Rachel Hanan, a Holocaust survivor - her inspiring life story • Holocaust Remembrance Day and Heroism in Haifa

A beacon for the revival and building of the Land of Israel • The amazing personal story of Rachel Hanan, the mother of Yaron Hanan, a member of the city council (former) - Haifa's greens. Rachel, who survived the Holocaust, immigrated to the Land of Israel, served in the Palmach, raised a glorious family here and instills her inspiring legacy for future generations, when she accompanies delegations and meets with thousands of Israelis.

Beacon for personal victory

I live in community and family

I was born on May 15, 1929 in the small village of Višu de Jos in northern Transylvania (Marmures region in northern Romania which then belonged to Hungary).

I am the fifth child in the Kahana family, my parents had eight children: the eldest Haya, who was married with a toddler and Meir - who were father's children from his first wife, who unfortunately died during the birth of Meir, and we are: the eldest Sarah (born 1926), Rivka [Rico] (1927) , I am Rachel (1929), Esther (1931), and my two younger brothers Zvi (Hirshamlech) (1934), and Yehudhala (1936) who were born to my father's second wife Ethel of the Kalush family.

I grew up in a house of values, the human values ​​were clear and rooted in all of us. There was no coercion and we were surrounded by love and exceptional parental care. My father was a religious, wise and highly respected person. He was in an unofficial leadership position, a kind of "community arbitrator and mediator" and a person many came to consult with and get good advice. He never forced religion on us and used to say: "I trust my daughters - I trust them" - and that was enough. I always knew that I was trusted and that I too had someone to trust. My mother was very talented and knew how to do everything: she arranged, sewed, cooked, baked, gave advice, grew vegetables in the vegetable garden, milked the cow in the yard and also used to listen to classical music and read literature and poetry.

Our extended families were very large. We were a tribe of about 200 people: uncles and cousins ​​and their descendants - because back then it was customary to bring many children into the world - and I didn't know all of them - except for a few brothers of mother and father and their children. Even if we talk about mother and father all the time, we don't forget everything else - and sadly, almost no one from the extended family was left alive after the Holocaust.

I remember that I had a beautiful childhood - I knew how to enjoy landscapes, springs, water streams, the land and the many plants around - I grew vegetables in the small flower bed - and that was my little piece of God.

I remember the holidays - we sat around a beautifully arranged table: candles and flowers, and there were always guests - father sat at the head of the table and everyone paid his respects. We were dressed in new clothes that mother had sewn.

My parents have contributed to the community all these years and always modestly - not with great fanfare - from them I learned that doing and giving for others should be without conditions and without expecting anything in return. I also don't usually blame - because I have never heard in my house that someone else is to blame for failures or troubles.

The Holocaust period - 1944-1945, and how 4 sisters miraculously survived in the death camps

The day after Passover, in April 1944, we received a deportation order from the Hungarian government in our region. We had to take one suitcase each. Early in the morning they gathered us - the whole village - in the synagogue. They took us on foot to the ghetto in the neighboring village. My mother and the little children were loaded onto a cart drawn by oxen and together we went quietly to the neighboring town of Vishou de Sus, not knowing why and where we were being taken, I was 15 at the time. There we stayed for a month in the homes of Jewish families who lived there.

One fine day they took us outside with shouts and threats and led us to the train station and loaded us with pushing, beating and threats on cattle cars - 100 people were crammed into each car. My sister says we were in the trailer for "only" 4 days and 4 nights, but to me it seems like an eternity.

This trip was a nightmare and I remember it as a severe trauma. To this day it is hard for me to hear the rattle of trains.

Most of the time we stood, we had a little bread that my parents hid in our clothes, but most of the time we were very thirsty and from time to time my father threw money out of the narrow window at the stops and sometimes they threw water at us and everyone stood there to drink a few drops that dripped from the narrow window into the carriage. My father organized in a hidden corner trailer where there was a bucket for defecating. At each station we emptied it.

We entered the gates of Birkenau on the night of May 15, 1944. It was my 15th birthday - indeed I received an unforgettable "birthday present" there...

