Monday, July 1, 2019

One Survivor’s Chilling Experience in Auschwitz

Apr 7, 2018  |  by 
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One Survivor’s Chilling Experience in Auschwitz
Leslie Kleinman arrived in Auschwitz on his 15th birthday and never saw his family again.
Holocaust survivor Leslie Kleinman arrived at the gates of Auschwitz on his 15th birthday and never saw any of his family members again.
He witnessed unspeakable horrors and has since made it his mission to teach young people of his lasting, haunting memories in the hope that history will never repeat itself.
Leslie was just 14 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz concentration camp.
While in the concentration camp and on death marches, the Romanian national saw starving prisoners eating dead bodies, a baby who had its legs torn clean off its body by a Nazi guard, and a Jew working alongside him shot for simply straightening his back.
Leslie wells up as he remembers his family during an interview with Rabbi Naftali Schiff.
But despite the horror of Nazi Auschwitz, his resounding message is one of love, in a bid to educate those who do not know about the terror of the war.

Humble Beginnings

Leslie's first day of school: (back row left-right) his baby sister Sarah, mum Rachel and dad Martin, (middle row) sisters Greeta and Linda, (front row) Leslie, Francis and Hermann
Leslie was born in the village of Ambud, near Satu Mare in northern Romania, which was invaded by Hungarian soldiers in 1940.
The second oldest of eight kids, he was the son of a Rabbi – and was very poor growing up.
After the Hungarian invasion, Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, but otherwise life for Leslie continued as normal.
All this changed in 1944, on the day after Passover, when his dad Martin was arrested and shamed by police, who cut off his sacred beard.
Welling up, Leslie recalls: “The local police came for my father and the first thing they did was cut his beard off. My mother was crying.
Leslie's dad Martin, back center right, was a Rabbi. Leslie, pictured front now fourth from right, was one of three people in this picture to survive the Holocaust
“She said to my father ‘I don’t think I’m going to see you again’. My father said ‘Don’t worry, God is going to bring me back’.
“But my mother didn’t believe it, and she was right – we never saw my father again.
“They told him a lie, that he was going to Russia to dig trenches. My father was only 33 years old and I thought he could work so he would be back.
“I managed to say goodbye, he gave me a blessing. I was always a big strong man, and he thought I would survive and carry on the name.”
Leslie, who was 14 years old at the time, added: “Two weeks later the police came for us. I later found out my father never went to Russia. He went straight to Auschwitz-Birkenau and that’s where he died.”
Leslie and his second wife Miriam with then Prime Minister David Cameron, in 2014

Long Journey to Auschwitz

Leslie’s family was taken to a ghetto, with 18,000 other Jews, where they lived for around a month.
When the freight trains came, on May 18, the group was told they were being taken to Germany – and were packed into carriages, with just one bucket as a toilet between 110 people.
Leslie said: “I remember one man shouted out ‘this train does not go to Germany, it goes east’. He knew.
“The crying that was going on was unbelievable. We stopped outside a Catholic church and they said the Jewish people were crying so badly that they couldn’t say the service anymore.
“In only a few hours the bucket was full up, and the stench was unbelievable. There was no privacy, we weren’t humans anymore. The women and men were together and getting undressed to go to the toilet. I can still see it in my mind sometimes.”
Leslie arrived at the gates of Auschwitz on May 29, 1944 – the day of his 15th birthday. They had left the ghetto 11 days earlier.
He said: “We stopped for quite a few days. We were hungry, we needed to get out and go to the toilet, but so many trains arrived at the same time. It was the biggest train station in the world and it still was not big enough. There were a million people in Auschwitz in 1944.”

Into the Gas Chambers

When the Nazis finally opened the doors, the prisoners were rushed into the concentration camp.
Leslie said: “We saw a cloud of people, a dark cloud covering the whole place. We started marching and they said ‘You’re going to have a shower.’ And everyone was glad to go, they believed them.
“The stink and the smell, we were filthy. It was a blessing to go and have a shower. What they didn’t know is, there’s no water in the building.”
Dr Josef Mengele is now known as the Angel of Death, but amazingly it was he who saved Leslie’s life.
Leslie says he wants to preach love, not hate, when talking about his experiences
Sadly, the same could not be said for his family who all, with the exception of his eldest sister Greeta, were killed that day. His youngest brothers were just two and four.
He said: “I was marching with my family and as I got to Dr Mengele, maybe 15 yards before, this Polish Jew picked me out and asked me how old I was.
“He said ‘You’re 17 now.’ He saved my life because I was big, a very healthy person and I was 5 ft 10 then already. So Dr Mengele said, ‘He’s a good worker, he’s going to work,’ and he passed me.
“I never saw (my family) after that. I found myself alone in the world. I never said goodbye (to my mother). But I saw her a couple of times in my dreams and I said goodbye then.”
Even when he discovered the horrific truth about the gas chambers, Leslie clung to the hope of seeing Greeta – who was two years older than him – again.
Before being sent to work, Leslie was branded with the number ‘8203’ - which ironically means 'love' or 'God' in Hebrew.
He said: “The Nazis didn’t know they gave me love. But God knew, God wanted me to have this number.”

The Baby Torn to Death

It was while he was working that Leslie saw some of the most unspeakable things. He said: “I saw a truck turn up which was full of 600 little tiny children, babies. They were crying and I knew they were going straight to the gas chambers and their death.
“One of the children fell out – and I was about 25 or 30 meters from there. The guard stopped the car, picked up the child, tore off its two legs, it was bloody.
“I was working on the railway lines. It was -25 degrees in a pair of pyjamas, no gloves and my hands were stuck to the metal.”

Shot at Work

This is far from the only story which sticks out in his mind.
Leslie said: “One day there was a man from Holland next to me, we were working together. He stood up to straighten his back, that’s all he did, and the guard shot him. The guard was Hungarian so I said, ‘Why did you shoot him?’
“He said, ‘He’s here to work, not to straighten his back.’ I thought ‘I can’t say any more, I’m just going to keep quiet unless he shoots me’.
“Three weeks later I was very sick, I thought I was dying already, so I went to the toilet for 20 minutes. When I got back the same guy shouted out to me, ‘You were there 20 minutes in the toilet. You’re not supposed to be there that long, come over here.’
“He told me to drop my pants and gave me 30 lashes. Instead of being annoyed with him, I thanked God he only gave me lashes. He could have killed me. I wasn’t annoyed with him, even after all the terrible things he had done. You just have to let it go.”
Young Jews show off their tattooed ID numbers.
Leslie's was 8203, which he believes means 'love'

The Death March

After nearly eight months in Auschwitz, on January 18 1945, Leslie was sent on a death march to Germany – trekking 500 miles through the forest.
He said: “They didn’t give us any food, nothing at all. We were starving and many people - Auschwitz prisoners - were eating dead bodies. I couldn’t do that. I was eating the grass and drinking the snow. That kept me going, praise God I never had any problems. Other people tried it and they died of diarrhea.
“It was -20, 25 (degrees), with no gloves and no warm clothes - I was wearing only a pair of pyjamas and a blanket in my hand and a pair of clogs. Every few minutes somebody got shot, if you couldn’t walk you got shot. For 5,000 people, if you’re lucky, there were 200 left.”
Welling up, he added: “God was looking after me. I would never give up because I thought I’m the only one left in my family, and there’s no way I’m going to see my family die in vain. I thought they’re not going to kill me, we’ve got a long way to go yet.”
Leslie was finally liberated by American soldiers in April, when they stopped overnight in a village farm, and the Nazis disappeared without warning.
Leslie recalled: “I looked around me and everyone had gone. I didn’t know what to do, I was only 15 then. So I decided to jump into a foxhole and wait there and see what happened. As I was waiting a guy comes over with a Tommy gun. He asked me if I was Jewish and said, ‘Shalom, I’m also a Jew.’
“We both started to cry, I weighed less than 20kg at the time. He took me to an army hospital and then he sent me to a convent.”

