and I celebrated our seventh wedding anniversary with some of the other students from the ulpan. It was a bittersweet affair. I regarded our triumph as a miracle, and Israeli casualty figures were relatively light. Nevertheless, our happiness was tempered by the wave of funerals taking place across the country. Seven hundred and seventy-six young soldiers sacrificed their lives to make Israel a much more secure country for the rest of us.

As soon as we could, we headed toward the Kotel (or Western Wall) in Jerusalem’s Old City, which, for so long, had been inaccessible for Israeli Jews. We had waited a lifetime to make this pilgrimage. The Kotel is the only surviving section of the retaining wall that had supported the First and Second Temples built thousands of years ago. It is the most sacred place of worship for Jews.

Before the war, Jerusalem had been split in two. The Israelis administered the western half, while the Jordanians controlled the eastern section, including the Old City, with its crenelated limestone ramparts and diverse holy sites, sacred to the world’s three major monotheistic religions: Judaism, Islam and Christianity. After driving back Jordanian forces in house-to-house fighting in East Jerusalem, the Israelis seized control of the Old City on day three of the war.

We could feel the tension when we entered the Jaffa Gate about a week later, although we felt safe because troops patrolled the maze of narrow alleyways inside the walls.

We were overwhelmed by the sights and sounds of the bustling souk, or market. Stalls brimmed with exotic goods, dresses with intricately hand-stitched embroidery and beautifully crafted pieces of jewelry. Paprika, cumin, cardamom, za’atar and other brightly colored spices in large open sacks emitted intoxicating aromas. Traces of familiar and strange languages I’d never encountered before mingled with shouted conversations of stall holders in Arabic. Although the souk merchants belonged to the losing side, any resentment toward the Jews now exploring their new world was diluted by pragmatism. Given the circumstances, they were reasonably hospitable.

Finally, after navigating the Old City’s labyrinth, we reached the Western Wall, rising sixty feet above us and glistening in the sun. Although partially hidden by the dilapidated shacks propped against it, amid reeking donkey dunghills and piles of garbage, the monument was awe-inspiring. I quietly mouthed an ancient prayer known as Sheheheyanu: “Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, who has granted us life and sustained us and allowed us to arrive at this time”.

For over 1,500 years, Jews have recited the Sheheheyanu to express gratitude for new and unusual experiences. It is hard to describe just how sublime this moment was, standing there with Maier, holding our children’s hands, before the Western Wall. At last, we, as a people, were able to pray where, for nearly two millennia, our ancestors had also petitioned God.

I felt immense gratitude and pride to be there with my family, touching those giant, ancient stones. As I stood in reverence and silence, I realized the wall represented part of my identity. It was a testament to Jewish strength, tenacity and chutzpah. Furthermore, it was vindication, and a far cry from being defined by the Nazis as Untermenschen—subhumans, parasites and vermin to be annihilated. This felt like another moment of liberation. Not surprisingly, it also felt like home. Confirmation that I belonged.

Not long after peace broke out, we left the ulpan and rented a three-bedroom house, five miles outside Jerusalem in the Judaean Hills, two thousand feet above sea level, in a community called Motza. The house nestled in knee-high grass among cedar trees and a small orchard brimming with peaches, apricots, apples and pears. After Manhattan’s landscape of concrete, steel and glass, it seemed like paradise.

One morning, a tall figure in a robe and sandals appeared at our door. He didn’t say a word. Using his hands, he gestured, “Can I be of help to you?”

In no time, our garden was pristine. He scythed the grass, pruned the trees and disposed of the rotting fruit on the ground. Ahmad, who lived in a small Arab village without electricity or water, became our gardener, babysitter and friend. He honored our family by naming his two boys Maier and Gadi.

Maier immersed himself in a niche area of cancer research. At the time, international health bodies and food companies were striving to mitigate the impact of aflatoxins, naturally occurring carcinogenic fungi that grow in hot and humid climates and contaminate a wide range of products, including maize, rice, nuts, spices and cocoa beans. In a project sponsored jointly by the Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University, Maier and a team of researchers developed a fermentation process to produce aflatoxins in order to help other scientists around the world protect the food supply chain and reduce the risk of cancer.

I took a job at the Hebrew University, teaching English to students who required help to matriculate or qualify for entry to university. One of my pleasures was driving past the Dome of the Rock, with its magnificent golden orb, sparkling in the sun. The Dome meant as much to most of my Arab students as the Western Wall meant to me.

