My Mother's Journal

Lois Silver-Avrin

Description

A woman dies leaving her daughter a journal in which she describes for the first time how she survived six years in the brutal Nazi slave labor camps in Germany and Poland. Hanna Neuman was an eleven year old child when, through an accident of fate, she was separated from her parents and her two sisters. Based on historical facts, the novel details life in pre-World War II Germany and day to day in the camps where Jews were sent to be exterminated.

Sujets

• Biography
• Daughter
• Mother
• Family
• Autobiography
• Life
• Journal

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 28 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781669878537
• Langue: English

Extrait

My Mother’s Journal




How does a child alone survive the brutal Nazi Slave Camps?







Lois Silver-Avrin



Copyright © 2023 by Lois Silver-Avrin.
Library of Congress Control Number:
2023909594
ISBN:
Hardcover
978-1-6698-7854-4
Softcover
978-1-6698-7852-0
eBook
978-1-6698-7853-7

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.





Rev. date: 05/26/2023






Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
850368



CONTENTS
Prologue

Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two

Epilogue
















Dedicated to those who survived the Nazi labor camps and to the memory of those who did not.















This book is based on true historical events. The characters, except for Hitler’s lieutenants, are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.



PROLOGUE
My mother died a while ago.
The death was sudden. Her next-door neighbor noticed her newspaper lying on the driveway of her home. She knew that Mom, a widow who lived alone, always picked it up first thing in the morning to read with her morning cup of coffee. After calling her and getting no response, the neighbor walked over and peeked in the bedroom window. She saw my mother lying motionless on the floor next to her bed and called an ambulance. The police called me at work to tell me she had died and which hospital the body was being held in.
She wasn’t rich or famous. She lived a quiet existence in an upper middle-class neighborhood in the Bronx with my father until his death about ten years earlier. Other than a brief obituary in the local newspaper which I placed, the world took little notice of her death. No heads of state sent flowers or letters of condolence. No celebrities or politicians attended her funeral.
As I recall there were not more than fifty or sixty people in attendance at her funeral, including me, my husband Arthur, my two teenage children, my brother, his wife, and their two children. I also recognized a few of my mother’s neighbors and about two dozen of my mother’s former colleagues from her days as a hospital nurse and as professor of nursing at a local college. Maybe a handful of attendees had been her students.
I was not surprised that there were so few people in attendance. I suspected that most of the people who had known her when she was a hospital nurse, then later as a professor, probably did not even know that she had died. She had been retired for more than ten years and had not kept in touch with many of the people who had known her. She had also not socialized a lot since my father died and even before that. My mother was never a social butterfly.
The Rabbi at the synagogue where she and my father had been congregants for many years conducted the service. I didn’t think he knew my mother well since he had been appointed only two or three years earlier to replace the previous elderly Rabbi who had retired. I had heard Mom say several times that she had not attended services very often since my father died. Rabbi Sternberg spoke respectfully about a woman who had worked hard, earned respect and prestige in her profession, raised a family and contributed greatly to the religious and civic community.
I always visualized my mother as a tall woman. I would use the word attractive in describing her. She was not beautiful but she had regular, proportionate facial features, smooth skin with few wrinkles and silvery gray hair. I remember she would go to a nearby hair salon once a month to maintain the color and for a trim. I believe that was pretty much her only indulgence. She had not quite reached her seventy-fifth birthday when she died, not very old by current standards of life expectancy. Five years earlier she had mentioned, almost offhandedly, that her doctor had detected a heart problem. “Not serious,” she had hastened to assure me, seeing the worried look on my face.
“I have been taking the medication he gave me.” I trusted that she was telling the truth because I had never known her to lie. I couldn’t quite believe that she was gone so soon.
My brother and his son delivered eulogies about their mother and grandmother. A colleague from the college where she taught nursing delivered a third one. The service was quickly over. The Rabbi gave announcements about the burial and Shiva arrangements.
After the funeral Arthur and I took the family and about a dozen others out for a meal at a local restaurant. Afterward everyone went their own way. My brother Jonathon, his wife Judy and their two sons, who had flown in from their home in California, accompanied Arthur and me back to our home where they had been staying.
The next day Arthur, my brother, his wife, and I went to the lawyer’s office to have her will read. It was brief. Both she and my father, a partner in a large accounting firm, had made a comfortable living. They had substantial savings mostly in the form of investments, but their major asset was their home. In a good, solidly middle-class neighborhood, they had bought it in the early years of their marriage and had done the requisite remodeling and repairs. Over time it had greatly appreciated in value.
The contents of the will, rewritten after my father died, was no surprise. I was already familiar with what it said because Mom had told me. She had left all her affairs in order which was also no surprise because that was how she had always conducted her life.
“I am leaving everything to you and your brother.” That was what she did, dividing the estate equally between Jonathon and me, with a few smaller bequests to her grandchildren. Although she and my dad had enjoyed travel, and had taken many trips around the world, they had lived simply and modestly, preferring to save their money or spend it on gifts for their children and grandchildren.
The lawyer would make all the arrangements. It was all taken care of.
When everything else was accomplished, I said goodbye to my brother and his family. Jonathon and his wife, Judy, had to get back to their jobs In California. Like Dad, Jonathon was an accountant. Judy was an elementary school teacher. They and my nephews had gone with me to Mom’s apartment to see if there were any of her personal possessions that they wanted as a keepsake. Judy asked for a few pieces of her jewelry which I gladly gave her. Mom had already given me her most valuable pieces which she had bought on her travels over the years. As a rule she never wore much of her jewelry. She always feared attracting criminals.
Jonathon and I had a good relationship as adults although we fought a lot as kids, and I had always been fond of my sister-in-law. We promised each other we would make time to visit more often. I drove the four of them to the airport.
It was my responsibility to properly dispose of Mom’s belongings and to get her house ready to be sold. I had already contacted a real estate broker about the sale. I had this in mind when I went back to her home a few days after the funeral.
Most of the furniture would remain where it was until it was sold. I knew that an empty house was usually more difficult to sell. I needed to go through her personal effects.
This turned out to be more difficult than I expected.
I loved my mother dearly but our relationship had sometimes been what I would characterize as contentious. Maybe it was because we shared so many of the same personality traits. We were both strong-willed women, with strong opinions on a lot of things. We tended to be calm most of the time but I had a temper which could explode suddenly. Mom seldom lost her temper. I couldn’t remember a single instance of her or my dad ever striking me or Jonathon. Like most mothers she worried about her children, especially me, and I think that was the source of a lot of our conflicts.
I remember my teenage years especially being a period of a lot of conflict between the two of us. I was in many ways a typical adolescent, pushing against the limits of parental authority, looking for freedom from the rules but not always handling the freedom well. I went through a period of a year or two when I was rebellious toward both my parents. I did some really crazy things which I still feel bad about now. I know some of the things I said and did really hurt my mother. I believe I even shocked my poor Dad who was normally very supportive of me. I hoped he had forgiven me.
We disagreed over a number of issues including my choice of a husband. Dad thought Arthur was okay. He wasn’t wild about him but