The Girl in the Cellar

by Gerda Krebs Seifer

  Another guest who visited the Wilson High students was none other than the brave Miep Gies, who, along with her husband and two others, was instrumental in hiding Anne Frank’s family. I participated in those activities and enjoyed them as much as the students did. At that time the students were involved in writing their diaries. They were told to write whatever touched them deeply, both in school and in their lives. They struggled at times with their problems, families, friends, and life. It was hard for some of them to admit that people were mean to them. Many felt their problems were insurmountable and that giving up would be far easier than struggling. But they didn’t give up. In their senior year, they collectively won a coveted Anne Frank Award, traditionally awarded to a single person. Fifty of the students flew to New York to accept the award. Again, I was invited to fly along with the group.

  While we were in New York, Erin Gruwell talked to publishers regarding the diary. The students were interviewed on ABC TV. They attended the Broadway production of Anne Frank, starring Natalie Portman.

  Nearly all the students graduated from Wilson High School, and most of them enrolled in colleges. Some were the first in their families to hold a high school diploma. In the eyes of their families, they had achieved greatness. One of the Freedom Writers became a teacher herself, and I gave lectures in her class two years in a row.

  Erin turned around the lives of 150 students 360 degrees. It was truly a success story, and I was so glad to have been part of it. In Erin’s book are photographs of the time we held a basketball game at Long Beach State University to raise funds for Bosnia. There are photos of me, John Tu, and others. Several teams were named after Anne Frank, Zlata Filipovic, John Tu, and, I’m proud to say, myself. I still have the jersey with my name on it.

  Erin invited us to the film screening of Freedom Writers. The students, Erin, and the parents felt very proud to have been involved in the project. The movie was quite good, but Hollywood changed the story to enhance the drama. There was less actual violence at Wilson than portrayed in the film. Erin was well portrayed by Hilary Swank.

  * * *

  19 For many years I have lectured at different high schools about my wartime experiences.

  20 John Tu credits his success to the unique opportunity that America offers immigrants like himself to achieve their dreams. He said, “I can tell you that I feel the founding fathers of American had the right idea: immigration has made this rich culture, this great environment of what is often called the melting pot.”

  Bełżec Memorial

  The first time Harold and I visited Bełżec, it was a huge, empty and neglected field that had a broken wooden stand and a few bricks on the ground on which were written words of remembrance. I picked up some rusted barbed wire and leaves that had fallen from trees and took them home as the only memento of that dreadful place.

  For years, I couldn’t bring myself to talk or even think about how my Mamusia and Richard were rounded up. Was she petrified or was she calm, trying to pacify my eleven-year-old cousin? Was she hopeful that somehow she and Richard would survive? Did my mother hold Richard’s hand as they walked down that dreadful corridor, naked and freezing, prodded by vicious guards to the gas chamber? What were her final thoughts? Was she resigned to her fate? I’ll never know the answers to these questions. I never had a chance to say a proper goodbye, to kiss her or feel her embrace once more. And I can’t begin to imagine my father’s pain in parting with his wife and watching as the barbaric SS shouted at her and cousin Richard, marching them away for transport. Did he have a moment to say goodbye?

  In 2005, we again visited the Bełżec Memorial Site, which by then had become a true memorial to many thousands of victims, my mother and cousin among them. Maybe by visiting the memorial, I was able to see the place where their lives had come to an end, the awful place I still see in my dreams.

  We went to Bełżec in late afternoon. The place was eerie and desolate. The train tracks where Jews once got off the Nazi cattle cars were now engraved with Stars of David. The autumn wind rustled the leaves, and if you listened carefully, you could almost hear the cries of the 500,000 Jews and thousands of Gypsies who were put to death in the gas chambers, using carbon monoxide. In the distance was a huge field covered with dark crushed stones that serve as grave markers.

  A young guard told us that the memorial would be closing in fifteen minutes and that we should come back the next day. I told him I was a Holocaust survivor and that my mother had ended up in this camp, adding that I was unable to come the following day. The guard then called his boss and after a brief consultation, we were told we could go in and stay as long as we wanted and that we didn’t have to pay the entrance fees. Hebrew letters drip rust down a wall, saying, “Never forget.” We asked the guard why the letters were rusting only two years after the memorial had been installed. He answered that it had been done on purpose, to seem as if tears were running down the wall. We walked on a road called Crevasse that grew higher and narrower as we neared the top of the walk. Thousands upon thousands of first names are etched into granite walls on both sides. On one side is a quotation from the Book of Job 16:18: “Earth, do not cover my blood. Let there be no resting place for my outcry.”

  What I keep, though, is a vivid memory of that wonderful lady who was not only my mother but also the best friend I’ve ever had. Visiting the magnificent memorial again gave me a sense that there was a final resting place for her and all the victims of Bełżec.

  In 2001, Harold and I dedicated a beautiful outdoor memorial at the Long Beach Jewish Community Center in honor of my parents, Henryk and Edyta Krebs, who perished at the hands of the Nazis. Our daughter, Julia, wrote the following poem, incised in concrete:

  In an old wooden frame, the backing coming out,

  Stands a photograph.