My students came from poor, male-dominated villages. In their traditional patriarchal world, women were discouraged from studying or teaching. Most were indignant that a woman should be their instructor and expressed their resentment in many ways. Some talked ostentatiously during presentations, others stripped off their shirts, and whenever there was political tension or instability, they tuned into Arabic news on small transistor radios. Although I couldn’t understand the language, I was aware that their tone was strident, not least because my students always seemed to get wound up.

Ever since childhood, I had always stood my ground. The habit had served me well, and I saw no reason to change now. The students settled down once they realized that their test grades would reflect their inattentiveness. I understood them and empathized with their plight. They felt powerless, ineffectual and maybe even scared. Being a minority in a dominant culture is always a challenge. But I’m pleased that some of them became high achievers and went on to obtain advanced degrees.

All the while, family life expanded and improved. My father and Sonia settled in Tel Aviv. Maier’s parents, Ruth and Leo, also moved from Brooklyn to Jerusalem. They were now close to both their sons, as Maier’s brother, Bunim, lived with his family in Tel Aviv. A few years later, my daughter Itaya was born and we moved into Jerusalem itself, as it was nearer to family and more convenient. There, Maier’s parents lived across the street and were able to help us raise the children while the two of us worked full-time. Fridays and holidays were often spent with Papa and Sonia in Tel Aviv, but our favorite activity was going to the beautiful Israeli beaches with Bunim, Davida and their three children, Shavit, Boaz and Oded. Jerusalem’s safe streets also became the children’s playground. At that time, young children even rode buses alone, and Risa, Gadi and Itaya would take themselves to activities like their sports teams, karate lessons and horse riding.

Being surrounded by a growing family and a widening circle of friends helped to heal the wounds of the Holocaust. I could never replace those who were lost. But now life had real meaning, especially when a new life came along. The sense of belonging enriched our existence, as did our lifelong friendships. In retrospect, this time we spent with family and friends in Israel was one of the happiest periods of my life.

Although we enjoyed the sea, Maier and I were more suited to living in Jerusalem than the coast. We adored its complexity and history, the timeless quality of its architecture, the crisp, clear air and brilliant light. Treading its streets, I always had the feeling that the stone houses had been there for eternity and would stand ad infinitum. Our fleeting existence in Jerusalem’s continuum was a privilege and we made the most of it. Buildings scarred by bullet holes were a constant reminder that our liberty came at a price. I adored the eclectic blend of Arab women in long, colorful dresses, orthodox Jewish women in modest clothing, religious Jewish men in their unique attire and girls in miniskirts bringing a sense of the Swinging Sixties to restaurants, stores and falafel stands amid the aroma of cumin and za’atar.

During downtime from work, we explored the four quarters of the Old City, sharing our curiosity with our children and imbuing them with a sense of history. My favorite site was — and still is — the Burnt House in the Jewish Quarter, which was unearthed not long after the Six-Day War. Beneath layers of ash, archaeologists discovered the remains of a priest’s house that was set on fire and pillaged by the Romans in the year 70 AD. The contents of the house were a time capsule from the period when the Western Wall formed part of the Second Temple.

In the Christian Quarter, we wandered along the Via Dolorosa, past the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, supposedly the site of Christ’s crucifixion and burial, inhaling the scent of freshly ground coffee from nearby cafés. In the Armenian Quarter, I always felt a sense of solidarity with the residents who fled the 1915 genocide in which 1.5 million of their ancestors were murdered. In that quarter, they produce beautiful hand-painted tiles, mosaics and dishes known around the world.

I admired the entrepreneurial ethic in the bustling bazaars of the Muslim Quarter. Our sightseeing tours always ended in the Jewish Quarter, with falafel and a cold drink near the Cardo, an ancient Roman market. Although diverse in character and faith, what united these communities was the thread of spirituality.

Every few weeks or so, we’d drive an hour east from Jerusalem to the Masada National Park in the Judaean Desert. We’d hike to the top of Masada, a rock formation 1,300 feet above sea level. We’d get there at dawn and watch the sun rise over the Dead Sea and Jordan and explore the ruins of King Herod the Great’s first-century fortress. After our exertions, we’d cool off by swimming in the pools of Ein Gedi, close to the Dead Sea.

These experiences are a sample of how, by and large, after the Six-Day War, life in Israel felt safe and comfortable. The children attended an experimental school that adopted a new approach to education: they didn’t mark the pupils’ work because they didn’t believe in competition. The children loved the school and flourished. The building was close to the Machane Yehuda shuk, a two-hundred-year-old market that Maier and I visited every Friday to buy food for Shabbat (Sabbath).

