(Author: Veronica Belling, Vol. 73, No. 2, Rosh Hashanah 2018)
When visiting Henia Bryer in her beautifully appointed apartment in Larmenier Retirement Village in Vredehoek, Cape Town, it is hard to believe that this beautifully groomed elegant lady has such a harrowing tale to tell. Henia is a Holocaust survivor from Poland. Together with her mother, she survived incarceration in several concentration camps, and a death march, to finally make it to Palestine with Aliyah Bet in 1947. After five years she met her husband, Maurice Bryer from Bloemfontein, who was visiting his family in Haifa. Some months after they were married they left Israel to live in Bloemfontein. It was only supposed to be for a year, but 68 years later she is still in South Africa. The couple moved to Cape Town in 2012. Although Henia’s Holocaust experiences have been recorded in an hour-long BBC documentary and there is an interview with her at the Cape Town Holocaust Centre, because she lived away from the main centres of Jewry in Cape Town and Johannesburg, her story as a survivor is less known. It was not recorded in the collection, In Sacred Memory, edited by Gwynne Robins in 1995,1 and her unforgettable years in Israel before, during and after the 1948 War of Independence have never been told.
Henia attends a Yiddish class that I have been conducting at the Cape Jewish Seniors for the past three years. While she speaks a fluent Yiddish, her mother tongue is Polish. When she was little her parents brought ‘a rebbe to the house – a melamed’ to teach the children that language as they were not taught it at school. (There was a Yiddish school in Radom, but Henia did not attend it). However her grandparents spoke in Yiddish to the grandchildren. Henia’s mother later visited her regularly in Bloemfontein and as a result even her eldest son can speak and understand Yiddish! After Henia left Israel, it was the language in which she and her mother corresponded.
Henia tantalises the class with glimpses of her life in pre-war Poland, as well as of her experiences in Israel between 1947 and 1952. The aim of our interview was ostensibly not to discuss her Holocaust experiences as much as her life in Radom and most particularly her time in Israel. But it is impossible to tell her story without framing it in the context of the Holocaust.
Henia was born in Radom, a city 100 km southwest of Warsaw, on 10 December 1925. In those days, Radom was “quite a big city, not a shtetele. There were buses trains, taxis, and droshkes (horse drawn cabs).” The family lived in a six roomed apartment in a three storey block. They were very comfortable and lacked for nothing. They had a grand piano in the living room (“the first thing the ‘bloody Nazis’ took” Henia remarks).[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row] Elimelech and Miriam Fishman with their children, Yehuda Hirsh, Henia and Mila Henia’s Yiddish name is Hinde and her Hebrew name Ayala, but she was always known by the Polish name of Henia – even in Israel. Henia’s father was Elimelech Fishman. Her mother was Miriam but was called by the very Polish-sounding name of Maria Studnia. Henia was the second oldest of four siblings. Her older brother Yehuda Hirsh, two years her senior, was unable to walk because of a birth defect. Every year, his mother took him to Vienna, which before the war was the medical centre of Europe. He had ‘hundreds of operations’ and could eventually was able to walk with calipers and go to school. Henia’s had another brother, Avram, and a sister, Mila. Henia first went to a Polish Catholic school, a private institution with few Jewish children. She spent four years there. One day, her mother came to fetch her early, when the children were eating lunch: “In front of me was a beautiful roll with butter and ham and a glass of milk. I did not know what I was eating. My mother took one look and nearly fainted. And at the end of the year she took me out of the school. But I had no complaints about the school, I loved it”. Henia’s parents were not religious but everything was strictly kosher (because “that’s the way it was in those days”). Her father wore modern clothes and most of the workers at his shoe factory were Polish. He was a Kohen, and on Saturday and Sunday his factory was closed. He went to shul on yontef and the family celebrated the festivals. Of her grandparents, Henia says: I went back to Poland their house was still standing. My grandfather had a timber mill; he cut down trees for builders. And on the other side of his factory he built a distillery, a very sophisticated one. He always made wine for Pesach from apples, grapes, or berries. The children were not allowed in – not into the factory, nor the distillery. We could only look through the windows! My grandparents immigrated to Israel in 1938; four sons and a daughter had been there for many years, having arrived with the Second Aliyah when they were youngsters. My grandfather was very frum and also very clever. He knew many languages and would write letters for the peasants – in German when the Germans occupied Poland or in Russian during the Russian occupation – Poland was always under one or other occupation throughout the centuries. He was not a Hasid but a