The Redhead of Auschwitz. A True Story

by Nechama Birnbaum

But I was safe because I was with him.

“God will help.”

Watching my mother, I understand a little more about her love for us now. She has sacrificed everything for us.

Every day she has set out to make it a

good one ...

You are sisters. You need to stay together. Whatever happens, I need you to know the most important thing is to stay together. You need to promise me this.”

I just want you to always, always have each other. Stay together!

Nothing will make me as calm as knowing that you have each other. You must never leave each other!” She talks loud and fast with panic. “It was always my family that kept me going. Stay together!”

I take Mama’s hand. “We will always be together.” Our words...

“You never, ever really know who the real person is. People are good at pretending. They are sweet and nice and then when they don’t need you anymore, who knows what they can do. You never actually know a person all the way. People know how to dress their souls up, put some makeup on. They can act polite when everyone is looking but you can never be sure.”

“Life goes on. I wouldn’t believe it, but it does.”

“The whole purpose of this world really is for the next

world, you know. This world is the corridor, before the palace. We are supposed to prepare ourselves in the corridor, so we can enjoy the palace. It is what our sages taught us. The next world is for eternity; this world is so fleeting.”

“You can go to heaven from here if you want,” I say, “but I am going home from here.”

you have to believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy,”

I know what I am, and no one can tell me otherwise.”

My Zaidy has always been there for me, now I am going to be there for him.

I know that laughter is the best medicine

I hate what is happening to us here but as Leah lays her head on my shoulder and looks up at the faucet, I know that no matter what happens I am so lucky to have her as my sister. I am blessed to have her with me through all of this.

This is the darkest place I have ever been in.

I don’t want to die, but I don’t want to be here, either.

“All destruction comes from thinking about others as different than you. To be cruel to someone, you cannot think of them as yourself. So, we make them a stranger in our eyes. As if we don’t all have the same blood in our veins, as if we don’t breathe the same air. No one can be cruel unless they really view someone as different but that rips

the world apart. We cannot be different. We are all part of the same God. We are never alone.”

You choose what you want to be.”

“Think of it as the greatest gift of all. You don’t wait to see what kind of life you lived or what kind of person you became, you choose for yourself no matter what you are going through. You don’t wait for life to happen to you, you happen to life. With every move you make you can choose to make it what you want, what you believe in, even if it is the harder choice.”

Katalin Karády

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yapchik,”

“We all are mad!” I tell the girl next to me. I know I hallucinate here, but this is different. “We all are crazy, stupid mad!” I continue. “We are a bunch of starved girls trapped in a room with bombs about to fall on us and blow us apart, and we are trading recipes!”

I was strong the entire time I was in the war, but now there is not an ounce of strength left in my body. I want to be strong, but strength is nowhere to be found.

You did not make me live through this whole thing so you could give up now.

we are free?” We are incredulous. We cannot wrap our brains around that word.

We are free and I am still alive. Me? I am alive? I almost want to laugh.

All the time I was buried underground, there were flowers growing on top of me.

But right now, we are surrounded by flowers. There is beauty in the world we thought did not exist anymore. We are alive again and the flowers tell us there is a life still waiting for us.

We rise like the flowers and push our heads into the world.

I will still have some control over my life. Everyone must stop doing whatever they want to us like we are not people.

From the first moment we come to this earth, we cry, and it is our mothers who soothe us. Even if we don’t realize it, every time we sob, we think of our mothers. It is the most primal part of us that cries to our mothers.

If you are reading this now, you are alive, and for you, too, the world was created for you alone. All the beauty of the world was created just for you, and for each one of us.

while there is hardship, pain, and sadness, there is also beauty, happiness, and love.

We cannot always prevent the bad, but we also cannot let it overshadow the good.

Evil

does not only happen when a person is abnormally bad. Evil happens when good people do not see the good in other people. Evil happens when we judge each other. Evil happens when we put ourselves higher than others. Evil happens when we stand by someone else’s evil and do not speak up.

“They can take everything away from you, but they can never take away what is in your head.” I know the past shapes the future and I also

know, “Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”