CLOS E -UP I

FRAGILE
HIST()

A new
Temple Emanu-El book
brings home the anguish
of the Holocaust.

ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM

Assistant Editor

or many
years,
Rachel
Kloc did
not speak
with her
children
about her

past.
It was too painful, she
said. She didn't want to bur-
den anyone.
For her son, Howard, the
silence was a never-ending
mystery. As a child, he won-
dered at his parents' tor-
ment, their nightmares,
their secret anguish.
It did not escape him for
a moment.
"I don't remember a time
when the Nazis didn't live
with us," he says.
Then one day Mr. Kloc, of
Huntington Woods, went to
see his parents in Florida,
determined to learn about

24

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 1992

their lives. It was important
not only for him, but for his
children as well, he said.
Today, the wartime mem-
ories of the Klocs are among
those — written, printed,
forever accessible — in a
new book,... And So We
Must Remember. Published
by members of Temple
Emanu-El, the book com-
prises selections written by
congregants and their fam-
ilies.
... And So We Must Re-
member is being printed this
week, and will be available
at the temple, Borenstein's,
the Book Beat and the Jew-
ish Book Fair.
The initial purpose of the
book was to capture Holo-
caust recollections. But for
many involved, it proved to
be much more than a mat-
ter of writing and editing
and collecting stories. It

meant lifting layer upon lay-
er of silence, removing the
shroud of uneasy quiet that
had enveloped families for
years.
"This project," Howard
Kloc says, "opened doors
that had remained closed."

R

achel Kloc was
born in a small
Polish town near
the Russian bor-
der. She was four months
pregnant with her first child
when she and her husband,
Hershel, decided to escape
into the Soviet Union to flee
the Nazis.
The family traveled in cat-
tle cars, riding with wound-
ed soldiers returning home.
The Klocs' baby, Rosmarie,
was born outside Tashkent.
At one point, Mrs. Kloc
writes in ... And So We Must
Remember, a soldier gave

her his bread for the baby:
Later, he found me on the
train and gave me his food
rationed for the soldiers and
said that he was not hungry.
I will never forget his face.
Another time, she writes
of her treasure — a gold
necklace, all she had left
from her parents' home.
I was often starving and I
wouldn't trade it for food.
There was one time that we
dug radishes from frozen
fields with our bare hands
and broken glass bottles and
ate them for three days and
I wouldn't trade it.
But then, on the train to
Moscow, Rosmarie became
ill.
People yelled at us to
throw the baby out the win-
dow, kill her, make her be
quiet. Two hours later, I re-
turned with the baby to the
nurse's car. I took (the neck-

lace) from my neck, held it
out to her and told her that,
if she helped me, this gold
was hers.
The trade saved Ros-
marie's life. For her gold -
necklace, Rachel Kloc re-
ceived penicillin.
At the end of the war,
Hershel and Rachel Kloc
opened an orphanage — the
Klocs called it "the kibbutz",
— located in the former
home of Nazi leader Her- '
mann Goering.
Mrs. Kloc was in charge of
education and served as a c
kind of surrogate mother to
the boys and girls. "I want- c'
ed Jewish children should
feel somebody still cares for
them."
"My sweet wife took over
one part (of running the or-
phanage); I took over an c-
other," her husband says.
Hershel Kloc's first job

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