One Final Tragedy

After regaining his strength, Leslie travelled to Prague, where he met up with his dad’s cousin and asked for news of Greeta.
Tragically, he discovered that she died of typhoid on a death march to Bergen-Belsen, two days after the liberation.
He added: “I started to cry for her. I couldn’t believe it, she was only 17.
“I was liberated on April 23, in the convent they call it ‘Leslie’s second birthday.’ They say, ‘When you were brought here you were half dead, you were so ill. So we brought you back to life.’”
This article originally appeared in The Sun. Leslie’s interview was arranged by J-Roots, a charity who takes today’s Jews on trips to places of historical significance – like Auschwitz.
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Friend of the Jews: How Dr. Adelaide Hautval Defied the Nazis and Saved Jewish Lives

Sep 19, 2018  |  by 
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Friend of the Jews: How Dr. Adelaide Hautval Defied the Nazis and Saved Jewish Lives
Standing up for Jews, Dr. Hautval was sent to Auschwitz where she was asked to assist in medical experiments performed in Block 10.
Dr. Adélaïde Hautval was a psychiatrist who lived in a Vichy-controlled area of southern France. In April 1942, Hautval was told of the death of her mother who had lived in occupied Paris. In order to attend the funeral, she applied for a pass to cross the demarcation line.
Although her request was rejected, Adelaide attempted to cross over. She was arrested and taken to the Bourges train station for an identity check. While waiting on the platform, she noticed some Germans mistreating a Jewish family. Speaking calmly to them in German, she told them to leave the family alone.
“Don’t you see that they are only Jews?” asked the German.
“So what? They are people like the others, leave them alone,” Adelaide bravely insisted. Her answer landed her in the Bourges prison where she would witness further cruelty towards Jews.
“A Jewish woman was placed in our cell and I discovered that she was wearing a yellow star sewn on her jacket. To attract the attention of the Gestapo, I attached a piece of paper to my clothing,” Adelaide explained. It stated, “Friend of the Jews.” Whenever she could, she boldly defended her friends.
When Adelaide was being interrogated, the Germans offered her a compromise: “Deny what you said about the Jews and you will be released.”
“But how can I say something else? Jews are like other people,” Adelaide insisted.
”So you defend them? You will share their fate!” the Germans harshly informed her. Because of Hautval's refusal to change her attitudes, the Gestapo compelled her to stitch a Star of David on her coat along with a cloth band marked "A friend of the Jews."
Dr. Hautval was sent to the Birkenau death camp together with other French prisoners. A devout Protestant and daughter of a pastor, she was housed with 500 Jewish women who called her “the saint.” Utilizing her medical knowledge to treat Jewish prisoners suffering from typhus, she secluded them in a separate part of the camp to prevent contagion. By not reporting the prisoners’ illness, she saved them from the gas chambers. Treating Jewish patients with total dedication, her acts of kindness were rare in this hell on earth.
She told them, “Here, we are all under sentence of death. Let us behave like human beings as long as we are alive.”

Block 10

In April 1943, Adelaide was sent to Block 10 of the main camp of Auschwitz where sadistic experiments took place, including the sterilization of women by injection of caustic products. She was supposed to assist with the "medical experiments" performed on Jewish women prisoners without anesthetic by German doctors. With great courage, she defied the criminal experimenters, refusing to enter the operating room or to assist the surgeons. Sent back to Birkenau, she wondered what had saved her from execution since the SS was known for its brutality.
When she finally discovered that an order had in fact been given for her execution, she was tormented by the idea that another inmate might have been substituted for her.
Back in Birkenau, she continued to treat typhus patients, saving them from the gas chambers. Then in November 1943, Adelaide herself caught typhus. She became very ill and was unable to resume work for several months.
In August, 1944, she was transferred to Ravensbrück and later sent as a doctor to the Watenstett camp, an ammunition factory.
After the liberation of Ravensbrück in April, 1945, she continued to treat the patients who were too ill to be moved.
Adelaide was repatriated only in June, 1945, with the last French patients. Because she was not part of a resistance organization or network, she had difficulty obtaining a resistance deportee card.
After the war, although her health was impaired by her bout with typhus and malnutrition, Adelaide resumed her medical practice in France. She was awarded the Legion of Honor in December 1945 for her dedication to her fellow inmates in the brutality of the concentration camps. In 1946 she wrote a short book called Medicine and Crime Against Humanity, which was finally published 44 years later.

