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The Loss of Family Members
In survivor testimonies we find descriptions of loss and pain, descriptions relating to the fact that the speakers feel themselves to be the last remaining survivors of their families. As we have seen throughout the ceremony, in the biographies of the witnesses, most of them established new families and returned to normal life. But the pain of loosing family members never leaves them.
“We wanted to look what had happened, where we were. So first of all, we don’t dare to speak, even those who were there already a longer time, like our “Blockaelteste” or the “Schreiberin” or the “Stubeaelteste” who were in control. […] we asked what happened to our mothers and to the ones not with us. “We got them” , they said. “The day you arrived to Auschwitz, whoever will remain alive should know that your “yahrzeit”, your “yom zikaron” (memorial day). After those who are not here, this is the date… We learned what happened, I don’t need to tell you how we felt.”
Source: The testimony of Lea Kahana-Grunwald, Yad Vashem Archive O.3/11914, Jerusalem 2000, pp. 24-25.
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Lea Kahana
Lea Kahana, nee Greenwald, was born in Sucha-Bronika, Czechoslovakia, on March 2nd 1922, the second of seven children. Her father was a teacher and her mother was a housewife. As a child, she went to a Czech school, where most of the pupils were Jewish. At the age of eight, the family moved to the town of Beregsas, so that the children could have a secondary education. Her parents’ home was a warm, religious-Zionist home, charitable and welcoming to guests. In 1938, after the partition of Czechoslovakia, Beregsas, the town in which she lived, was annexed to Hungary. After the occupation, certain restrictions were applied to Jews and the education of children over fourteen was halted. After this, prior to the move into the ghettos, Lea and her sister were offered the chance of being saved, but they both refused. In 1942, her friends began to be sent to work camps and other forced labor. Her brother Yosef moved to Budapest in 1944 to look for work, and after a short time was sent to forced labor, while the family moved into the confines of the ghetto.
On May 15, 1944, Lea and her family were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. In the morning on May 18, the transport arrived in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, Lea’s parents were sent to the crematorium with her two younger brothers, while she passed the selection with her two sisters and then discovered that her brother was also in the camp. After a period of quarantine, she was sent to work in the “Canada Commando” (A special section of the camp known as "Canada. Here Veteran inmates were sorting out the personal belongings of the recent arrivals at Auschwitz under the constant supervision of their SS guards). On January 18, 1945, when the camp was evacuated, her sisters went out on a Death March. Lea, who was in the camp hospital at the time, hoped to join the marchers, but did not have the strength. After liberation, she moved with her friends to Auschwitz 1 and stayed there for a short period, until she left with a group of Czech soldiers going towards Beregsas. She stayed briefly in Beregsas and then emigrated to England, where she married David Kahana and the couple had three daughters. In 1979, after her husband died, she immigrated to Israel with her family.
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Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority
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