The train stopped on the track. Early in the morning the car doors opened at once. With loud shouts they demanded that we leave. The prisoners looked "crazy" to me. They were dressed in striped shirts and helped us down. One of the prisoners asked me in Yiddish: "How old are you?" I answered, "I'm 15" and he whispered to me, "Don't say you're 15. If they ask, say you're 18"!

We found ourselves on the ramp in Birkenau, I managed to ask my mother who was walking with us and my two younger brothers walked beside her and held her hands: "Mom, this man told me to lie and say I'm 18 years old", at home we knew that no one lies, this is a big prohibition, but mother answered quietly and approached So that we all hear: "If they offer you to work, volunteer to work." I never understood where she was able to pick up this wise insight, but that was her last sentence. In a split second, Dr. Mangala's cane marked and carved destinies: the four sisters to the right, and mother with my older sister Haya with her toddler daughter and her two younger brothers were taken to the left. Father was already sent down from the train to the men's column and I didn't even have time to notice it - and that's it - I had time to see the The column of men passes in front of us, I suddenly caught father's look, he suddenly seemed to me stooped and 30 years old. It was a sad look - he looked so poor .. in pain... This hard look accompanies me to this day. Mother walked with the younger brothers She looked at us for a moment and that's how we parted ways. After becoming a mother myself in many days, the pain of this parting even increased because I imagined what went through my parents' head when their children were torn from them and 4 other teenage girls suddenly had to manage for the first time alone in this terrible place, without any adults beside them.

They took us from the ramp to a place that looked like a bathhouse, a column of girls with shaved heads, dressed in some kind of garment, a coarse and striped shirt passed in front of us and I didn't realize that in a few minutes we would also look like them. We got a haircut, a shave, we got this outfit and wooden shoes that were two sizes too big for me. From there we were taken to reception and living in the gypsy camp.

My sisters say there were twelve women to a bunk, I think "only" ten. There was only one blanket for all of them. Life in Birkenau was unbearably difficult. We were lucky to have this togetherness, of the four sisters, under the leadership of Sarah, the eldest among us who actually immediately took the place of the parent and she is only 18 years old and we owe her our lives.

One of the nights we heard screams of terror and cries of anguish from women. That night all the gypsy women were taken and they knew where...they never returned.

After a few days, they made a selection again, we undressed and again stood in front of Mangala. This time he chose only my two older sisters and me and my younger sister were sent to another side.

The further separation from my two older sisters immediately caused despair to grip me. I sat down with my frightened sister on the ground and wanted to die, the electric fence was close and I thought of doing what many prisoners did, running to the fence and killing myself. Their charred bodies were constantly in front of our eyes. While I was immersed in deep despair, I suddenly noticed out of the corner of my eye that a selection was being organized again, in a moment of resourcefulness, I immediately told Esther let's undress and sneak into the girls' column, that's how it was and this time Mangala chose us for life. When we joined our two older sisters we all cried and hugged, it's hard to describe how happy we were to be reunited in this hell.

At this stage we were selected for a work company and a number was tattooed on our arm: I had the number A-13561 engraved.

The other nurses received four consecutive numbers. We worked carrying heavy bricks from Birkenau to Auschwitz and back, a distance of about 3 km. I don't remember any difficulties except pain in my feet from the shoes and a terrible toothache that attacked me in the camp for several weeks. On one occasion, when I returned to the barracks without permission, and I don't know why, I was caught by the capo and then I received murderous beatings from her. My face was swollen from the beatings and my sisters didn't know me but they did everything they could to take care of me. And on the XNUMXth I am not angry with this capo. She was a Polish Jew who was there two or three years before us and you can understand how it brings a person to numbness. On the XNUMXth she fought all the time not to admit to any illness (she knew what happens to the sick) and thus saved many of the female prisoners .

