Betty is a good friend of mine who is now well into her nineties and someone I try and call most weeks before Shabbos. Betty is an amazing lady who is a great grandmother many times over and continues to live and enjoy each and every day of her life with positivity, joy and pride and love for her Jewish identity and traditions.
Betty is also a survivor of Auschwitz and a survivor of the Holocaust.
On a recent visit with my son Mendel, we spent some time chatting with Betty as she filled us in about her survival of the Holocaust and what life was like in prewar Europe for her and her family. My son was riveted and intrigued and indeed deeply moved by this firsthand experience of the best and worst of humanity, and what Jewish life was like for her and her family in prewar Romania.
Betty often told me the story of how she saw her parents and siblings sent to the Gas Chambers and how she saw her teenage brother through a fence at Auschwitz one day and tried to give him a piece of bread so that he would survive another day, and then she never saw him again.
While Betty saw the worst, her life is one that is infused with so much joy and happiness and a truly deep connection to her faith in G-d and Judaism and its traditions.
On this recent visit, Betty was telling us how she loved G-d even in the Concentration Camps and never lost hope even during the darkest moments. On another visit, Betty told us that she tried not to shove her way through a line when they were choosing workers for a Factory, which meant a pass to live for another few months. She didn’t believe it was right to push others out of line while saving her own life if this would mean that someone else’s life was now at greater risk.
In the end, Betty was taken as a slave laborer to a Factory. Even while there, she and her friends did their best to do sabotage when they had the opportunity, as they sought to do their part to undermine the Nazi War effort.
Every time, I talk with Betty or pay her a visit, I gain so much and am truly inspired and humbled, as I witness the joy and faith that guides her life and the unbelievable strength and conviction of her personality. It is this attitude that has helped her build a beautiful Jewish family that now includes multiple beautiful generations and enables her to be an inspiration to her dear family and to everyone who knows her.
On this 77th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, I am thinking about all of the survivors that I have met, who to me, represent the best of the best, and at the same time, remembering the millions who died in the flames of Auschwitz and so many other places who often have no one to remember them, but us.
At the same time, I am reminded, that it is the Betty’s of this world, who are the inspiration for what the best of humanity looks like, and a reminder that it is positivity and joy, along with faith and kindness, which are what will make be a truly beautiful world.