  Old, yellowing, cracked with age, faded.

  A woman’s face can be clearly seen.

  A stranger to my eyes, yet I’ve always known her name.

  A smile like that of my own,

  Her gentle brown eyes

  Expressing the warmth I never felt.

  I see our two lives connecting as one.

  Grandmother, our lives may have been separated

  By more than a war,

  But through this old photograph you live again.

  The Hidden Child

  In June 2006, several unexpected things happened. I had submitted my Lwów article to Rachelle Goldstein, editor of The Hidden Child newsletter the year before. Rachelle had assured me that she’d publish it when the next letter came out. I had completely forgotten about it, until one day I received a fat brown envelope in the mail. Upon opening it, I found about a dozen copies of the newsletter containing my article entitled “Return to Lwów.”

  I was so pleased to see my article in print, even though it took almost three years after I had written it. A short time later, I received an email from Rachelle, asking if she could give my email address to a woman in San Francisco who had read my article. I said yes, and the next day the woman called. She was a dentist who was calling during office hours and sounded nervous because she was leaving for Poland in three days and had made no hotel reservations. She needed a name of a driver to Lwów. I gave her all the necessary information. During our short conversation, I learned that before coming to America, she had left Poland and gone to England. I asked her when that had been, and she replied that she’d traveled by ship in March of 1946 on a transport of war orphans, led by Rabbi Schonfeld! I told her that I’d sailed on the same ship but hadn’t met her or other fellow travelers, because I’d been seasick for most of the trip. I knew that I’d hear from her when she returned from Poland.

  The next day, I received another email from a woman called Halinka. She had come from Lwów and had lived in Manhattan, but moved to Florida after her husband’s death. She had no children. She was eager to talk to me and we seemed to have a lot in common. I asked her how she’d come to the United States, and she too had been o
n the same transport of orphans as mine to England—another coincidence! Because of my one published article in The Hidden Child, I connected with many people after sixty years. I never thought it would bring so many new acquaintances. As we talked, I found out that Halinka had gone to school in Lwów, so I asked if, by any chance, she had known Anita Seltzer. She became very excited, telling me that she and Anita had been the best of friends in school. She didn’t know that Anita had survived and was ready to call her at once.

  I had met Anita, a lovely and gentle lady, in Katowice in 1946. She and her mother had survived the war and still lived in Katowice. After I left Poland, Anita and her mother also left Poland, moving to Paris. For a while, we kept in touch, but after a few years we stopped writing for some reason. I found Anita again through her relatives in San Francisco, who gave me her address in Australia, where she taught English and French in high school. From then on, we continued a warm friendship; Harold and I visited them in Melbourne and they came to visit us in Long Beach. Anita’s son and daughter visited us as well, and our son, Philip, saw them in Melbourne while taking an extra course for medical school at Tufts. In 2015 her letters stopped coming. After a long period of not getting answers to my letters, I wrote to her son. He promised to deliver my messages. Eventually, he told me that she was losing her memory. In 2017, he wrote to tell me of her passing. I had lost an old and very good friend.

  During my conversation with Halinka, I brought up another name, Halina Aleksander. I couldn’t remember Halina’s maiden name, but I mentioned Korner, the surname of her grandparents. She said she knew a Halinka Lemel, another best friend. “Yes, Yes!” I shouted, “That’s the same Halinka! Lemel was her maiden name.”

  We were both astounded that within thirty minutes, two total strangers had found so many people in common. Halinka sang the three songs we’d learned on the ship en route to England: “Daisy,” “You Are My Sunshine,” and “It Ain’t Gonna Rain No More” and we reminisced about the wonderful Rabbi Schonfeld.21 After we talked, I dialed Halina Aleksander’s house in Kraków, Poland, and told her about the other Halina in Florida. She was so happy to hear this news. All of a sudden I had connected three women who had known each other over 60 years ago, and I found two women who shared the same experiences, leaving Poland in 1946, sailing to Britain on the very same Swedish ship as I had.

  * * *

  21 In 1962 Harold and I had the chance to visit Rabbi Schonfeld at his school in London for girls and boys. He saved the lives of more than 4,000 children in Kindertransports during the war. When he died at the age of 72 in 1984, his obituary appeared in both the Los Angeles Times and the Long Beach Press Telegram. It was reported that 2,000 people followed his funeral cortege in the north of London.

  Trip to Israel and Poland

  Harold and I went to Israel for a week in 2006 to visit relatives and friends. It must’ve been our eighth or ninth visit to Israel. Afterward, we flew to Warsaw where we spent a day with our friend, Eva Kujawa. I wanted to meet Irena Sendler, a wonderful brave lady who was ninety-six years old at the time. When she was in her early twenties, she’d smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw Ghetto, placed them with Christian families in convents, orphanages, and churches. She wrote the children’s names, birthdates, and parents’ names on tissue paper and stuffed them into a jar, later burying it in someone’s yard under a tree. After the war, the children who had survived would know their beginnings and might be reunited with any surviving family members. Irena had been caught by the Nazis, was tortured and sentenced to die, but at the last minute, the Polish underground bribed a Nazi and saved her life.

