Holocaust survivors Zanne Farbstein, Manya Brodeski-Titelman, Mordechai (Motke) Wiesel, Yaacov (Jacki) Handeli, David Gur and Ya'akov Janek Holladner have been chosen to light torches in memory of the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust - here are their stories.
Upper row, from left: Zanne Farbstein, Mordechai Wiesel, David Gur
Bottom row, from left: Yaakov Handeli, Manya Brodeski-Tittelman, Ya'akov Janek Hollander
Photo: Courtesy
| Holocaust Remembrance Day 5767 |
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Zanne Farbstein
Zanne Farbstein was born in 1926 in Bardejov, Slovakia. Her first memory of the war was the sudden entry of German soldiers into her family's home on Shabbat eve, after which there remained a solid German presence in the town. Her father's business was confiscated, and her two older brothers were sent to a military labor camp.
In March 1942, all females under 25 were ordered to gather in a school. Farbstein and her two sisters, Edith and Sarah, were escorted by their father, who tearfully gave each of them a corona coin as a good-luck amulet.
They joined a thousand other girls on the first transport to Auschwitz, where they were ordered to leave their possessions on the train, including the treasured coins.
After a few months, they were sent to the newly built Birkenau camp, where they endured hard labor, acute hunger and disease. Farbstein survived the selektions because of her Aryan looks, and managed to obtain the "desirable" jobs of sorting confiscated clothes and other personal possessions. One day, she found her father's prayer shawl, and understood that he had been murdered.
The three sisters stayed together, looking after one other and sharing their food. One day, Edith, sick and exhausted, suggested exchanging her good shoes for Farbstein's threadbare ones. The meaning was clear: Farbstein and Sarah never saw Edith again.
On January 18, 1945, the women were sent on a death march to Germany. Through the snow and rain, Farbstein had to support her ailing sister. After the German guards abandoned the prisoners in a small town, the sisters continued on to the American Zone, where they met soldiers from the Jewish Brigade. They then travelled to Prague and Bratislava, where they learned that two of their brothers had survived. They returned to their birthplace, where the four were reunited. The fates of Farbstein's grandfather, grandmother and younger brother remain unknown.
In 1949, the extended family immigrated to Israel with the help of the Joint Distribution Committee. Zanne Farbstein and her husband, Moshe, have two children and five grandchildren.
Manya Brodeski-Titelman
Manya Brodeski-Titelman was an only child, born in 1932 in Zhabokrich, Ukraine.
In July 1941, the German army entered the town, followed by the Romanian army.
The Jews were ordered to gather in five cellars, where the Romanian soldiers proceeded to shoot them. Manya Brodeski-Titelman lost consciousness. When she awoke, she saw that her mother had been killed. Her father had survived.
Manya and her father hid in the cellar until nightfall. They then escaped to a forest but after a week, starving and cold, they returned. A few days later, they were herded into the town ghetto, where they lived under grueling conditions in an apartment with several other families.
One day, the police ordered both adults and children back to the cellars to remove the corpses from the massacre. The bodies were in a terrible state of decomposition, and the horrified prisoners were forced to bury them in a mass grave.
Manya identified her mother's body by the red boots she had been wearing. She and her father managed to bury her near their home.
During this period, thousands of Jews from Bessarabia were being herded to the nearby River Bug, where they were murdered. Manya's father would throw boiled potatoes to them across the ghetto fence, and bring survivors to their home.
Toward the end of the war, the Romanians gathered all the Jews in the main square of the town, planning to kill them. Suddenly, a group of German soldiers arrived and warned the Romanians that the Russian army had arrived. The Romanians fled. To the Jews' astonishment, the German soldiers turned out to be partisans in disguise.
In 1980, Manya and her family immigrated to Israel. In 2003, she was among a group that erected a memorial tombstone on the site of her hometown's mass grave.
In March 2007, Manya's husband, Boris, a Holocaust survivor and a veteran of the Red Army, passed away. She has two daughters, five grandchildren and a great-grandchild.
Mordechai (Motke) Wiesel
Mordechai (Motke) Wiesel was born in 1929 in Satmar, Transylvania, to a family of eight.
When the Germans invaded Hungary in 1944, Motke's father sent his three sons to work on a farm. Meanwhile, the Jews were herded into the city's ghetto; after a few weeks, the boys were taken to the ghetto as well.
Motke and his family were put on a transport. He and his twin brother, Meir, managed to find air to breathe from a small crack in the train car.
