Gość: ELM
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29.12.01, 00:53
Lala Fishman tried to forget her memories of escaping the Holocaust.
She tried to forget how she used a fake name, recited prayers of another
religion and ran from town to town to flee the Nazi Gestapo.
She tried to forget the nightmares and mental images, but they would not go
away.
She would always remember the religious persecution and slaughter of 6 million
Jews.
“I could not forget,” she said. “This is my sacred duty to bring it to the
light of day.”
Speaks to students
The Skokie resident spoke to students at Elmwood Park High School about her
life in Poland and Germany during World War II and the book she wrote 50 years
later to express her memories, “Lala’s Story: A Memoir of the Holocaust.”
The presentation began with a candle-lighting ceremony. Each of the six candles
lit represented 1 million Jews who were killed in the Holocaust.
Despite the half of a century that has passed, Fishman said her memories of the
horrible events are sharp.
“The sounds and pictures are so vivid in my mind,” she said. “How can you
forget the sounds of the children being separated from their mothers?”
Fishman, who was born in 1922 in Russia and raised in Poland, said she was 16
when Russia invaded her hometown in eastern Poland.
“Just before the war, my life was just like yours — sheltered, serene and
secure,” she told the students.
In 1941, German forces invaded her town. “That is when the horror began.”
The Nazis ordered Jews to wear arm bands identifying their religion.
“Instinctively, I refused to wear an arm band,” she said. “I knew there were
dire consequences, but I didn’t care.”
Fishman also refused to move to follow the Nazis’ next order to move all Jews
to the ghetto.
She witnessed the Gestapo taking random people from the streets to
concentration camps.
“One of them was my father,” she said. “He went to work and never returned.
Grows up
“I had to grow up overnight.”
Fishman recognized the need to do whatever it would take to survive. She
outwardly denied her Jewish faith and took on the appearance of a Christian.
She wore a cross, memorized Catholic prayers, assumed a typical Polish name and
had documents made that said she had been baptized.
“In order to survive the terrible, terrible war, we had to become Christian,”
she said.
The first time the Gestapo took her to jail, she had to recite Catholic prayers
to make the police think she was not Jewish. She gleaned self-confidence from
the experience and used it to outsmart the Gestapo for the next four years.
Another time she was taken to jail and put in a room with 10 Gestapo officers
for interrogation. She took the offensive and screamed at the officers.
“I said, ‘How dare you keep me here for so long? I am a Polish girl of Catholic
faith. My papers are authentic.'
Walks out
“Then all the doors opened up and I just walked out.”
Fishman relied on her instincts and moved often to survive until the end of the
war.
“I was alone, lonely and desperate, but indisputably alive,” she said.
After the war, the Red Cross opened a search center for missing people where
she registered her given name. It was the first time she had used it since
assuming the Polish name.
At a help center for displaced people, Fishman told an American officer of her
survival. She said she had an uncle in the United States, but because of
American quotas on the number of Polish people that could immigrate, she would
not be able to join him for three to five years.
However, Fishman shortened that wait. She married the officer and eventually
became an American citizen.
Experience stays
The Holocaust experience remains with Fishman. Though she spoke German during
the war, she refuses to utter another word in that language because of the
painful memories.
“I haven’t spoken one word of German since the war, and I won’t,” she told the
students.
Fishman is also a member of the Illinois Holocaust Memorial Foundation in
Skokie. She speaks about the atrocities of the war to prevent them from
reoccurring.
“Once, all 6 million (of the Jews killed) were flesh and blood and drawing
breath like all of us,” she said. “We live in their future. It is our solemn
duty that they never ever be forgotten.”