Mitnaged,2 but he believed that if you didn’t die in Israel, your neshome [soul] wandered all over the world before it arrived there. So he wanted to save himself the trip! I remember my grandmother saying that they were not going to eat anything on the way. So she baked and baked for months and took all the food with her. They had to get to Trieste to take the boat to Palestine. When we eventually arrived in Palestine, they were still alive. Back in Radom, Henia went to the Hebrew Gimnasye Hoveve Da’at [Lovers of Knowledge], a very good school where the language of instruction was Polish. She remained in the primary school for only two years before she was promoted. Because her brother had a tutor at home – there were then no kindergartens in Radom and children stayed home until they were six – Henia was able to listen in on her brother’s lessons and was advanced for her age. Thus she managed to finish four classes of the gimnasye before they created the ghetto. At school her subjects were Hebrew, German and Polish, Geography, History and Latin (her favourite subject). They also had Nature Studies and Music, and attended a concert once a week. To this day Henia is passionate about classical music: You had to learn those subjects, because in Poland you couldn’t choose subjects, you chose a school. Either a school of Humanities with many languages – geography, history and ancient history that came with Latin – or a technical school with mathematics and science. I didn’t go to school until matric because the war broke out but we learnt in the ghetto. All the professors were there and they gave us lessons. My father wouldn’t allow us to go into the street because it was dangerous so the teachers would organise small groups. Whichever teacher was available my father engaged. I will never forget how he came home with a Professor of Calligraphy from Krakau, and I learnt calligraphy. Then he came with a teacher of Accounting and I hated it. But we stayed home and that was how we occupied ourselves. We also gave lessons to the younger children, teaching them to read and to write Polish. Henia was nearly fourteen when the war started on 1 September 1939. According to the Yivo Encyclopedia of the Jews in Eastern Europe, With the Nazi occupation of 1939, Radom became the capital of one of the four districts of the General Gouvernement. With forced resettlements, the city’s Jewish population increased dramatically, reaching about 33000 in 1942. In April 1941, the Germans established two ghettos in the city – the ‘large ghetto’ in the city center and the ‘small’ ghetto in the Glinica neighbourhood. Despite extreme hardship and persecution, ghetto residents organized a well-developed network of self-help organizations and a civilian resistance movement that included clandestine schooling, a theatre and literary activities. The Germans liquidated the Glinica ghetto on 4 August 1942, the larger ghetto 12 days later. Most of Radom’s Jews were murdered at Treblinka. About 3000 remained in town as labourers; in the end they were housed in a camp in Szkolna Street, which from 1944 was linked to the Majdanek concentration camp. In the summer of 1944, most were sent to the Valhingen camp near Stuttgart, where the survivors were liberated.3 These historical facts tally with Henia’s memories. She says, “One day they had an akzion and transferred 20 000 Jews to Treblinka. We were transferred to the main ghetto and the second ghetto was totally liquidated. We couldn’t go out at night as there was a curfew.” Henia’s family were among the Jews who remained in Radom after the liquidation of the ‘large’ ghetto: “Initially the family was safe as my father had a shoe factory that the Germans needed for the war effort. However they confiscated the shoes and the leather, and he had to work for them.” Henia’s disabled brother was shot in the ghetto when they liquidated the hospital. Henia was supposed to go to the hospital the very same morning as she had a sore tooth that needed extracting. When they evacuated the patients from the hospital before murdering them, her brother took off his coat and gave it to his mother, saying, “Where I’m going I won’t need a coat.” Henia’s younger brother, Avram, who also survived, was separated from the rest of the family quite early on and sent to work in a munitions factory. They did not meet up with him until many years later. In 1943, Henia was sent from the ghetto to a forced labour camp, where she spent nearly a year while her parents and little sister remained in Radom. At the end of 1943 only 3000 people were left in the former ghetto. At the beginning of 1944, she and her family were sent from the camp on Szkolne Street on the last transport to Majdanek concentration camp. Of Majdanek, Henia recalls: It was a horrible place. There were Russians and Poles and all sorts of people. Fortunately it was 1944, and the Russians were coming, so we were only in Majdanek for six weeks. We worked there making baskets for the bombs. These were long cylinders, handmade baskets soaked in water.4 We had to make eight a day and heaven help you if you did not fill the quota. The younger women would help the older women to fill their quotas. I would make twelve cylinders. There