Leon Uris Trial

Then in May 1964, a libel suit was filed in London against American novelist Leon Uris by Dr. Vladislav Dering, a Polish gynecologist then living in Britain. He accused the author of Exodus of defamation. Leon Uris claimed that the doctor had participated in Block 10 in criminal experiments with Jewish prisoners.
Dr. Adelaide Hautval was called as a witness. On the witness stand, she declared: “Yes, Dr. Dering did experiments on at least 400 Jews.”
Asked questions from the defense, Adelaide explained how she reacted during her incarceration in Block 10:
“I had to serve as an assistant to Dr. Wirths, a German with gray-blue eyes. He told me that I would also have to assist Professor Clauberg, a civilian, bald little man, wearing a Tyrolean hat and boots. I was troubled because that is something I did not want to participate in. Having probably noticed my reluctance, he questioned me about my opinion of sterilization. The opportunity was unique. I think a direct question deserves a direct answer. I said, ‘I am absolutely opposed to it.’”
"’Do not you see that these people (the Jews) are very different from you?’ I was asked again. ’I do not and don’t stop me from saying that in this camp many people are different from me.’”
Following this testimony, one of the English judges proclaimed, "Here is one the most impressive, brave women who has ever appeared before a court in this country, a woman of strong character and an extraordinary personality.”
Dr. Adelaide Hautval honored by Israelis at Yad Vashem in 1965.
In 1965, Dr. Adelaide Hautval was awarded the title of Righteous of the Nations by Yad Vashem and traveled to Israel to receive her medal. Her positive attitude towards the Jewish people remained as strong as ever:
"The return of the people of Israel to their own country is an accomplishment concerning not only itself but the world at large…. Israel has always played a gestative, fermentative role, due to which it was hated or respected. Its mission in the world continues. May Israel remain faithful to it. The entire history of the Jewish people demonstrates the primacy of spiritual forces. Hence, its undertaking cannot but be successful," she stated.
In October, 1988, after discovering the signs of Parkinson's disease, Dr. Hautval sadly chose to end her life. The hospital where she worked was renamed Adelaide Hautval Villiers-le-Bel in her honor.
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Ida and Louise Cook’s Remarkable Rescue Mission

