On the Anniversary of Kristallnacht

The little girl in the front row with the long brown braids, showing off her wristwatch, is posed together with her mother’s extended family - her grandmother, Rachel, at the center, along with Rachel’s sons and daughters, their spouses, and children. Short years later, they would all be dead but for that little girl, Gisella. My mother.

A copy of the photo, taken in 1936, was sent to relatives in Palestine, who had left Poland some years earlier. I saw it for the first time in 2017, after the son of my mother’s second cousin found me on Geni. I met Uri and his mother Bella in Israel, and they gave me this precious gift. Bella had been unsuccessful in finding my mother after the war ended – a missed opportunity for them both.

Gisella died on November 9, 1988. I don’t believe it was coincidental that she passed away on the 50th anniversary of Kristallnacht. Several days earlier, in a private moment between us in the hospital, she told me that she had lived on “borrowed time” since she was 15.

My mother survived as follows. Along with other Jews in Stanislawow, she had been rounded up into a mill, waiting two days until a sufficient number of Jews would be collected from nearby towns to reach a certain quota. Then they would be taken out to the pits and shot. But she hid behind the door of the mill and was not discovered. She explained the extraordinary twists and turns that followed until liberation as sheer luck. As with others who endured those years, the need to focus on daily survival crowded out the luxury of thinking about anything else.

The thoughts came later. By the time Gisella reached DP Camp Foehrenwald in November 1945, she knew there was no one to search for and felt that there was no purpose in going on. She fell into a deep depression and considered ending her life. But a kind older woman, Helen Matousek, herself a Jewish survivor from Czechoslovakia now working for UNRRA, took her under her wing. Soon Gisella became Helen’s assistant. And then she met my father, who had survived with an aunt and uncle and several cousins. My father’s aunt took care of the girl as if she were her own daughter. It was understood that my parents would soon marry and begin a new life. They did so here in the United States. Gisella, having been on the receiving end of kindness in the DP camp, went on to obtain a Master’s degree in Social Work, and worked with troubled teenagers in the NY city school system.

On the anniversary of Kristallnacht, we remember the past and our loved ones. They left us an important legacy, one that bears remembering in 2022. When times seem dark, it is more important than ever to hold on to hope, be kind to one another and never ever give up.