Left: Rachel Kloc and
her son, Howard.

Below: Rachel and
Hershel Kloc.

0

was getting food. Riding an
old bicycle he had found, he
'would buy whatever food he
could, then pile it on his
pack to take home. Later, he
helped children cross the
border to safe haven in the
American zone.
Virtually all the Klocs'
family perished in the Holo-
=caust. Hershel and Rachel
Kloc came in 1949 to the
United States, settling in
Detroit where Rachel had
family.
o At times, Mrs. Kloc would
discuss the war with her
° children, but always speak-
, ing about it from a distance,
in purely historical terms.
She rarely spoke of her own
experiences because "I don't
want to fill my kids with so
cmuch pain.
"Every child, when he
hears such stories it sticks

r

in his mind. I still remem-
ber stories my father used
to tell me from World War I.
Some things are just so
painful, you don't want to
give a piece of it to somebody

you love."
But Howard Kloc was de-
termined to record his par-
ents' memories. So finally he
brought a tape recorder, sat
down with his mother, and

asked her to begin.
At first, talking was diffi-
cult.
"I broke down," Mrs. Kloc
says. "I couldn't continue.
He kept asking and I kept

saying, 'Please, Howard, not
today.'
"I was very anxious (to
speak), but I couldn't come
to it," she added. "But God
bless Howard; he got ahold
of me."
Mr. Kloc and his mother
were exhausted when the
taping was done — her
memories recorded in Yid-
dish, English, Hebrew and
later edited and transcribed
for the temple's book. But
Howard was pleased.
"It helped me understand
my parents a lot better," he
says.
"As a child, I knew they
were different, and that was
hard. English wasn't their
first language and my dad
didn't know anything about
baseball, and I was always
sort of embarrassed by that.
"But now I'm really proud

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

25