Bergen-Belsen concentration camp

A few months later, the four of us were transferred from there to the famous Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where we received slightly better meals. We also had a water tap where we could wash our bodies for the first time in months, we even got beds covered with straw. On the other hand, I witnessed a shocking scene there when an SS officer murdered without batting an eyelid with his gun one of the best friends that the four of us adopted back in Birkenau, because according to him she and four other friends of hers "corrupted the property of the Reich" and why? Because she and 4 other girls innocently cut a tattered towel they received into 5 pieces and that was all their "crime". They were all immediately shot to death in front of our horrified eyes. From Belsen we were transferred to the Duderstadt camp in Germany where we worked in an ammunition factory. My job was to act as a "human rake" and remove the ammo pods from the hot oven with my bare hands. To this day I don't feel any pain when I touch a very hot iron. After a while, when the fighting got closer to our area, a terrible journey began, mostly on foot, which is known as the "Death March" and partly we traveled in a frightening way in trains that were bombed by Allied planes. A large part of the prisoners did not survive the journey. During this journey we suffered from terrible hunger and all of us, including the guards We ate everything that came by, even leaves from the trees we saw along the way. Finally we were brought to the Theresienstadt camp in the Czech Republic. This was the last stop in that hell. We arrived at the camp with a body covered in fleas, covered in abscesses with hard pus all over our bodies and suffering from severe hunger. Many of those who survived until then died There from infectious diseases that ran rampant in the camp. We were exhausted and calculated our end. The camp commander informed us that he had sent a messenger to the Russian army with the following message: "If you do not come within two days to occupy the camp, we will kill all its inhabitants and leave." The day after the official end of the war Some Russian soldiers arrived and opened the gate. They entered and thus the camp was "conquered" and we were released.

One of the soldiers who came to the camp was a Czech Jew whom my sister Sara had known before. He told her what happened to the Jews in our district, in Hungary and the Czech Republic, and when we asked him if he knew what happened to our parents and our family that was torn from us in Birkenau, he told us for the first time that the Nazis murdered every Jew who was there and was not drafted and burned them in crematoria. Up until that moment we always had some hope in our hearts that maybe they were saved, we never asked what the chimney was that burned day and night in the camp and what was the terrible smell that came from it, maybe we didn't want to think about it. When we received the news that was so bitter to the face we were shocked and for the first time since we left home we realized the extent of the break and collapsed.

After the war - the qualification and service in the Palmach

The war is over. Four sisters miraculously survived, this is a very rare story and perhaps one of a kind, and that's why they also chose to make a documentary about it. We returned with the Czech soldier who accompanied us on the train home to Jesus. In the corner - in a house that was completely empty - we found some discarded family photos and we started to cry, on the walls of the gentile neighbors we saw that they had hung my mother's wonderful embroidered handiwork, none of them offered us to take these souvenirs. None of the Jews of our village returned, more than a community of over a thousand Jews in Jesus de Jos survived alone. We sat there and cried for the first time since the liberation, for three days without a break, because before that we didn't dare to cry at all. My elder brother Meir, who was taken from the ghetto for forced labor and from there was transferred to the terrible Buchenwald concentration camp and survived, he also arrived in the village and he took us from there to Budapest, two years later Esther and I immigrated to Israel illegally while Israel was still under the rule of the British Mandate. After that I came to the kibbutz Mizra with my sister and I served in the Palmach in the Negev battles, as a medic.

We four sisters survived the inferno. In the places to which the four of us rolled, between May 44 and May 45, a truly illogical miracle!

To our great mercy, in the Yom Kippur War, my younger sister Esther and her husband Mondak, who was also a Holocaust survivor, lost their eldest son Ben-Ami Tamir The deceased who was an armored officer of only 21 years old and fell on the first day of the war in the heroic battles of the armor near the Suez Canal. Unfortunately, here the miracles no longer happened to my sister and her husband.

When I ask myself if the effort to stay alive was worthwhile after this suffering, I say honestly:
"It would have been worthwhile for me to stay alive. When the boys were born I said to myself that maybe after all it would have been worthwhile to stay alive. I started a family for glory - not only for me - but for the people of Israel", but why did my resurrection have to come at the expense of all the other dear and innocent members of my family who were murdered there For not wronging them?

And yet, in my heart there is no hatred! Those who were there during the Holocaust learned firsthand what the terrible price of unrestrained hatred is. Hatred does not bring anything good and can lead people to the most barbaric and inhumane behavior that even the "advanced" German culture did not curb.

I try to pass this lesson on to future generations and to the thousands of youths, soldiers, commanders and adults to whom I had the privilege of telling my story.