Nov 18, 2017  |  by 
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Ida and Louise Cook’s Remarkable Rescue Mission
Using their avid opera-going as a cover, the British sisters saved dozens of Jews in Nazi Europe.
They were an eccentric pair: spinster sisters who lived for opera, travelling the world to listen to their favorite performers sing. Yet Ida and Louise Cook harbored a secret. For years, they worked to bring Jews out of Nazi Europe, using their avid opera-going as a cover. In all, the sisters saved the lives of 29 Jews.
Louise Cook was born in 1901 and her sister Ida in 1904. By the time Nazism was ascendant in Europe, the sisters were confirmed middle-aged spinsters, living in their family home in London. Louise was an office worker, Ida a typist and later a prolific writer who published under the name Mary Burchell. Their single passion in life was opera, scrimping and saving to be able to visit the world’s great opera houses.
In 1934, the sisters’ lives changed at one of these operas. A few weeks earlier, Austria’s Chancellor Englebert Dolfus had been murdered by a gang of Nazis. All of Austria was in turmoil, but Ida and Louise cared only for music and travelled to Salzburg for an opera festival where they became friendly with the great Romanian singer Viorica Ursuleac. At the end of the festival, Ursuleac took the sisters by the arm and asked them to look after a dear friend, a certain Frau Mitia Mayer-Lismann, who would be travelling to London soon on a short trip.
Ready for the opera
Ida and Louise agreed, and back in London they took Frau Mayer-Lismann around to see the sites. As the women chatted, Frau Mayer-Lismann mentioned that she was Jewish, and was surprised when the clueless sisters said they hadn’t realized. Patiently, Frau Mayer-Lismann explained to Ida and Louise what life was like for Jews in Austria and Germany.
Years later, Ida Cook remembered that conversation as a turning point. “We began to see things more clearly and to see them, to our lasting benefit, through the eyes of an ordinary devoted family like ourselves. By the time the full horror of what was happening in Germany, and later in Austria, reached the newspapers, the whole thing had become almost too fantastic for the ordinary mind to take in,” Ida wrote in her 1950 memoir We Followed our Stars. “It took a war to make people understand what was happening in peacetime, and very many never understood it. To us, the case of the Mayer-Lismanns was curious and shocking, but we did what I suppose most people would have done. We asked, ‘Where did they hope to go? And what could we do to help?’”
As British women living in London, it was difficult indeed to help Austrian and German Jews. Britain restricted the number of Jewish refugees it accepted and the paltry number of refugees it did accept was allowed only under strict conditions. Jewish refugees had to be sponsored by a British citizen and had to produce a large sum of money guaranteeing they wouldn’t be a burden on the state. Because refugees were not allowed to work in Britain, this financial guarantee had to be produced upfront, posing a near-insurmountable burden on many Jews.
Moved by Frau Mayer-Lismann’s descriptions, Ida and Louise began to sponsor refugees. When their money ran out, they encouraged others to help and marshalled resources to provide guarantees to Jewish refugees.
Ida later described their methods. “We began to coordinate the smaller offers of money or hospitality around individual cases, until we had enough money or hospitality to ‘cover’ a case. Then we would persuade some trusting friend or relative to sign the official guarantee form, on the understanding that the guarantee would never be called on because we already had the wherewithal to meet the needs of the case.” Many of the sisters’ friends started cutting back on their daily expenses, walking instead of taking the bus or cutting out cigarettes, for instance, in order to contribute to refugees’ pledge guarantees.
Word soon spread among Jews in Germany and Austria, and Ida and Louise were inundated with requests for help.
Word soon spread among Jews in Germany and Austria, and Ida and Louise were inundated with requests for help. Louise began learning German to better aid the refugees. Every few months, the sisters would travel to Germany to meet with potential refugees, with the pretext of attending operas as cover. In order to evade scrutiny, they travelled through smaller ports, flying from Croydon airport near London into Cologne on a Saturday morning and returning via boat from Holland on Sunday nights. “You never know what you can do until you refuse to take no for an answer,” Ida later explained of their travels.
In Germany, Ida and Louise often worked with Clemens Krauss, the head of the Berlin State Opera and then the Munich Opera House. Krauss was married to the singer Viorica Ursuleac, who’d befriended the Cook sisters years before. Throughout World War II, it was assumed that Clemens Krauss was a passionate Nazi; afterwards it was revealed that he in fact had personally worked to help Jews escape. In the case of the Cook sisters, he provided them cover for their trips. When they announced another visit to Germany, Krauss would send them the details of that weekend’s opera performances so they could gush about seeing their favorite opera to suspicious border guards or other officials.
Ida’s forthright style moved others to action.
