Girl with an Apple - you must read !!!

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 man approached 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 barrack. 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 into 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's sub-camps near Berlin.

One morning I thought I heard my mother's voice,
"Son," she said
softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel."
Then I woke up.
Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place t here
could be no
angels. There was only work. And hunger. And fear.

A couple of days later, I was walking around the camp,
around the
barracks, near the barbed-wire fence where the guards
could not easily see. I was alone. On the other side of
the fence, I spotted someone: a little 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 question in Polish. She
stepped
forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around
my feet, but
the girl looked unafraid. 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 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 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 little girl whose name I'd
never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were in 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 AM. 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.

But at 8 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
where there 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 who 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 can never
forget.

She nodded. "My family was hiding on a fa rm 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, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six
months."

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
50 years of
marriage, two children and three grandchildren I have
never let her
go.

Herman Rosenblat, Miami Beach, Florida.

This is a true
story
and you can find out more by Googling Herman Rosenblat as
he was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75. This story is being made
into a movie called The Fence.


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