Patrons view
the exhibit at
the March 11
opening.

A Day to
Remember
'Mose Who Have
Fallen So Israel
I
May Continue
to Stand

.

Richard Taubman with his mother,
survivor Lola Taubman, look at a
panel by artist Julia Terwilliger
during the exhibit opening.

displaced person (DP) camp near
Frankfurt. She worked at the French
consulate for a while and also for the
Jewish Agency for Palestine.
The last of her family to arrive in the
U.S., Taubman landed in New York in
1949. The next few years were spent
working in New York; then, in 1951,
she moved to the Detroit area. There
she found employment as an interior
designer. She married and has two
daughters, a son and several grandchil-
dren.
TO this day, my siblings and I do
not know how our parents were killed:'
Taubman says.
Another local woman in "Women
of Ravensbruck" is 85-year-old Paula
Marks-Bolton of West Bloomfield.
Born in Poland, she was barely in her
teens when the Nazis invaded. Faced
with daily sneak attacks on Jewish
homes, nobody knew who'd be targeted
next and ordered to leave with only the
clothes they were wearing and what-
ever they could carry.
One day, somebody pulled Marks-
Bolton out of the crowd on the street
to save her. She never saw her parents
again. Subsequently, along with about
400 other children, she was marched
to a ghetto. Not long afterwards, she
was sent to the Lodz Ghetto, the second
largest in Poland. Luckily, she was taken
in by a kind, young couple.
The Nazis compelled her to work in a
straw factory; she also made shoes and

worked in a plastic factory. The forced
labor was tough. Food rations were dis-
tributed only once a week.
After a while, she was trans-
ferred to Auschwitz and then sent to
Ravensbruck for several weeks. There,
beatings with batons occurred regu-
larly, along with other unspeakable
horrors. The prisoners were starved
and allowed almost no water.
Marks-Bolton and others were forced
on a death march. Surviving that, she
spent time in a work camp where a
kind German foreman made life a
little easier with extra food rations. He
encouraged her to survive. Her concen-
tration camp travels ended at Bergen-
Belsen in Germany, where she had to
peel potatoes. At Bergen-Belsen, the
beatings continued and always there
was the question: "Will we survive?"
One memorable day with the war
finally over, soldiers came to liber-
ate the prisoners. Marks-Bolton was
moved to a DP camp where she met the
man who'd become her first husband.
They married in 1946 and, three years
later, immigrated to the United States,
where she learned dressmaking and
design. After 46 years of marriage, her
first husband died and she later remar-
ried. She has two daughters, a grand-
daughter and two great-grandchildren.
Recently at the HMC, when she
finished addressing students from a
Wyandotte public school and a Detroit
charter school, Marks-Bolton offered
herself up for hugs from the audience.
The numbers of girls and boys who
raced up to take a place in that line
were inspiring. Some of these young-
sters had tears in their eyes. Although
she was fairly soft-spoken, her message
had been heard — loud and clear.
"It's a sheer miracle that some of us
survived:' she told them. She left this
audience by saying, "Remember, I am a
normal person:'
She tries to speak to as many groups
as she can, urging them not to let bul-
lying happen and reminding them,
"Gauging your success in life isn't about

YOM HAZIKARON

2012 Ill;Tri tIr

COMMUNITY-WIDE
MEMORIAL CEREMONY

TUESDAY, APRIL 24, 2012
2 IYAR 5772
7:00 P.M.

THE BERMAN CENTER FOR THE PERFORMING ARTS
6600 WEST MAPLE ROAD WEST BLOOMFIELD

We kindly ask that you be seated by 6:45 p.m.
in order to start promptly.

There is no charge for this commemoration.

For more information, contact Gina at (248) 642-1643
or andrisan@jfmd.org

Jewish
Federation
OF METROPOLITAN DETROIT

AJC-Detroit • Akiva Hebrew Day School • AMEINU • American Technion Society-Detroit Chapter
BBYO • Bnei Akiva • Detroit Jewish News • Frankel Jewish Academy • Friends of the IDF - Michigan Region
Hadassah • Hillel Day School of Metropolitan Detroit • Jewish Community Center of Metropolitan Detroit
Jewish Community Relations Council • Michigan Board of Rabbis • ORT America Michigan Region
StandWithUs-Michigan • Young Israel Council of Metropolitan Detroit • Zionist Organization of America

April 19 • 2012 11