  The children Irena had saved were now caring for her. As her health was fragile, I was told that it might not be possible for me to meet this courageous human being. Irena had saved her caregiver, Elżbieta, when she was only six months old. Elżbieta never saw her birth parents, but her adoptive mother had been very good to her. At the time I called her, Elżbieta was grieving the loss of her husband, who had died six weeks earlier. A friend from Montréal was staying with her to keep her company. When she told me the name of her friend, Renata Saidman, I said that I had met her at meetings for Hidden Children in Denver, Colorado. What a small world it was! I had planned to meet Renata in Warsaw. Renata had been another of the many children saved by Irena Sendler.

  Mother’s Building In Przemyśl

  During the Solidarity movement in Poland, led by Lech Wałęsa, workers raised their voices in protest and went on strike against unfair labor practices. The movement eventually prevailed in pushing communist Poland toward more democratic reforms. In 1989 there were, for the first time, free elections in one of the Communist bloc countries, and Poland became the first non-Communist government in the Soviet bloc. (Six months later, the Berlin Wall fell.)

  After upheavals in Poland, we traveled back there several times, hiring a lawyer in Przemyśl concerning my mother’s building. I was asked to produce the death certificates of my parents, which, of course, I did not have because the Nazis had murdered them, leaving no records. The procedure we had to follow was to place an ad in the newspaper. If my parents were still alive, they might read the newspaper notice and claim ownership of their building. These newspaper ads had to remain in the newspaper for six months.

  After several trips, and after filling out many legal forms, I was asked to appear in the Przemyśl City Court for a judgment. In the courtroom, I had to stand in a fenced-in area, like in an English court, and give answers to the judge’s questions. Finally, she gave her decision: I, in fact, was the legal and rightful owner of my mother’s building where I’d spent my childhood years. Reclaiming ownership of the building gave me great satisfaction and pride in my family heritage. Because the majority of Jews in Poland had been murdered at the hands of the Nazis, few survivors were left to claim their homes, buildings, or lands.

  Finally, in 2008, I managed to sell the house to the manager of the building. I discovered that there were plans to add another story to the house where the attic used to be. If I had more time ahead of me, I might have waited longer before selling, because I had a feeling that real estate values would increase in that area. But I sold the house when I had a chance; it was easier than having my children deal with a complicated transaction in Polish, a language they didn’t speak.

  I doubt that I’ll return to Przemyśl again, and it makes me sad that my connection with the city of my birth has ended. Yet walking on Przemyśl streets, seeing old familiar buildings of my childhood made me feel vulnerable, as if I were a young child again. No matter what experiences you have as an adult, you always treasure memories of your hometown and growing up.

  The Diary of Anne Frank Opera

  The Long Beach Opera sent a condensed version of The Diary of Anne Frank opera into schools in 2007-2015, introducing students not only to the opera but also to me, an actual Holocaust survivor. After each performance, I went onstage and told my own story.

  Each year, there were about six to ten performances at different high and junior high schools. The eighth, ninth, and tenth grade students were very receptive to the half-hour show, presenting one opera singer and a pianist. Most students had never heard an opera before, and although the music was quite modern, they seemed to enjoy it.

  After the performance, I went onstage to talk to the students for a full hour. After my talk, there was a question-and-answer period. They were often too shy to ask anything at first, but later, when the students gathered around me, they asked plenty of questions, took pictures with me, shook my hand and hugged me. They felt more comfortable when we spoke directly to one other. It was a wonderful experience both for the students and me. Though funding for the opera ran out in 2015, I am gratified to learn that the opera will once again be presented in the schools.

  As time goes on, World War II and the Nazi atrocities get farther and farther removed from the younger generations’ knowledge. Very few survivors remain alive and hopefully, I will be able to speak to
the students once again. Such an experience has been shown to make a greater emotional impact on students than reading about the Holocaust in textbooks. Many of the students, after hearing me tell my story, promise to “never forget.”

  Yom Hashoah

  At the beginning of the 21st century, I revived the annual commemoration of Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, at the Long Beach Jewish Community Center. I chaired that event for the next twelve years, because it was important to remember the terrible deeds perpetrated against the Jewish people during the war.

  Each year, we got the whole community involved in the commemoration. Usually we had a rabbi represent the religious community, and survivors would light six memorial candles, each candle representing one million of the six million who were murdered. We tried to involve school-aged children to write essays, poems and music, and we invited a guest speaker.

  One year, we invited Clifford Michaels from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who was a twenty-one-year-old soldier who’d liberated a concentration camp in 1945. I invited him to participate and to read aloud the letter he’d written to his family from Europe. He accepted the invitation and asked if he could visit the Queen Mary while he was in Long Beach—the ship on which he’d sailed to Europe during the war.

  April 18, 1945

  Dear Folks,

  Have just returned from a newly liberated German concentration camp. It is less than a week since we got here. I would like to tell you what I saw. It is a large camp (50,000 men) but considered small in comparison to other camps. It is located on a high hill, near a rock quarry. There is a wonderful view, but I don’t think prisoners had much time to admire the view.