Back in Britain, Ida began writing and speaking out publicly about the dangers facing Jews in Europe. Her forthright style moved others to action. Invited to address her first conference about the situation, Ida was dismayed at the dry, academic tone of the speakers. When her turn came, Ida decided to talk about an actual Jew. “He has asked me to save his life. He is under sentence to go back to Buchenwald Concentration Camp - and almost certain death - unless he can be got out of the country in a matter of weeks. I have no guarantee. I have no means of saving him. He must die, unless I can find both - and find them quickly.”
Ida recalls the profoundly uncomfortable silence that followed. Three days later, the conference organizer’s secretary called her. She had been crying nonstop about the Jew Ida had spoken of and she and her husband had decided to sponsor him themselves, saving his life.
In the final years leading up to World War II, Ida and Louise began an even more dangerous activity: having exhausted their own finances to pledge refugees, they began smuggling diamonds and other precious gems that desperate Jews had purchased out of Austria and Germany in order to help pay pledges to resettle in Britain. This carried huge risks: Jews weren’t allowed to bring valuables out of those countries, and the penalties for anyone caught helping them would be severe.
On November 9, hordes of Nazis and Nazi-sympathisers poured into the streets of cities and towns throughout Germany and Austria, burning thousands of synagogues, destroying Jewish businesses, and beating and killing scores of Jews. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested that night. For the world, it became clear just how little Nazis thought the lives of Jews was worth. Just weeks after these pogroms, Ida was asked to travel once more to Germany to help an older Jewish woman get out to safety in Britain.
Ida did so, at enormous risk, and then was presented with a still more dangerous request. A Jew with a visa to Britain needed help raising the financial guarantee they required. They’d spent their entire life savings to purchase a single diamond brooch which would cover the guarantee, but Jews were barred from bringing valuables out of Germany. Would Ida please smuggle this life-saving jewelry into Britain instead? Ida said yes.
She affixed the huge diamond brooch to the front of her cheap sweater. People would assume it was a fake.
When she saw the brooch, Ida was appalled. It was an enormous oblong, glittering with huge diamonds. At the time, Ida was wearing a cheap cardigan from Marks & Spencer. With trembling fingers, she affixed the blazing diamond brooch to the front of her sweater, reasoning that anyone seeing her would assume it was a fake. Her ruse worked, and she returned to England with the brooch still affixed to her cheap outfit.
In the following months, both Ida and Louise repeated this daring ruse time and again, smuggling diamonds and pearls that Jewish refugees had bought with their life savings into England where they were converted into pledges guaranteeing them a safe place to stay. If they were caught, the sisters decided to “do the nervous British spinster act” and behave eccentrically. When an Austrian frontier official questioned Louise’s opulent string of pearls that she was wearing along with her otherwise inexpensive outfit, she acted affronted, exclaiming, “And why not?!’ She frantically ran to a mirror and looked at herself, all the while yelling at the inspector, “What is wrong with my appearance? What were you trying to imply?” until the inspector fled Louise’s crazy act.
The last person Ida and Louise were able to rescue, their 29th, was a 25-year-old Jewish photographer named Lisa Basch. It was 1939 and the sisters’ old friend Frau Mitia Mayer-Lismann was now living safely in Britain. She handed the sisters a list of names and addresses with the words “God bless you and help you” written at the top.
Louise had no more leave from work, so Ida went alone to Frankfurt to the Basch’s family home. It was in ruins, having been searched by the SS. Most of the Basch family had found refuge; only Lisa remained with no place to go. Ida interviewed her, then got to work raising a guarantee, allowing Lisa to find refuge in England.
In 2007, Lisa Basch recalled Ida Cook to Britain’s Daily Telegraph, remembering that Ida had been like a mother to her. Ms. Basch eventually moved to New York, and recalled that every time the Cook sisters visited that city, Lisa “was completely at their service. Wherever they had to go, whomever they wanted to visit, I drove them there. Ida always said to me, ‘You don’t have to repay anything.’ but I wanted to. I was so grateful. I loved her really, and if it hadn’t been for her…”
In 1965, Israel’s Yad Vashem named Ida and Louise Cook Righteous Among the Nations. Ida died in 1986 at the age of 82, and Louise in 1991 at the age of 90. In 2010, they were posthumously honored as “Heroes of the Holocaust” by the British Government.
Donald Rosenfeld, a British film producer, is working on a movie about Ida and Louise Cook, titled The Cooks. “They are huge heroes,” he explains. “This movie is an opportunity to make a global tribute to them.” Mr. Rosenfeld is appealing for anyone with a personal story or connection to Ida and Louise Cook to contact Sovereign Films.
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The French Resistance Socialite Heroine who Saved 60 Jewish Children