was a very good relationship between the women, who helped each other a lot. In 1944, the family was transferred to the Plaszow concentration camp near Krakau. This was where Oscar Schindler’s factory was located (and where the movie Schindler’s Listwas filmed). In 1944 Plaszow was liquidated because the Russians were approaching. It was there that Henia’s father and young sister Mila were murdered. Despite having come back hale and hearty after serving in the Russian army for ten years, Elimelech Fishman was unable to come to terms with the Nazi’s treatment of the Jews (“He was bewildered and he couldn’t cope. He was beaten to death in Plaszow”). Mila, then twelve years old, was killed in a roundup of the children in the Plaszow camp. Oscar Schindler managed to save his workers’ children but the rest were murdered in a children’s akzion. In October 1944, Miriam and Henia were sent to Auschwitz. They arrived on the eve of Yom Kippur, and as they wanted to fast, they were punished by not receiving any food for two days. On the other hand, the woman in charge of Henia’s section took ‘a shine’ to her as she could not believe that she was Jewish and hence gave her extra food. She even took photographs of Henia and sent them to her family to show that not all Jews conformed to the image that was being conveyed by the Nazis. When Auschwitz was liquidated in January 1945, Henia went on the death march. Her mother remained behind as she was too weak to be sent with her. Fortunately the Germans did not have time to murder everybody before they left, so she survived and was liberated by the Russians on 27 January 1945. From Auschwitz they walked through the middle of the night to Breslau and from there through the forests to Bergen Belsen. “That camp was the worst of the lot,” says Henia, “There was typhus there and no food, medication – there was nothing. We washed ourselves with snow.” In 1945 Bergen Belsen, located near Hamburg, Germany, was liberated by the British. Says Henia: “The British came and looked and then drove away, not to return for two days. They weren’t very kind; they were still fighting a war.” Henia was very sick at the time. She had typhus and had only snow for medication. Her best friend had just died. After the liberation, she remembers that thousands of people died because they were given the wrong food. When Henia had recovered from typhus she still had third degree abrasions on her feet, the result of walking barefoot in the snow. A Hungarian woman stole her shoes (“There were many Hungarians Jews with us. We called them tsigayners – gypsies”). She didn’t remain at Bergen Belsen very long as the Jews from Radom, most of who had been sent to the Valhingen camp, had gathered in nearby Stuttgart. A friend came to fetch her and took her to Stuttgart, where she was eventually reunited with Miriam. Stuttgart was under American control. Henia remembers the Americans as being “totally different [to the British]. They were supported by UNNRA, the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, as well as by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, who sent a rabbi and established a kitchen. They looked after us very well. They requisitioned a street where we lived in apartment blocks.” Miriam had gone back to Radom, where she stayed until she was able to travel. While in Radom, she went to the local magistrate and got copies of the papers for a large property that the family owned, and which was registered in her name. The papers were found in her flat in Haifa after her death fifty years later, by which time Poland had freed itself from Soviet domination. From Stuttgart, Miriam and Henia went to Paris, where the late Elimelech Fishman’s younger brother lived with his wife and three children. The family had survived the Nazi occupation and Vichy period by placing their children in convents. They were all blond and blue eyed and nobody suspected them of being Jewish. When Henia’s uncle learned that his sister-in-law and niece were in Stuttgart, he sent a car with two Polish officers to fetch them. To avoid the risk of being detained, they dressed up in Polish uniforms and crossed over quite easily. Henia and her mother remained in Paris from the end of 1945 until mid-1947. They lived in an apartment not far from the Jewish Quarter (known as “the Pletzel”). A morning job was found for Henia while her mother helped her sister-in-law around the house. After finishing work around 3 p.m., Henia would go directly to the Alliance Francaise, where she learnt French language and culture. She visited every museum in the city and acquired “an encyclopaedic knowledge of the Paris Metro”. Although only 8% of DPs chose to immigrate to Palestine, there was never any doubt in the minds of Miriam and Henia that this was their final destination. The family was very Zionistic. Miriam’s four brothers and a sister were already living there, together with her parents. Henia had attended a Zionist youth movement in Radom, called Akiba. It was a general Zionist youth group, neither religious nor socialist. While in Paris they tried to get papers to go to Palestine, but it was impossible as there were such strict quotas. Finally Moshe Fishman, one of Miriam’s brothers