ARLINGTON, Va. - For many people, stories of the Holocaust and those who lived through it are part of a history lesson. But for some, those stories are more than a history lesson – it's their childhood.
As part of the national Days of Remembrance event commemorating the victims of the Holocaust, the Army National Guard recently hosted Elzbieta Strassburger, who lived through the Holocaust as a child.
Strassburger spoke of her experiences during World War II and how the war personally affected her and her family. For many in attendance, it gave a human face to the Holocaust though firsthand experiences of events that happened almost 70 years ago.
"On the first of September 1939, the Germans came," said Strassburger, who was barely a year old at the time. "They came from the west and the Russians came from the east and in 17 days (our life) was gone."
As a result of the invasion, her father went into the Polish army.
"He felt that he wanted to do things for his country," she said. "He was a physician, and he knew that he would be useful."
Strassburger and her mother wouldn't see him again until after the war.
"We lost track of him totally … My mother was 27 when this happened. So, what does a young, 27-year-old woman with a child do? She went to her mother."
Grandmother's care
For more than two years, the infant and her mother lived with her grandmother in southern Poland. And despite the passage of close to 70 years, she still has vivid memories of her grandmother's house.
"I remember the carpeting," she said. "I remember the beautiful pictures, and I remember all the things she gave me and how good she was and how loving she was."
As a child, she had few clues as to why they were living with her grandmother.
"… we were in a place where there were seven people in one room and where there was no very good food and where people were dying. Though, I didn't know they were dying, I just knew they were going away, but they were dying."
During that time, she spent most days with her grandmother as her mother went to work in a tailor shop.
"It was up to my grandmother to take care of me, and she did. We would walk and we would talk."
And her grandmother gave instructions to Strassburger on what to do if anything were to happen.
"There was a gazebo in this place and I was told if I ever got scared or if anything happens I was to go into this gazebo and go under the stone benches."
The instructions turned out to be lifesaving.
"One day we were walking and my grandmother said ‘Go under the benches'. There were these two huge Germans coming. And that was the last time I saw my grandmother. It was June 11, 1942. She was one of about 3,500 Jews taken to Belzec or Auschwitz, we don't know."
Catholic in disguise
Strassburger her mother then went to live with another woman and her two daughters. Her mother was able to purchase "Aryan papers," which gave them new, non-Jewish identities.
"My mother was a very savvy woman," she Strassburger, whose name had now been changed to Barbara and she went to a Catholic school and church.
"I didn't know I was Jewish, but the people in the house did. It was up to the younger daughter, who was probably 13, to take care of me and make sure I went to church every week, that I had my catechism and that I went to school with the sisters of Saint Ursula."
It was a time of relative happiness.
"I was very happy and I loved going to church," she said. "I was getting ready for my First Communion and I had everything down pat. I had my dress, I had my veil. It was a very exciting thing for a child."
As the war continued, the German army was defeated in Poland by the Russian army. During that time, many of those who had left started to return.
"Eventually, the husband of the woman we were staying with came back," she said. "My mother looked for anyone from her family, but nobody had survived – nobody."
Though the war was winding down, her mother decided they should move across the border and into then Czechoslovakia.
"Somehow she bribed somebody to put us in barrels of China. My mother was a pharmacist and she had gotten something to keep me asleep and we went over the border into Czechoslovakia. Then we went to Austria, and there was a displaced persons camp."
Revelation
Just before leaving for Czechoslovakia, her mother revealed that Barbara was not her real name and that they were Jewish.
"I said, ‘What do you mean I'm Jewish? I don't want to be Jewish. I want to be Catholic. I want to have my First Communion. I was a little kid, so I didn't know anything about being Jewish."
They lived in several camps in Germany for about a year. She had started going to school and learning Hebrew and had made a number of friends when a medical commission came through the camp.
"My mother recognized one of the men who had been a friend of my father's. He said ‘Oh my gosh, you're alive.' My mother said, ‘yes, my daughter and I are, but my husband died.' And he said, ‘No, no, no, he's in Italy.'"
Her father was someone she had only heard stories about as he went into the Polish army a year after her birth.
"My mother had always told me, ‘I wish you could have seen your father. He was tall and had blonde hair and he had blue eyes and spoke 12 languages and he was so wonderful.'"
And when she finally met him, the meeting was somewhat different than she imagined.
"So, when I saw this man who looked like any other man, I was so upset. I had expected to see this man on top of a white horse with a sword after everything she had told me."
Though he didn't have a sword or a horse, he did have something else with him which she has kept to this day.
"This is my doll who is now 66 years old," she said, showing off the gift her father gave her. "This is what he had. I was eight and I hadn't had a doll. She used to talk, but after 66 years she got tired of talking."
Leaving the past behind in America
Soon after, the family emigrated first to England and then to the United States, where an aunt of her mother had moved in the 1920s. The aunt was the only family of either of her parents to survive the war.
"I should tell you that my grandmother was one of nine children. So, if you extrapolate and say each of them had two children that had two children, it comes to maybe a hundred people. We talk about 6 million (who died during the Holocaust) and you can't imagine 6 million people, but when it's a hundred of your own family you surely imagine it really well."
Though they had somehow survived the Holocaust, the Strassburgers and many other families put those events and experiences quickly behind them and started new lives.
"We didn't talk about the Holocaust at all. We didn't talk about the people who were dead at all. I think that part of it was that people were (thankful to have survived.) And nobody wanted to hear it. Why would you want to hear about blood and death?"
She went on to earn a master's degree in social work and work with troubled children. She also married and had two children of her own. After 50 years, she and her husband returned to Europe.
Revisiting the past
"In 1990, we went back to Poland and we saw Visha, who was the young woman who had taken care of me."
For Strassburger, it was an emotional meeting.
"At this point she is maybe in her 70s and I'm in my 50s. We're old. And I say to her, ‘Visha, do you remember me?' And she looks at me and she said no, and I was so upset, because she looked the same to me. … She's got grey hair, a little more poundage, but the face is the same. She's the same person. I tell her I'm Basha, which was my Polish name. And we start crying and we start hugging."
She learned a bit more about the events of her childhood.
"I asked how her mother could take us in. She told me that her mother always felt that everybody should be given a chance. Then she told me that there was another family on the same street who were found out and they were killed. Now, not just the Jews, not just the people in the family, everybody in the house. So, if you had gone there for a birthday party that means you're gone too."
It gave her a different perspective on her childhood.
"That made me feel how much this woman did for us, how much she risked. She had two daughters, and a husband who was away."
And for those in attendance, it brought to light one of the points of the presentation—that one person can make a difference.
"It's a remarkable story of the human spirit," said Army Master Sgt. Hervey Allen, from the Human Capital Management section at the Readiness Center. "And the lives that flourished before the Holocaust, struggled during the darkness of the Holocaust, and ultimately prevailed with the survivors after the Holocaust."