There are times in life when one is given the opportunity to read a book that is able to recreate firsthand the story of personal survival. I recently came across a page on Instagram entitled The Redhead of Auschwitz.
The page is named after a memoir about the life of Holocaust survivor Rosie Greenstein. This powerful life story was written by her granddaughter Nechama Birnbaum, who shares a very special bond with her 96-year-old grandmother. As someone who was very close with his own grandparents, the closeness that Nechama shares with her grandmother struck a very special cord in my heart. Upon seeing that the Instagram page had over 38,000 followers and her book sold over 8,000 copies in its first two weeks, I was drawn to her grandmother’s life story and reached out.
Nechama knew since she was a little girl that she would write about her grandmother’s life experiences. She knew her grandmother’s tenacity and determination to live as an 18-year-old girl in a concentration camp started long before she told her friends in Auschwitz that she was returning home from there. “Rosie was always told that her red hair was a curse, but she never believed it,” Nechama wrote. “She often dreamed what it would be like under a white veil with the man of her dreams by her side. However, her life took a harrowing turn in 1944 when she was forced out of her home and sent to the most gruesome of places: Auschwitz.”
When Rosie arrived at the concentration camp, her head was shaved – and she lost her beautiful hair and the life she once had. With the persecution that endured, Rosie always knew that the one thing that the Nazis couldn’t take away from her was her redhead resilience and her spirit.
In her book, Nechama is able to recreate her grandmother’s account of her life story through hundreds of hours of interviews over a five-year period, in which she shifts every other chapter between beautiful descriptions that are like poetry (including quotes from Psalms) about life in Crasna, Romania, before Auschwitz, to the horrific firsthand account of survival there. I recently spoke to Nechama, who is currently finishing her master’s degree in nutrition. She lives with her husband and daughters in Brooklyn near her redheaded grandma, whom she cherishes so much.
I wanted to thank you for writing The Redhead of Auschwitz, a true gem of a book and an emotional account of survival. You were very articulate and paid special attention to detail. You created a stark contrast of the beautiful days that were, and what occurred during the Holocaust. What was the catalyst that inspired you to write it, and how does it stand out from other emotional stories of survival (each unique in their own right)?
The thing that made me want to write this book was that I thought it was amazing how my grandmother valued life and fought for life. I felt that a lot of Holocaust stories that I heard were so important and crucial. I believed that my grandmother’s story was very much about someone who fought to survive and loved life. It was a time in history that there was so much darkness and death and so much horror. She was able to bring optimism and beauty under the worst of circumstances, yet she was resilient, stubborn and strong, and wanted to live. She wouldn’t let anyone else tell her what she can or cannot do. I loved that fighter and redhead spirit in her, and felt that was a story that had to be shared with the world. It’s the reason why I incorporated her childhood story as well, because when she was surrounded by her friends in Auschwitz, they could literally see the smoke of their families burning.
Under the worst of conditions (including starvation), she kept that same optimism she did as a child. Her friends would say that “we are going to heaven from here, and we are going to die here.” She would answer back, “You all can go to heaven from here, but I’m going home.” She was a resilient 18-year-old girl, and that’s why I started the book with a quote from Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, who quoted Psalms and said: “I will not die but I will live and I will declare the works of Hashem.” He goes on to say after the quote that sometimes the refusal to die, the insistence of the holiness of life, is itself the work of Hashem.
You place a Psalm from Tehillim at the beginning of each chapter that is relevant to the subject matter of your grandmother’s life story. After the experience that your grandmother endured, what is her message for future generations? With the current rise in antisemitism worldwide, what is her vision (as a Holocaust survivor and grandmother of 28 and great-grandmother of over 100) to defy what the Nazi regime wanted and for generations to come?
Her message is that it doesn’t matter what religion you practice, the color of your skin or your political beliefs, we are all one. When you separate people because of their race and other factors it can lead to such evil. We as a Jewish people did nothing wrong, we wouldn’t have hurt a fly. They were such good and innocent people that included women and children who were killed just because they were Jewish – look at what hate can do. And when she came out of the Holocaust she said that the world will see what happened to the Jewish people.
Even though hate hasn’t stopped, that was her message: that we should see the ramifications of what hate can do. We are all human beings made of flesh and blood. You may not agree with someone, but you can still respect them, and always stand up to hate and make sure something like this never happens again. To quote from the book, it is “as full of life as it is of death. It is about the intricacies of Jewish culture that still exist today and the tender experiences that are universal to all of humanity: family, coming of age, and first love. It is a story that celebrates believing in yourself no matter the odds. This is a story about the little redheaded girl who thought she could, and so she did.”
What was your process of gathering the information for writing this book and for recreating a firsthand, vivid experience of what transpired?
My brother-in-law Daniel Machlis spent two years gathering all of the information as well, and deserves a lot of credit for doing what he did. He would send me videos when I was in Israel at the time. I would send him questions to ask and he would use those questions for the next interview.
How did you originally get in touch with the publisher that you decided to use to publish this touching story?
My mother-in-law read the original manuscript and was talking about it to someone, who said her cousin also wrote a Holocaust book for Amsterdam Publishers. Amsterdam Publishers specializes in Holocaust memoirs and is an international publisher of Holocaust memoirs in Europe. She put me in touch with Zvi Wiesenfeld, and he told me about the publisher that I ended up using to tell my grandmother’s story.
What was your grandmother’s feedback regarding the publication of the book and for telling her personal life story for all to read?
She was so happy, and with eyes wide open she said: “We did it!” It was a dream come true, and it gives her so much hope that people are reading her story, and that they will learn from it and it won’t just be forgotten. For that, she is happy. ■
The writer received his undergraduate degree in business (cum laude) from Yeshiva University and his MBA with a double distinction from Long Island University. He is a financial adviser who resides in New York City, and is involved in Israel-based and Jewish advocacy organizations.