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Many scholars of the
Holocaust have come to believe that when a Holocaust survivor tells
a story that sounds too incredible to be true, it may be just that:
the truth. Such is the story of Lilly Zelmanovic and her photo
album.
18-year-old Lilly
Jacob was deported with her family, and most of the Jews of Hungary,
in the spring of 1944. On the ramp at Auschwitz she was brutally
separated from her parents and younger brothers; she never saw any
of them again. She was lucky and survived; yet, she was not always
convinced of the blessing of having survived totally alone, bereft
of family, friends and her world.
Unlike all of the
other survivors, she was granted a small miracle. On the day of her
liberation, in the Dora concentration camp hundreds of miles from
Auschwitz, she found in the deserted SS barracks a photo album. It
contained, among others, pictures of her family and friends as they
arrived on the ramp and unknowingly awaited their death. It was a
unique tie to what once had been, could never return, and could
never be rebuilt.
It was also, as we
now know, the only photographic evidence of Jews arriving in
Auschwitz or any other death camp.
After the war Lilly
found and married Max Zelmanovic, a prewar acquaintance. Selling
glass-plate prints of the album to the Jewish Museum in Prague
enabled the couple and their first-born daughter, Esther, to
immigrate to the United States. They settled in Miami and raised a
family, yet the album continued to be central to their lives.
Survivors spread the word of a unique album in the possession of a
waitress in Miami, and they made their way across the country to
seek her out, and to hope against hope that their lost family, like
hers, might be engraved on its prints. Not a week would go by but
Lilly would bring home strangers who were not strangers, and they
would pore over the pictures and weep.
Rarely, someone would
identify a family member, and Lilly would give them the snapshot.
Since most of the Jews had been murdered, leaving no living trace,
most of the photos remained unclaimed.
In 1980 Serge
Klarsfeld convinced Lilly (pictured right) that the album should be
safeguarded at Yad Vashem. She came to Jerusalem, showed it to Prime
Minister Menachem Begin, and donated it to Yad Vashem, where it
resides to this day and is treasured for the future.
On
December 17th 1999 Lilly Zelmanovic passed away. May she rest in
peace. |
