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Janine Guttman (Rosenbaum)
I have so enjoyed reading these posts but due to wrist isuues have not blogged myself. The Franklin experience was central to my life and the lessons learned there about getting to know people as individuals has guided my whole belief system. My parents loved the way the house was full of people different from each other but with the same ideals underneath. You ask about their stories and that is hard to discuss as I was one of those children of survivors who found it too painful to listen to the specifics of their experiences during the war. But I will say a little of what I do know.
My Dad was Czech and left there to join the French Underground/Resistence. He told mostly funny stories of his pet dog and pig and goats. He lived in the woods all those years fighting--he said that he always shot in the air so as not to hurt anyone! Who knows. He was captured twice but managed to escape each time. Of all the 6 siblings, all married with families, he was the only survivor. He was awarded medals but let me play with them and they were all lost---he never put much stock in those kinds of things! After the war he worked for UNWRA, as he spoke 6 languages, helping the child survivors go to Israel. He never was much good at being inside after that--he loved being outside in the Northwest which he called G-d's country.
My Mom was 1 of sevenchildren and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and other camps with 1 sister, 1 sister-in-law and my cousin who was hidden and age 10 when the war was over. She rarely spoke of the war. She owned a millinary shop in Warsaw. I have a picutre of her standing in the doorway smiling, and suddenly it was all gone. She and my father met in Paris after the war at an ORT school where she was teaching hat making and they married and had me. My mother had a brother who left Poland before the war and was a US GI. He found what was left of the family and urged them to come to the States as there would only be more wars in Israel and had they not had enough of war? My mother's childhood friend from Poland had a daughter who was living in Seattle with an American GI she had married and so, knowing 1 person, we came here. That women is still part of our family at 91!
So they came and loved America and what it stood for so much. It is that dream of America where you can be who you are, whatever religion, race, ethnicity and live in harmony that guided them. My Dad only drove Fords because Mr Kashino sold them. I treasure my friendship with Debbie and have always taught the Japanese Relocation in whatever school I was in. They often had not heard of it at all in the Esat where I lived in Massachusetts and New Jersey. Last year, my husband's Mom came to visit from NY and we took her to an exhibit on it on Bainbridge Island. She left knowing more than she had ever known on the subject and she is 88. When we fisrt came back to Seattle, yay!, Debbie brought a group of Nisei Veterans to Herzl Synagogue on Mercer Island, where my husband is the Rabbi, to participate in a Holocaust Memorial Program. It came full circle for us. What an honor to meet those men who had seen the worst and lived to educate us all on what can happen when insane hate is manifest in the world.
The thing is, we say Never Again but it continues to happen all over the world to all kinds of people all the time. It makes me sad and angry and know that we have to speak out for those who are the current victims of hate wherever they are. Debbie gave my children a book when they were little by the author Ken Mochizuki called Passage to Freedom, The Sugihara Story. It was about the Japanese counsul to Lithuania who wrote visas for Jews against the wishes of his country. He did the right thing and saved so many but was disgraced for it in Japan. Ken wrote to my children to remember always that one person can make a difference. Chiune Sugihara was honored in Israel in 1969 at Yad Vashem as a Righteous Among the Nations and later a monument to him was erected in Japan, as well. Debbie also gave me a book called I Can Never Forget, Men of the 100th and 442nd by Thelma Chiang. I recommend both of them as they teach us how improtant it is to always stand up for what is right--even if you are standing alone.
Oy, much too long----on to happier topics!
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