in Haifa managed to organise papers for them via the Mossad l’Aliya Bet, the organisation for the illegal immigration of Jews initiated after the issuing of the British White Paper in 1939.5 They left from Marseilles where the DPs were accommodated in a huge transit camp supported by the Zionist Organisation while they waited for a ship to take them to Palestine. Henia recalls how all the young people were roped in to help to pack food and supplies into the legendary illegal immigration ship, the Exodus, that sailed to Palestine on 11 July 1947 only to be attacked and turned back.6 Henia and her mother were still there six weeks later when the ill-fated passengers returned. Finally they travelled on a Greek liner with a cabin to themselves and were able to dock safely in Haifa. When they arrived in Palestine, her younger brother, Avram, was already in Israel. After being liberated in 1945, he had been taken there by the Youth Aliya and sent to Kibbutz Hulata in the Hula Valley. There, they were planting eucalyptus trees to drain the swamps. When they arrived he came to live with them. Three of Henia’s mother’s brothers were living in Haifa. A fourth lived in Tel-Aviv. One brother in Haifa took her and Henia to live in his home at 5 Rehov Rambam, a wooden hut on top of the mountain in the Hadar. They shared a downstairs room, which could just fit in three beds and a cupboard. Her uncle lived on top together with his daughter. The toilet was in the veld and the shower in the garden. There was cold water only. The kitchen was not much more than a square metre, with a primus stove and a kettle. They stayed there for about a year. Henia’s identity card, issued by the British Mandatory authorities The young Henia Fishman, shortly after her arrival in Israel Henia did not have to learn Hebrew, as she had learned it at school in Poland. She thus went straight to night school. However she had to find a job as well. Her uncle Moshe managed to find her a position with the English firm Spinneys, a general supply store that he worked for. As she was unable to speak English, she was given a job in the library. Henia worked at Spinneys until the declaration of the State of Israel, when the firm moved out of Israel and she was drafted into the army. To illustrate the atmosphere between Jews and the Mandatory authorities, Henia remembers how a relationship between a young attractive German Jewess who worked on the front desk and a British man (who would take her to the English Club after work) was strongly frowned upon. She also remembers the “terrible day” when Dov Bela Gruner was hanged. Born in Hungary in 1912, Gruner was a member of the pre-State underground militia, the Irgun. He was executed on 19 April 1947 on account of “firing on policemen and setting explosive charges with the intent of killing personnel on His Majesty’s service.”7 Henia is euphoric when describing the rejoicing and the celebration in the streets on the evening that the State of Israel was declared. While they were casting the votes, cafes on Rehov Herzl were handing out free drinks “It was medicine after the camps,” said Henia. “I didn’t mind the hut, the lack of amenities, we were free citizens.” When the Arabs began shooting the following day, Henia immediately received her call up papers. But, she says, “There was no army! I don’t know how we won that war!” The newly established State tried to get arms. Parts of planes were brought from Europe and assembled in Israel. The army had to acquire uniforms as there was no time to manufacture them. They were donated from a variety of countries and arrived together with the arms and ammunition. The first batch came from Czechoslovakia. Henia’s uniform was from Canada. Although it was somewhat darker than the other uniforms, it fitted her “like a glove.” Unfortunately the army could not provide her with shoes so that she had to wear her own sandals. On returning home one wet weekend, her feet soaked, her family collected money between them so that she could buy herself some shoes. Henia’s call-up papers, dated 11 May 1948 With the fighting commenced the Arab exodus. Henia fervently maintains that the Arabs were not forced to leave: If anybody tells you that we threw the Arabs out I can swear that it is not true. There were loudspeakers on each side of the road. On the one side the Arabs broadcast, “Join your brothers and we will throw the Jews into the sea.” And on the other side of the road the Israelis broadcast, “Stay where you are and nothing will happen to you.” But the Arabs were scared and they chose to follow their brothers. Those who stayed had a very good life. The Druze stayed on top of the Carmel in Haifa. In uniform during the Israeli War of Independence Henia’s war service medal Henia’s younger brother served in a very dangerous capacity. He had to travel on a motor cycle into Arab villages to check if there were any snipers left there. As he was the only surviving son, the family had him moved to a safer post. He became a specialist in repairing arms and ammunition.The women were auxiliary forces and did not go the front. Henia’s camp, known as Stella Maris, was situated on the top of Mount Carmel alongside the Stella Maris Monastery. From that vantage point, she says, they could see the wreck of the Altalena, the ship carrying arms and ammunition for the Irgun. The ship was attacked off the coast of Kfar Vitkin on 20 June 1948 by the newly created Israel Defence Forces under orders from David Ben Gurion. Sixteen veteran fighters were killed.8 The women performed a variety of duties. Alongside their camp was the Air force base, but as there were no aeroplanes, Henia says they filled Molotov bottles [cocktails]. At one stage they were sent to look out for foreign planes. On occasion even the women were required to do guard duty. For this they were given two weeks of training in the use of weapons in Sarafand, an evacuated Arab village near Ramle. The women were given Sten guns and grenades of which they were completely ignorant (“The trainer was a Hungarian woman who barely knew Hebrew. What was more she trained us with live ammunition and could have killed us! It was like the tower of Babel …. primitive. It was not an army”). Henia served with Menachem Meyerson, son of future Prime Minister, Golda Meir (who used to visit him). He played the cello and she remembers a recital that he and three others gave. After the war, he went to the United States to continue his musical studies. Henia continually stresses the lack of formality in a rag-tag army that was all but formed overnight. The practice of saluting senior officers barely existed, for example (an officer was likely to be someone’s grandson or cousin). They were more like one big family than an army. Next, Henia was transferred to the Haifa office of the Military Canteen Shekem, the army supplies headquarters situated outside the city at Khayat Beach. She did the accounts and issued the ration supplies for every unit. “On the one side were the huge store rooms and on the other was the building that housed the offices”, she recalls, “It opened at seven in the morning and I had to take two buses to get there. We were not allowed to speak about what we were doing, as we knew the location and size of every unit. It was a wonderful job and I met wonderful people.” After two years in the army, she was asked to stay on to work as a civilian: “If there was a boat in the harbour they would ask the staff of Shekem to come for supper. I couldn’t pass Rechov Herzl without somebody shouting “Henia do you want a lift?” Everybody knew me! Those were heady days.” Right next to Shekem was a m a’a b a r a h, one of the transitional camps introduced in 1950 to provide temporary shelter for the thousands of new immigrants. They consisted of tents but were well equipped. Immigrants were provided with work and made responsible for looking after themselves.9 The workers at Shekem were asked to help out in the m a’a b a r a h after work. Says Henia: “At the time the immigrants were from Muslim countries. They were Arabic speaking and very dark skinned. They had lived under terrible conditions in their countries of origin and were unfamiliar with modern conveniences. They had never seen an electric light bulb before and were not used to the food. Most were sick – they suffered from trachoma and tuberculosis. WIZO sent mobile ambulances to examine them. They gave them mattresses made of straw to sleep on, and they climbed inside the mattresses!” It was through these mobile clinics that Henia was able to change the life of a former school friend of hers from Poland. She had arrived in Israel before her, and was employed in a workers’ kitchen doing manual labour. Henia knew that the mobile clinics were short of trained radiographers and were offering free training to potential candidates. She put her friend’s name down, and in this way changed her life. She ended up working in one of the big hospitals. Henia relates a special role that her mother played in the rebirth of the State of Israel. As soon as independence was declared, the first Jewish police station was opened in the harbour area in Haifa, and Miriam Fishman ran its first canteen: “She couldn’t speak Hebrew very well but spoke Yiddish – they all spoke Yiddish and they loved her. She made cakes for them and got a Rumanian helper to do the cleaning. It was a simple canteen, coffee and tea and sandwiches. She worked there until she retired.” After the war, Henia’s brother left Kibbutz Hulata and studied architecture, going on to become a very successful architect. As there was no money left for her to study, Henia had to make do with night school. Since both she and her mother were working, they were able to move to their own apartment. Henia waxes euphoric when reminiscing about the first years of the State: In the first year there was not a big celebration for Yom Ha-Atzma’ut because we were still mourning all those who had lost their lives during the war. But marching in uniform in the second Independence Day parade in Haifa was the proudest day of my life. We never missed a concert of the Israel Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta. We heard the greatest artists: Yehudi Menuhin, Isaac Stern, Pinchas Zukerman, Jascha Heifitz – he was the best. At one time Menuhin was boycotted because directly after the war he gave a concert in Germany in aid of German orphans. The Israelis considered it to be a slap in the