A Girl with an  Apple

 
 August 1942. Piotrkow , Poland .  The sky  was gloomy that morning as we anxiously All the men, women  and children of Piotrkow's Jewish ghetto had been herded into a  square. Word had gotten around that we were being moved. My  father had only recently died from typhus, which had run  rampant  through the crowded ghetto. My greatest fear was that
our  family  would be separated.
 
 "Whatever  you do," Isidore, my eldest brother, whispered to me, "don't tell  them your age. Say you're sixteen." I was tall for a boy of 11, so I  could pull it off. That way I might be deemed valuable as a  worker. An SS  man approached me, boots clicking against the cobblestones. He looked me up  and down, then asked my age. "Sixteen," I said. He directed me to the left,  where my three  brothers and other healthy young men already  stood.
 
 My mother was motioned to the right with the   other women, children, sick and elderly people. I whispered to  Isidore, "Why?" He didn't answer. I ran to Mama's side and said I  wanted to stay with her. "No," she said sternly. "Get away. Don't  be a nuisance. Go with your brothers." She had
never spoken so  harshly before. But I understood: She was protecting me.  She loved me so much that, just this once, she pretended not to.  It was the  last I ever saw of  her.
 
My brothers and I were transported in a cattle car to Germany . We arrived at the Buchenwald concentration camp, one night weeks later and were led into a crowded barrack. The next day, we were issued uniforms and identification numbers.
 
"Don't call me Herman anymore." I said to  my brothers. "Call me 94983."
 
I was put to work in the camp's crematorium, loading the dead into a hand-cranked elevator. I, too, felt dead. Hardened, I had  become a number.   Soon, my brothers and I were sent to Schlieben,  one of Buchenwald 's  sub-camps near Berlin .
 
One morning I thought I heard my mother's  voice, "Son," she said softly but clearly, I am going to send you an angel." Then I woke up.  Just a dream. A beautiful dream. But in this place there could be no angels. There was only  work. And hunger. And fear. 
 
A couple of days later,  I was walking around the camp, around the barracks, near the  barbed-wire fence where the guards could not easily see.  I was  alone. On the other side of the fence, I
spotted someone: a  little girl with light, almost luminous curls.. She was half-hidden behind a birch tree.  I glanced around to make sure no one saw me. I called to her softly  in German.  "Do
you have something to eat?" She didn't understand. I inched closer to the fence and repeated question in Polish. She stepped forward. I was thin and gaunt, with rags wrapped around my feet, but the girl looked unafraid. In her eyes, I saw life. She pulled an apple from her woolen
jacket and threw it over the fence. I grabbed the  fruit and, as I started to run away, I heard her say faintly, "I'll see you tomorrow."
 
I returned to the same spot by the fence at the same time every day. She was always there with something for me to eat - a hunk of bread or, better yet, an apple. We didn't dare speak or linger. To be caught would mean death for us both. I didn't know anything about her,  just a kind farm girl, except that she understood Polish. What  was her name? Why was she risking her life for me? Hope was in  such short supply, and this girl on the other side of the fence gave me some, as nourishing in its way as the bread and apples.
 
Nearly seven months later, my brothers and I were crammed into a coal car and shipped  to Theresienstadt camp in Czechoslovakia . "Don't return," I told  the girl that day. "We're leaving." I turned toward the barracks  and didn't look back, didn't even say good-bye to the little girl whose name I'd never learned, the girl with the apples.

We were in Theresienstadt for three months  The war was winding down and Allied forces were closing in, yet  my fate seemed sealed. On May 10, 1945, I was scheduled to die in  the gas chamber at 10:00 AM.   In the quiet of dawn, I  tried to prepare myself. So many times death seemed ready to claim me, but somehow I'd survived. Now, it was over. I thought of my parents. At least, I thought, we will be reunited.
 
 But at 8 A.M. there was a commotion. I  heard shouts, and saw people running every which way through  camp. I caught up with my brothers. Russian troops had liberated  the camp! The gates swung open. Everyone was running, so I did  too.

Amazingly, all of my brothers had survived;  I'm not sure how. But I knew that the girl with the apples had  been the key to my survival.&nb sp; In a place where evil seemed triumphant, one person's goodness had saved my life, had given me hope in a place where there  was none. My mother had promised to send me an  angel, and the angel had come.

Eventually I made my  way to England where I was sponsored by a Jewish charity, put up in a hotel with other boys who had survived the Holocaust and trained in electronics. Then I came to
America , where my  brother Sam had already moved. I served in the U. S.  Army during the Korean War, and returned to New York City after two years. By August 1957 I'd opened my own electronics repair  shop. I was starting to settle in.
 
One day, my  friend Sid who I knew from England called me. "I've got a date.  She's got a Polish friend. Let's double date."  A  blind date? Nah, that wasn't for me. But Sid kept pestering me, and a few days later we headed up to the Bronx to pick up his  date and her friend Roma I had to admit, for a blind date this  wasn't so bad. Roma was a nurse at a Bronx hospital.  She was kind and smart. Beautiful, too, with swirling brown curls and green, almond-shaped eyes that sparkled with  life.
 
The four of us drove out to Coney Island .  Roma was easy to talk to, easy to be with. Turned out she was  wary of blind dates too! We were both just doing our friends a favor. We took a stroll on the boardwalk, enjoying the salty  Atlantic breeze, and then had dinner . I couldn't remember having a better  time.
 
We piled back into Sid's car, Roma and I sharing the backseat. As European Jews who had survived the war,  we were aware that much had been left unsaid between us. She broached the subject, "Where were you," she asked softly, "during  the war?"  "The camps," I said, the terrible
memories still vivid, the irreparable loss. I had tried to  forget. But you can never forget. She nodded. "My  family was hiding on a farm in Germany , not far from Berlin ," she told me. "My father knew a priest, and he got us  Aryan papers." I imagined how she must have suffered  too, fear, a constant companion.  And yet here we were, both  survivors, in a new world.

"There was a camp next  to the farm." Roma continued. "I saw a boy there and I would  throw him apples every day."
 
What an amazing  coincidence that she had helped some other boy. "What did he look  like? I asked. He was tall, skinny, and hungry. I must have seen him every day for six  months."  My heart was racing. I couldn't believe it. This couldn't be. "Did he tell you one day not to come back
because he was leaving Schlieben?"  Roma looked at  me in amazement. " Yes," That was me! " I was ready to burst with  joy and awe, flooded with emotions. I couldn't believe it!  My angel.
 
"I'm not letting you go." I  said to Roma. And in the back of the car on that blind date, I proposed to her.   I didn't want to wait.  "You're  crazy!" she said.  But she invited me to meet her parents for Shabbat dinner the following week. There was so much I looked  forward to learning about Roma, but the most important things I  always knew: her steadfastness, her goodness. For many months, in  the worst of circumstances, she had come to the fence and given me hope. Now that I'd found her again, I could never let her  go.
 
That day, she said yes. And I  kept my word. After nearly 50 years of marriage, two children and  three grandchildren I have never let her go.
 
Herman  Rosenblat, Miami Beach, Florida 
This  is a true story and you can find out more by Googling  Herman Rosenblat as he was Bar Mitzvahed at age 75.  This story is  being made into a movie called "The  Fence".
 
This e-mail is intended to reach 40 million  people world-wide!
 
Join us and be a link in the memorial chain and help us distribute it around the world.
 
 Please send this e-mail to 10 people you  know and ask them to continue the memorial chain.
 
 Please don't just delete it. It will only  take you a minute to pass this along -  Thanks