Rena's Promise (50 page)

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Authors: Rena Kornreich Gelissen,Heather Dune Macadam

Tags: #Biography & Autobiography, #Historical, #test

BOOK: Rena's Promise
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Epilogue
On the "American side of Germany," Dina, Rena, and Danka were taken to the city of Ludwigslust by an American major. He was so moved by their ordeal that he took them to a mansion in the occupied town and ordered the housekeeper to treat the girls like royalty, give them the best rooms, and serve them breakfast in bed. This respite was like a dream, but the real world was not far away; after a few days they were moved to a refugee camp and then to Holland. In Holland, they were put in a hospital and almost sent back to Germany because they had no papers. Rena went to the major in charge and begged him, on her knees, not to send them back to Germany. He took special consideration for their case and sent them to the Dutch Red Cross, hoping they could find a place for the girls. (On the morning they were moved, Dina was separated from the rest of the group.)
John Gelissen, commander of Red Cross Relief Team No. 10, gave Rena and her sister jobs helping Dutch citizens get home after being released from forced labor camps in Germany. The girls were given a room with cots to sleep on and three meals a day. Taking them under his wing, John acted as friend, psychologist, and caretaker, gradually coaxing them back from their ordeal. He treated them like womennot prisoners, not victims, but real women.
"We hoarded bread under our cots until it got moldy," Rena re-

 

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members, "and John had to take me aside and say, 'You will never lack for bread again.' Slowly, we began to believe him."
They worked at the Red Cross for several months before joining a Jewish youth group that hoped to emigrate to Israel. Rena and Danka decided to stay in Holland, though, because they had fallen in love with DutchmenRena with the Red Cross commander. On July 29, 1947, two years after the war, Rena Kornreich married John Gelissen.
Rena and John emigrated to the United States in 1954. They have four children, Sylvia, Joseph, Peter, and Robert, and three grandchildren, Shaun, Julia, and Zachary John. They have retired in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, which remind Rena of the Carpathian Mountains in Poland.
"I found a good husband and have a good life . . . but I will never forget. Every year on May second John gives me white and red carnations, to celebrate the anniversary of our liberation.
This day is more important than your birthday
, he writes,
because without this day there would be no birthdays to celebrate. Love, John
."
Danka married Elie Brandel in 1948, and emigrated to the United States in 1951. They have two children, Norman and Sara, and five grandchildrenAndrew, Eric, Jamie, Jenna, and Adam. Gertrude (Rena's oldest sister) emigrated to the United States in 1921. She married David Shane and had one son, Irvin. All of the family photographs from before the war come from Gertrude, who died in New York in 1994 at the age of eighty-eight. Rena has no idea what fate befell Zosia and her children, Herschel and Ester Stuhr. Despite efforts to locate the children in hopes they had been hidden in a Christian orphanage, Rena was never able to find her niece or nephew. Any information about their fates would be appreciated. It is believed that Nathan Stuhr, Zosia's husband, was lost in Siberia.
The fate of Sara and Chaim Kornreich is unknown. Rena believes that they were among the one and a half million Jews exterminated

 

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in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. According to Alex (Joseph's son), the Jews forced to leave Tylicz for FlorynkaJoseph, his family, and the Kornreichswere transferred to Grybow

*, Poland. Alex escaped from Grybow, and fled to Slovakia where he worked in the resistance. While working for the underground he heard reports that the Jews in Grybow were forced into the Nowy Sacz ghetto or put into vans and gassed. Alex survived the war; he has one son and two daughters and lives in New York City.

Dina was separated from Danka and Rena in a military compound in Holland; she emigrated to France, is married, and has one son. Erna and Fela Drenger survived Auschwitz and emigrated to Israel. There were twenty-five Jewish families who lived in Tylicz before the war; none lives there now.
Frania Kieblesz, one of Rena's best friends, still lives in Tylicz. She has nine children. What happened to Tolek, from Muszynka, Poland, is unknown. After saving Rena and her father, according to the rumor in Tylicz at the time, Officer Hans Joskch was transferred to the Russian front.
Because of the coat she found in ''Canada," Rena believes that Jacob and Regina Schützer were exterminated in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Rena does not know whether their daughter, Cili Schützer, escaped from Slovakia and survived the Holocaust. The family Rena was staying with when she turned herself in, the Silbers, were able to escape from Slovakia and emigrated to America.
What became of the kapos Emma and Erika is unknown.
Of the men prisoners who helped Rena and Danka little is known: Heniek and Bolek, Stasiu (Artista), and Tadziu (Wisniewski, the water pump operator) were Polish citizens. While Rena does not know if they survived or if they are still alive, she would like to thank them, wherever they are, for helping save her life and her sister's. Marek Sterenberg did survive the death march; he never made it to America, though. He stayed in Poland and became a guard over Nazi prisoners, the very men who had tortured and bru-

 

