After Chanukah sale

Fireplace Gas Logs
on sale from $200 to $800

In 1930 Europe, Jewish mothers in
many ways lived to this ideal. They were
deeply committed to home life, deter-
mined to see to their children's educa-
tion, both Jewish and secular, and
involved in social activities, Ofer said.
When the Nazis came to power, they
implemented anti-Jewish legislation,
several years before the start of the war.
The result was "dramatic changes in the
basic duties" of Jewish women. Jewish
newspapers began running articles on
how to provide a meal when shopping
opportunities were limited as well as
how to keep up the family's spirits
despite anti-Semitic discrimination.
In the 1930s, more Jewish women
than men were eager to emigrate;
because they were rarely the family
breadwinners, they had less to lose
financially, Ofer said. After
Kristallnacht, the situation changed.
Many of the men arrested were released
only if they promised to leave Germany,
which meant their wives would now be
in charge of the family.
Some time after Kristallnacht, the
Germans began deporting Jewish fami-
lies to ghettos, and here a woman could
find it impossible to fulfill what she
regarded the most basic aspects of her
duties. Ten people would live in one
room, only a sliver of soap was avail-
able, there was no hot water and very
little food.
How could she keep her children
clean and warm and fed?

Protection Under Attack

Everything came under attack, from a
mother's ability to handle her children's
physical needs to their emotional safety.
As death — in the tangible form of
disease and starvation as well as unimag-
inable reports of transports to death and
labor camps — increasingly gripped the
ghetto, some mothers searched for ways
to get their children out to anywhere.
"A mother's basic instinct is to
embrace her child," Ofer said. So imag-
ine what it was like for women "stand-
ing in a situation that asked [them] to
do the opposite."
Some sent their children to live with
gentile families (though at least one
vowed never to do so, lest her son grow
up to be an anti-Semite). Some sent
their children on the Kindertransport, a
program in which Jewish children were
resettled in Great Britain. Others let
their children leave for pre-state Israel.
They were young children, headed to
kibbutzim, institutions, or gentile
homes. Parents and children never knew
if they would see each other again.
Sara Kofler thought she would see her

daughter again when she sent Klara to
live in pre-state Israel. "If I could be
sure that you felt really happy, I would
be happy with you," she wrote. Soon
after, Kofler was murdered by the
Germans.
It was with both a sense of tragedy, as
well as hope, that mothers let their chil-
dren go,
0 ao Ofer said.
Most continued, despite the odds, to
write their far-off sons and daughters.
They wanted details: "What are you
eating? Do you have wool socks for the
cold winter?"
"These small questions are so telling
of the emotional situation" of the moth-
ers, Ofer said. "They want so much to
continue to be involved with children
))
they hadn't seen for years
Most of these mothers would never
set eyes on their children again; the
women were killed in the death camps.
Others would reunite, but this, too, was
a tragedy, with so much time, distance
and change between them.
Sometimes it was the mothers, and
not the children, who survived. As
recorded by Emmanuel Ringelblum, in
his famous Warsaw Ghetto diaries,
unimaginable despair created a myth:
The Jewish children were taken from
the ghetto, not to Auschwitz, but to an
unknown spot in Russia where they
roamed about much like one of the
Lost Tribes of Israel.
"I am sure that years after the end of
the war, when all the secrets of the
camps will be revealed, desperate Jewish
mothers will still dream that their chil-
dren, who were torn from their hands,
live somewhere in the Russian tundra,"
he wrote.
Ofer left her audience, some already
in tears, with this story:
In June 1944, the Red Cross came to
Auschwitz-Birkenau. Representatives
were there to investigate reports of
German abuse and terror.
Six hundred Jewish mothers were
invited to stay in a special "family
camp" created especially for the visit.
Here, the Red Cross could see for itself
how wonderful the Jews had it there.
Why, children had school and music
lessons, families were together. What
could be better?
After the Red Cross left, the mothers
were offered yet another opportunity:
life. They could continue as workers at
the camp. All they had to do was give
up their children to the gas chambers.
Or, they could march straight to
death with their little ones.
Of the 600 mothers at "family camp,"
Ofer said, only two opted to abandon
their children.

Ta e an exit

S18o

in stock fireplace gas log
set or fireplace grate-

coupons cannot be combined-
coupon valid to12/31/04

Ta e an extra
50ff
barbecue cover

e an ex ift

18o

any fireplace tool set or
log holder or basket-

coupons cannot be combined

coupons cannot be combined-

coupon valid to12/31/04

coupon valid to 12/31/04

4 Seasons Fireplace & Barbecue

30903 Orchard Lake, Farmington Hills by the Gap,

Open Sundays 10am to 6pm, Mondays and Thursdays 10am-9pm,
Tuesdays & Wednesday 10am-7pm, Fridays 10am-4pm, Closed Saturdays

sale ends
12/31/04

248-855-0303

Expert Installation 8( Service

919000

on all fall & winter
ready to wear

Tobert 'Mann GRA

248-855-9545

njore

Telegraph at Maple • In Bloomfield Plaza

WHERE THE jEkiftSlit
COMMUNITY SHOPS!

www.jewish.com

ss.Z

12/24

2004

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