Holocaust Survivors' Love Story

Okay, so I'm a sucker for a great love story. So when I got the assignment to comment yet again on another Holocaust story, I sought out something that had some assemblance of a "happy ending". I am a true believer of God's written word which states that all things are used for His glory and, in this, I think He has shone.

I'll begin with, once upon a time there was a young boy named Herman Rosenblat in a concentration camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. A girl a bit younger than the boy was living free in the village. Her name was Roma Radziki. Her family were posing as Christians. She spotted him through the barbed-wire fence and thought him handsome. She tossed an apple over the fence, for which he gratefully ate. Day after day, for months she would return and toss over the apples. They never spoke a word to one another in all that time.

This young man's father's life was one of the many cut short by the tyrantical abuse thrust upon the Jewish people. But on his deathbed he told his son, "If you ever get out of this war don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody." Herman was only 12 years old.

One day Herman spoke to Roma. He told her he was being relocated and for her not to return again. So at that point, they thought their brief dalliance was at an end. They both went on to survive the war. Roma went to school to become a nurse in Israel, and Herman went to London and became an electrician.

Eventually Herman moved to New York. One day a friend fixed him up on a blind date. He was not very interested, but agreed to go. All went well, she was Polish and easy to talk to. Eventually their conversation turned to wartime experiences. When he spoke of the camps he was in, she in turn mentioned her time in Schlieben, hiding from the Germans at the same time as Herman. She spoke of the handsome boy she tossed apples to and how he was sent away. Herman's only response was, "That boy was me."

Herman proposed to Roma that night. She declined, thinking him crazy, and eventually said yes two months later. They were married at a synagogue and have loved one another ever since. Their story has inspired a children's book entitled "Angel Girl". There are plans to make it into a film called "The Flower of the Fence". Herman is planning to publish his memoirs next year.

Herman and Roma have been married 50 years. They often tell their story to Jewish and other groups. He believes his father's words led him in his life lessons. He says, "Not to hate and to love- that's what I am lecturing about. Not to hold a grudge and to tolerate everybody, to love people, to be tolerant of people, no matter who they are or what they are." He has forgiven the anger and atrocity.....now he has a life filled with love and his father's lesson to carry on.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081012/ap_on_re_us/holocaust_love_story_3

"Night" a novel by Elie Wiesel

I found reading Elie Wiesel's novel Night to be both sad and insightful. It's still so difficult for me to imagine how these atrocities could have occurred in a modern world. And yet, they did. It pains me to think of this teenaged boy, with his whole life ahead of him, having to endure things unimaginable. He describes his memories with such painstaking detail...the good and the bad. I would think the happy memories of childhood would be as painful to recall as the events occurring thereafter that left him without a family and with a fearful sense of surviving alone.

It is a difficult book to read, but I can't help but turn the page to get closer to finding out how he is able to survive. I am not one to ever enjoy reading about any type of suffering that someone, or many, have endured. But this book was an excellent depiction of the loss of youth and is worth the read. If only to arouse tender feelings towards another in his suffering.