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talized him. In retaliation he took vengeance on his former captors. Marek was overpowered and disarmed by one of the SS prisoners, and shot to death.
After the death march, Janka was separated from Rena and Danka in Ravensbrück. She survived the war and is married and lives in Germany. Rena does not know what happened to Mania and Lentzi, who were also separated from Rena and Danka in Ravensbrück. It is not known what happened to Aranka.
Andrzej Garbera saved many lives, including Rena's; he died a war hero at the age of twenty-three. In 1990, Rena returned to Poland for the first time since the war and was finally able to place flowers on his grave.
Of the SS Rena came into contact with, especially the lesser-ranking SS, little is known. The following information has been compiled for the reader's information from various sources, including two survivors' personal accounts.
"It is estimated that [Carl Clauberg] conducted sterilization experiments on about 700 women. In 1948 he was tried in the Soviet Union and sentenced to 25 years in prison. Freed in an amnesty in 1955, he returned to Kiel in the German Federal Republic, boasting of his 'scientific achievements.' Only after the Central Council of Jews denounced him was he arrested, in November 1955; he died in August 1957, shortly before his trial was to begin" (Czech, 810). Josef Mengele was "accused of selections, fatal injections (phenol), shootings, beatings, and other forms of deliberate killing" and the suspicion was raised that ''he threw newborn infants directly into the crematoriums and into open fires . . . For over twenty years Mengele was able to evade all extradition attempts; he died in a swimming accident in Brazil in 1979" (Czech, 819).
"Heinrich Himmler . . . used terror and force against the opponents of the Third Reich and transformed his fanatical race ideology into concrete politics and organizationlike the system of the concentration camps . . . At the end of the war, Himmler tried to es-

 

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cape capture disguised as an army private; after his discovery and arrest, he committed suicide on May 23, 1945 . . . Rudolf Höss (SS Lieutenant Colonel) . . . was named Commandant of Auschwitz in 1940. Characterized as an assiduous, petit bourgeois executive, he organized mass murder with technical and administrative meticulousness. Arrested in 1946, he testified at the Nuremberg Trial . . . and was extradited to Poland in May of that year. In April 1947 he was sentenced to be hanged and was executed on the grounds of the camp [Auschwitz]" (Czech, 814).
"Among the SS supervisors, Mandel, Taube, Drexler, and Hasse distinguished themselves in their savage treatment of women prisoners" (Strezelecka, 396). Margot Drexler finished the war in Bergen-Belsen. There is a survivor's account that on the day of liberation female prisoners dragged her into the latrine and held her head under the sewage; this account does not confirm whether she died or not, or if she was ever put on trial for war crimes. Irma Grese was put on trial at the Bergen-Belsen war crimes trials and was sentenced to death by hanging for torturing and assaulting prisoners (source: Gutman, 1499). Maria Mandel was put on trial for war crimes and sentenced to death by a Polish court. She was executed in December 1947 (source: Rittner and Roth, 29). It is unknown whether her sister, Elisabeth Hasse, was ever held accountable for her actions, or what happened to Maria Mullenders.
Of Reporting Officer Anton Taube and his cohort Stibitz, it is unknown whether or not either of these SS men was ever held accountable for their "calisthenics" and other murderous actions in Auschwitz.

 

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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the following people for their belief in us and their support: John, for his calm assurance throughout this project, making sure we took lunch breaks, providing Dutch jokes, and for being the wonderful husband he is; Danka, for surviving and letting us share her part in her sister's story; Karen, for her unconditional love and belief in usfor being a maid when she could have been working on her own art and for encouraging Heather to take this project on; Corrine Johnson, for introducing us; Dr. Annette Allen, for the hours she spent discussing the initial drafts, her insight and help in refining the accepted manuscript, and the beautiful poem she wrote for this book; speed-reader extraordinaire Joanne Pankow, for proofing the manuscript twice in thirty-six hours before it went to our agent, Sarah Jane; Sarah Jane Freymann, for having the courage to believe in a first-time author, representing us, and bringing this story to our publisher; Beacon Press, for publishing this story; our editor, Deb Chasman, for accepting this book in the first place, for seeing its potential and bringing that potential to the surfaceit is her talent, empathy, love, and patience that brought this book to fruition; Chris Kochansky, our copy editor; Penny Niven and Gerald Jackson, for answering all those panicky phone calls and explaining the business of writing biography, editing, and getting published.
We would also like to thank Rena's children, Sylvia, Joseph, Peter, and Robert, for their enthusiasm; Carol Engel, Rena's confidant and dearest friend, who heard her story long ago and told her it should be a book; Elaine Grenata, for helping Rena cope with her memories;

 

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Sara Cuneo, for asking Rena to tell her story twenty years ago and encouraging her to let the world know; Heather's mother and her brother, Loch, who read all three of the first versions and helped put the project in perspective; Vincent Bridges, for introducing Heather to Corrine and telling Heather to write; Tamara and the Telberg family, for the attic and everything else; Olivia Vlahos, who was the first person to invite Rena to speak to her students back when no one wanted to listen; Patricia Raskin, for putting us on TV for the first time; Liz Bergstone, for the Mac; the gang at Franklin's Printing, for all those copies! We would also like to thank Dean Patterson, Dr. Clauss, and all of the teachers, office staff, and students at Salem College who welcomed us into their community and gave this story its first public reception.

 

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