However, we had to live in a state of permanent vigilance. Part of the new normality was the War of Attrition. For almost three years, Israel and its neighbors engaged in frequent tit-for-tat raids as our Arab neighbors attempted to destabilize Israel and undermine its security with a series of incursions. Still, we took it all in our stride. Walking the children to school one day, we passed a bomb squad disarming a device in the middle of our path. We just changed course without thinking and continued on our way. But the children were taught not to pick up toys, food, pens or interesting rocks, even in the playground, because it might be an explosive booby trap. A bulletin board with potential threats was regularly updated and parents organized patrols to monitor the school, the classrooms and the grounds for suspicious objects.

And so life went on.

My love for Israel was tempered by one significant area of disappointment: the subject of the Holocaust (Shoah) was seldom raised, even though the country was home to a large number of survivors who migrated in the 1950s with the intention of rebuilding their lives.

Israel’s founders had erected a permanent memorial to the Shoah in 1953 (known as Yad Vashem, the beautifully designed remembrance center was an attraction for people from every country and walk of life), but the Israeli education system discouraged students from visiting it, arguing that the country was too fragile, insecure and vulnerable to teach children about the atrocities that the Jewish people, and possibly even their extended families, had endured.

Israel was trying to develop a new, self-confident, psychologically strong, proud generation, ready and willing to fight to defend their country. Educators claimed that studying the Holocaust could instill self-doubt and undermine the confidence of youth. I was hurt that I could only share my story with other survivors, but I knew many other survivors who agreed with the prevailing sentiment of not addressing the Holocaust. Some of my friends and even my aunts, Ita and Elka, never even shared their experiences with their own children for fear of damaging their egos. Some removed their tattoos and never spoke of their past. Consequently, their children only discovered their parents were survivors after they had passed away.

Thankfully, this way of thinking began to change in the 1980s when Israel started teaching the Shoah to high-school students, and today, Holocaust education is core curriculum for all ages. Today, Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, is observed as a day of mourning and as a pledge to never let it happen again. But back then, I was reminded of the tattooist in Auschwitz telling me to cover my number with a long-sleeved shirt and the teacher in Astoria who told me to forget the Holocaust. I felt the pressure once again and decided to remain silent.

It wasn’t long before everyone’s attention focused on a new conflict. Sirens pierced the air on Saturday, October 6, 1973. It was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar. Surely this was a mistake, a technical glitch? Galei Tzahal, the national army radio station, assured us that the alarm was genuine, however. Egypt and Syria had launched a coordinated attack to try to reclaim territory they had lost six years earlier. This time, the Israel Defense Forces weren’t prepared. Many front-line units were understrength because soldiers weren’t at their posts for this High Holy Day. The Egyptians made rapid progress in the Sinai Desert, while the Syrians struggled in the Golan Heights.

Within a few hours, the country had mobilized. Maier reported for reserve duty, taking with him our vehicle, which was requisitioned by the army to help transport the troops. Civilians, young and old, kept the country ticking. Government departments, schools and the post office were mostly staffed by volunteers, supervised by professionals not serving in the armed forces. Even my seventy-year-old father-in-law, Leo Friedman, stepped up to do his part, becoming the local postman.

The conflict lasted three weeks. Fighting was intense. In the Golan Heights, the biggest tank battle took place since the Second World War. The Israelis counterattacked and destroyed five hundred Syrian tanks and armored vehicles in the Valley of Tears.

Although Israel was ultimately victorious, there was a sense that the country would not always enjoy military superiority. In human terms, the price was high. Over 2,000 Israelis were killed and many more wounded. Once again, we found ourselves in bomb shelters. This time, I was with my three children, aged ten, eight and four. We painted the streetlights and car headlights blue and covered our windows with blackout curtains so as not to be targeted by any bombs. The streets were eerily quiet with everyone in their shelters.

Although the war was over fairly quickly, it was six months before Maier was allowed to return home. He was exhausted but returned straight to work. Many Israelis were very angry because prior to the war, the government had been smug, overconfident, and had misread the danger signs. The prime minister, Golda Meir, felt responsible and resigned, and the economy tanked because of high inflation and the international oil embargo, imposed by Arab oil producers to create leverage in the wake of the war.

I gave birth to a son — Shani. I had always thought I would have six children, one for every million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. But after having two girls and two boys, we decided that our family was complete.

Unfortunately, around this time, Maier’s project lost funding and eventually closed. My department at the university also cut its staff by 50 percent and I found myself jobless. Maier took a position in the solar-energy industry, and I enrolled at the Hebrew University. We desperately tried to hold on, but when Maier was offered a post back in the United States, we weighed our options and reluctantly decided, for financial reasons, that we should pack up and leave Israel after ten happy, fulfilling years. As we said farewell with heavy hearts, we promised our friends, family and ourselves that we would be back in three short years.