face. On two occasions when he came to Israel, the orchestra refused to play with him, so he was accompanied by his sister Hephzibah, who was a pianist. Then he wrote an article in the paper and apologised and the orchestra agreed to play with him again. Besides violinists there were pianists, opera singers, Spanish dancers. We never missed a performance of the Habimah Theatre with Chana Rubiner, Yaffa Yarkoni, Shoshana Damari. I was happy in Israel. It was alive, it was wonderful. Over the weekends we would go on day outings to Tiberius or Rosh Hanikra. The men would requisition a jeep from the army. On Saturday night there were nightclubs on Mount Carmel, and we went dancing. There were no supermarkets, but there were makolet (general stores). There was rationing. It was known as “Dov Yosefs tsaytn” (Dov Yosef’s times), Dov Yosef being the government minister in charge of rationing and food distribution during the period, known as the Tzena, that lasted for about six years).10 There was no meat at all, only chicken for the children. But they had fresh fruit and vegetables, fish, wonderful herrings, and milk products from Tnuva. Nobody was hungry. We didn’t see meat for six years. My cousin, who had a farm in Merchavyah near Afula, would send us a chicken from time to time. On the radio they used to broadcast vegetarian recipes. Eggplant was very popular as it was very versatile to make dishes such as mock chopped liver. Because I worked for Shekem I could get extra supplies. There was a biscuit factory and a chocolate factory and I was the supplier of chocolate for all the children in the family! There were also tough times especially in Haifa where there was a large Arab population. When the British left, all the government offices and police stations were left to the Arabs not to the Jews. But there was such freedom, such a wonderful atmosphere. It didn’t matter if you lived in a hut or in a villa – nobody minded. Henia met future husband Maurice Bryer in Haifa in 1952. Together with his brother, he was on a camping holiday in Europe and had come to Haifa to visit his cousins. Henia happened to visit the Bryers whilst he was there and, as she puts it, “that was that”. When it came to making her wedding dress, there was a shortage of white silk, so she got married in blue. The wedding was held in a cafe in the Hadar. Henia was fortunate that she worked for Shekem and so was able to obtain sufficient rations to cater for it. Even so, it was not an elaborate affair. The couple stayed in Israel for a few months after they were married. Maurice knew Hebrew, having studied at the Talmud Torah (Hebrew afternoon school) in Bloemfontein from Standard Two to matric with the well-known South African Hebrew teacher, Mr J. Blesovsky. He worked in Haifa for an oil company for a few months but felt that he was not sufficiently pro0ficient in Hebrew for business and wanted to return to his family in Bloemfontein. In 1952 Henia arrived in South Africa. She was heartbroken to leave her mother, brother and large extended family and found it hard to adapt to life in Bloemfontein. Maurice went into business with his father, while Henia became a Hebrew teacher at the same Talmud Torah where Maurice had studied. By that time, Mr Blesovsky had left to bcome principal of the Talmud Torah in Sea Point, Cape Town. She did not train at the Hebrew Teaching Seminary in Johannesburg, but studied by correspondence. Rabbi Klewansky and Rabbi Dr Gerald Mazabow alternately came to Bloemfontein to give her private tuition. She qualified and was admitted to the Hebrew and Yiddish Teachers Association. In those years there were 160 children at the Bloemfontein Talmud Torah and four full-time teachers. There were four classes and students attended for an hour in the afternoon from Monday to Friday. Although there were four levels, most pupils left after bar or batmitzvah, very few continuing to matric. Classes were supervised by the Inspector of Hebrew, who came out from Johannesburg every three to six months. The syllabus comprised Modern Hebrew, Tanach(Bible) and the Festivals. As time went by, the number of pupils decreased, until Henia was the only teacher left. She finally stopped teaching about fifteen years ago, when she her eyesight deteriorated due to macular degeneration. In 2012, she and Maurice moved to Cape Town, where both of their sons and their families were living. Maurice passed away three years ago, just short of his 90th birthday. Interviewing Henia was an inspiration and a privilege. Although I came away somewhat shaken by her memories of the Holocaust, I was totally enchanted by her experiences with the Aliyah Bet and her six years in Israel. The events that she witnessed and in which she participated are the stuff of legend. They embody the very essence of the modern-day Jewish experience and the miracle of the survival of the Jewish people. Dr Veronica Belling is the author of Bibliography of South African Jewry (1997), Yiddish Theatre in South Africa (2008), and the translator of Leibl Feldman’s The Jews of Johannesburg (2007) and Yakov Azriel Davidson: His Writings in the Yiddish Newspaper, Der Afrikaner, 1911-1913 (2009). 
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