Jan 20, 2018  |  by 
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The French Resistance Socialite Heroine who Saved 60 Jewish Children
Everyone should know about Suzanne Spaak’s remarkable courage.
As the daughter of a successful Belgian banker and sister-in-law of the Belgian foreign minister, Suzanne Lorge Spaak was accustomed to an upscale lifestyle. Her husband Claude was a successful dramatist/film maker. Fellow Belgian René Magritte, a talented surrealistic artist, painted her portrait. Relocating to Paris in 1936, the Spaaks found a home at 9 Rue de Beaujolais, in the same building as famous French novelist Colette.
A highly devoted mother to her children, Lucie and Louis, Suzanne found fulfillment in raising her family while enjoying the life of a wealthy socialite in Paris. With the outbreak of World War II and the occupation of France by Germany, Suzanne Spaak’s life would never be the same again.
Feeling angry about the suppression, brutality and racial intolerance of the Nazi occupation, she decided to do something highly unusual for a woman of her affluent background. In 1942 she joined the French Resistance movement. However when she volunteered to work with the underground National Movement against Racism (MNCR), she was greeted with skepticism by their members. They wondered how - or if - this wealthy socialite would survive the difficult, dangerous conditions of their organization. At first they assigned her to simple tasks such as typing, distributing leaflets, and shopping for everyday supplies. After a while Suzanne asked for greater challenges. “Tell me what I must do, it is all the same for me to do this or that work… so I’ll know that I am serving in the struggle against Nazism.”
Portrait of Suzanne Spaak by René Magritte
Mr. Aronson, a fellow member of the MNCR, who initially doubted the new recruit’s abilities, began to realize he had misjudged her deep commitment to the cause. “We were not very optimistic regarding the capabilities of our new collaborator but how great was our mistake. She belonged to the category of idealists for whom their private lives and personal needs cease to exist the moment a great idea comes to possess their heart and soul.”
Never refusing an assignment, Suzanne walked all over the city of Paris in an effort to find a hospital willing to take the risk of treating Jews in hiding who needed urgent medical attention. Using her influence with the upper class of Parisian society, she knocked on the doors of lawyers, educators, judges, clerics, movie stars and writers asking for their support.
Aware of the growing atrocities of the Nazis, Suzanne devoted herself to ridding France and her native Belgium of their oppressors. She joined the Red Orchestra intelligence network, a Soviet-sponsored organization founded by Leopold Trepper, a Jewish communist from Poland. This group conducted very effective intelligence gathering in Germany, France, Holland and in neutral Switzerland with members known as the "Lucy Ring". The network grew so successful at infiltrating the German military intelligence service that the Nazis set up the Red Orchestra Special Detachment to eliminate it.
In early 1943, information concerning the deportation of Jewish children leaked out. As the loving mother of her own two children, Suzanne felt so overwhelmed by the danger facing the Jewish children it affected her personal life. Working tenaciously to save the lives of these Jewish youngsters about to be sent to the German death camps, she actively participated in a daring operation initiated by Pastor Paul Vergara and Marcelle Guillemot. They managed to smuggle to safety more than 60 Jewish children, ranging in age from three to 18.
Suzanne initially sheltered some of the children in her own home, despite the great personal risk. With the assistance of her comrades, she provided the children with ration cards and clothing, moving them to safe havens in various parts of France. Meanwhile in Belgium the Nazis traced and monitored Red Orchestra operative radio transmitters and started making their first arrests of the agents. Captured members were so brutally tortured that several divulged names and network secrets. As a result, during the next 18 months, more than 600 people were arrested.
Aware of the impending danger, Suzanne, who had already risked her life to save other people’s children, realized the time had come to save her own, Lucie aged 16 and Louis, 12. In October 1943, she managed to flee with them to the safety of her sister's home in Belgium.
However, a few days later Suzanne was arrested by the Gestapo. She’d had the presence of mind to give the lists of Jewish children and their addresses to an underground comrade, saving their lives. Taken to the notorious Gestapo-held Fresnes prison near Paris, the second largest prison in France was a horrific place with cold, filthy cells. Members of the French Resistance and captured British special operations executives imprisoned there seldom survived.
Righteous gentile Mary Elmes of Ireland (featured on Aish.com, August, 2017) had also been confined in the Fresnes prison but, due to the efforts of the neutral Irish government, she was released a few months later.
The notorious Fresnes Prison is still in existence today
Unfortunately Suzanne Spaak was destined for a different fate. Imprisoned for nine horrifying months, she was subjected to torture and sentenced to death by a German military court. As the Allied forces broke through at Normandy and started to fight their way to free Paris, the Gestapo prepared to flee. But before leaving they executed some of the prisoners, including members of the Red Orchestra. On August 12, 1944, Suzanne Spaak was shot to death in the prison, only 13 days before Paris was liberated by the Allies.
All the Jewish children she rescued managed to survive the war. Unlike many Righteous Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews, Suzanne did not live to a ripe old age, enjoying her grandchildren and seeing the generations she had saved. Only 39 at the time of her death, this heroic woman had written on the wall of her cell: “Alone with my thoughts, there is still freedom.”
In 1985, Yad Vashem recognized Suzanne Spaak as Righteous Among the Nations.
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