Miracle
ourney
J
In one of the most
curious incidents
of World War II,
the Nazis in 1945
shipped 1,200 Jews
from Theresienstadt
to Switzerland. The
beloved grandmother
of a Detroit family
was among
those freed.
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Au S T R P
.uNOARY
f Rum AN tA.
Bertha Weinschenk,
right, with a friend, soon
after arriving in
Switzerland. Above:
thousands of Jews
were sent from
Theresienstadt directly
to the death camps.
ELIZABETH APPLEBAUM ASSISTANT EDITOR
nside Bertha Gutman
Weinschenk's shoes
were tucked two pho-
tographs, cut in the shape
of half-ovals to fit perfect-
ly at the heels.
The first photo showed
a rather austere-looking
woman, her hair parted
severely in the middle,
named Fany Gutman. She
was Bertha's mother. The
second was of an
elderly gentleman
with sharp features
named Nehum Gutman,
who was Bertha's father.
If the rough edges of the
photographs made walking
uncomfortable, Bertha
Weinschenk would never let
on. The pictures would stay
in her shoes. It was the only
way to guarantee she could
keep them.
It was September 1942,
and Bertha Weinschenk
was on her way to
Theresienstadt.
From 1941-1945, the
Theresienstadt ghetto
served as a kind of tempo-
rary holding place from
which thousands of Jews
were shipped to Treblinka,
Sobibor, Auschwitz and
other death camps. Disease
was rampant and food
scarce. There was virtually
no sanitation. By the end of
the war, 33,539 men,
women and children had
died there.
Forty-eight years after
Bertha Weinschenk arrived
at Treblinka, her grand-
daughter, Elsie Simkovitz of
Southfield, holds a frame
containing two half-oval
shaped photographs show-
ing her great-grandparents,
Nehum and Fany Gutman.
There are other indelible
pieces of the past here, too.
In thick scrapbooks, Mrs.
Simkovitz has chronicled
the lives of generations
past: letters, postcards, sad
photographs of children who
perished in the Holocaust (a
cousin, Steffi, who has
bangs and wears a dark
beret, was 7 when she died;
blonde and beautiful Lore
was a baby when she per-
ished at the Nazis' hands).
Every photo, every piece
of paper has a history. But
perhaps none is so strange
as a small blue journal, its
pages bearing thin horizon-
tal and vertical lines to
guarantee fine penmanship,
that chronicles Bertha
Weinschenk's journey from
a Nazi ghetto to freedom.
Sept. 11, 1942: The
Weinschenks arrive around
midnight, erev Rosh
Hashanah, in Theresien-
stadt.
Bertha Weinschenk soon
records the deaths of virtu-
ally everyone dear to her: