Eight Decades after the Death March Survivor Vows, We’ll Rise Again

January 21, 2025

by: Shoshana Chen ~ Ynetnews

Tuesday, 21 January 2025 | Today marks 80 years since my mother, Auschwitz prisoner 48956, Bella née Szarfharc, embarked on the death march. Two weeks of terror, covering roughly 850 kilometers (530 mi.) from Poland to Ravensbruck, Germany—mostly on foot, some by freight train.

Snow fell and temperatures plummeted far below freezing. German guards shot or unleashed dogs on anyone who faltered. “You couldn’t stop, you couldn’t think,” she recalled.

About 60,000 shattered souls left the camp gates, most of them Jews. Roughly 15,000 reached Germany alive. Across dozens of death marches that continued throughout Europe until the Allied victory, nearly a quarter of a million Jews perished.

Every winter, I think of that march of horrors. Survivors often referred to it as “Totenmarsch”—death march in German. I think of that inferno and can’t comprehend how my mother, like other survivors I’ve known, endured it and went on to rebuild their lives.

How was I born against all odds? How did the families they built grow and thrive? This year, my awe mixes with the pain of over 90 families awaiting their loved ones’ journey home from captivity.

What would my mother say to them? I’m certain she’d try to instill hope—the same hope, tempered with faith and bolstered by the extraordinary strength of her friends, that carried her through the march of horrors. After a few days on the march, she lost hope.

An “alumna” of the Warsaw Ghetto, Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau, she was emaciated, weighing less than 40 kilograms (88 lbs.), burdened by countless losses—a husband, a child, her parents and a vast family who were murdered. All she wanted was to collapse in the snow and rest forever.

But three friends—barely able to drag themselves forward—refused to let her fall. With their meager strength, they carried her, repeating over and over: “You’ve made it this far. We’ll get to the end. The Germans are fleeing; they’ll lose. You’ll see, we’ll all start new lives.” My mother never forgot their kindness.

The late Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Gilberlater was 15 years old when he set out on a death march with his 17-year-old brother and their father. The two boys carried their father when he could no longer walk. Three days without sleep or food.

They had already survived four and a half years of ghettos and camps. When they collapsed in the snow for a brief, permitted rest, their father bade them farewell. “I can’t go on anymore. You must leave me behind. A son must not risk his life to save his father. That would be murder, not honoring your parent.”

Young Yitzchak, who’d celebrated his bar mitzvah (religious coming-of-age for boys) in the ghetto, hesitated but chose to refuse. They sat in the snow for 14 hours. The Germans fired into it [the crowd]. People died before their eyes. All three survived, later raising large families.

What the hostages, their families and all of us have endured over the past year and a quarter is not the Holocaust, a concentration camp or a death march. But there are threads that connect them: hatred and cruelty on one side, sacrifice, hope, mutual aid, compassion and faith

What the hostages, their families and all of us have endured over the past year and a quarter is not the Holocaust, a concentration camp or a death march. But there are threads that connect them: hatred and cruelty on one side, sacrifice, hope, mutual aid, compassion and faith on the other—qualities unique to us, the most hated people in the world. Immense inner strength that overcomes snow and Hamas tunnels alike. It’s from this strength that I draw my hope.

“Suddenly, I don’t care who I am,” one woman wrote in a WhatsApp group dedicated to prayers and good deeds for hostage Omer Shem Tov yesterday. “I toss [the political] labels of into the trash.”

“I’m not debating whether I’m for or against a deal. Right now, I’m just a loving daughter of Israel, yearning desperately for my brother and sister to return. In the end, it’s God who decides. So let them come home already.”

There are dozens of such groups for other hostages. “A person may plan their path, but the Lord gives the answer. O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall show forth thy praise.” Amen.

Posted on January 21, 2025

Source: (This article was originally published by Ynetnews on January 21, 2025. Time-related language has been modified to reflect our republication today. See original article at this link.)

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