Darkness and Hope

Sam Halpern

Description

Sam Halpern’s eyewitness account of a flourishing Jewish life wiped out by the Nazis, Sam’s miraculous survival, and his ultimate success in America.

In this incredible memoir, Sam Halpern lovingly and mournfully shares his life story—from his vibrant childhood in Chorostkow, Poland, to the horrors of the labor camp he was forced into by the Nazis, and ultimately his survival with his brother Arie. We see Sam’s deep affection for his parents, Mordechai Dov and Bella Halpern, and brothers, Naftali, Avrum Chaim, and Arie, and are introduced to the people, customs, and traditions of the Chorostkow shtetl. We also have an up-close view of the cruelty and horror inflicted by the Nazis. While in a forced labor camp, Sam is beaten, nearly starved, and ill with typhus, but ultimately as a result of street smarts and divine intervention, Sam and Arie escape and are miraculously hidden until liberation. Throughout the darkness, they maintain hope. After the war, Sam meets Gladys, the exceptional woman who becomes the love of his life and with whom he will raise four sons. Together with Arie, they eventually make it to the United States where they raise families and are international advocates for the Jewish community.

This beautifully written story was originally published in 1996. This new edition features a moving contribution by Rabbi Israel Meir Lau and a wealth of new photos, and is published in honor of Sam and in advance of what would have been his one hundredth birthday.

Sujets

• Holocaust
• Histoire
• History

Informations

• Publié par: Apollo Publishers
• Date de parution: 03 juin 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781948062992
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Darkness
and Hope






Darkness and Hope
A Survivor’s Story
Sam Halpern
with contribution s by
Elie Wiesel and Rabbi Israel Meir Lau



Acknowledgments
Heartfelt thanks to Miriam Sivan. My appreciation cannot be adequately expressed to her for her dedication and devotion which made a true labor of love of this work. Her tireless efforts created order from chaos and enabled me to achieve my goal of telling the story.
To Moshe Sheinbaum, the original publisher of this volume, for his wise counsel and guidance. He made invaluable comments. My cordial thanks.
My heart overflows with gratitude to my beloved sons, Fred, David, Jack, and Murray, for their comments and excellent advice during the time when I retold and resurrected the days of destruction and renewal, of darkness, and hope.

Darkness and Hope Copyright © 2019 by the Sam Halpern Family Foundation
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without the written permission of the Sam Halpern Family Foundation. All inquiries should be sent by email to Apollo Publishers at [e-mail].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.
Front cover photo by Praszkiewicz / Shutterstock.com.Artistic interpretation of front cover photo by Ben Gasner, Jerusalem.Cover design by Rain Saukas.
Printed in the United States of America. Published in 2019 by Apollo Publishers LLC. First printed in 1996 by Shengold Publishers, Inc.

Dedicated to my parents, Mordechai Dov and Bella Halpern; my brothers Naftali and Avrum Chaim, and Arie, who shared my story of survival and success; and the rest of my family.
And to my beloved wife, Gladys, and her parents, Ephraim and Sara Landau, and their family.



Contents

A Moving Testimony by Elie Wiesel
Chorostkow Childhood
Living with the Russians
The German Occupation
Kamionka
The Hayloft
After Liberation
The New World
New Material
The Missing Story
Memories of Sam from the Office
Letter from Rabbi Israel Meir Lau
Additional Photos



A Moving Testimony
by Elie Wiesel
“I was liberated by the Red Army on March 22, 1944 . . . ”
T hat is how Sam Halpern opens his poignant and moving narrative about his wartime and postwar experiences. I read and reread this deceptively simple sentence, I stop at the date, and I am shocked by its implied significance: When his nightmare was over, mine hadn’t yet begun. In fact, we knew nothing about its horror-laden dimensions.
Whenever I meet Sam Halpern, we come back to the fact that Hungarian Jews were kept uninformed about the fate of their brethren in Poland. How was it possible? Why weren’t we warned? I wish I knew the answer.
Sam speaks often of his native town of Chorostkow. He speaks about it with tenderness and nostalgia. He remembers everything about its social structure and religious environment. The Hasidim and their rebbes, the heder and its children, the merchants and their problems, he recalls them all with amazing precision. Naturally he evokes his family. His parents, his brothers, his relatives: He brings them back to life.
Many of them have shared the tragic destiny of Eastern European Jewry. His parents perished in Belzec, one of the six extermination camps for Jews established by Hitler’s hate-filled armies on Polish soil.
Sam himself, with his older brother Arie (Sam calls him Zunio), were spared. Why they and not others? Sam says: “Among our people, there were many Jews who were smarter, richer, stronger, and more educated than I . . .” And yet. Call it a miracle, divine providence, or chance. What is clear is the awareness for Sam that “We find purpose and create meaning for our survival through what we do—what we take from the world and, more importantly, what we give back.”
He has given back, and is still giving, quite a lot. He gives to Israel and all other Jewish causes. But his generosity is not limited to financial contributions; it includes his personal recollections. In sharing them with readers, he helps them to acquire an essential measure of knowledge about what will be remembered as one of the greatest events in Jewish history. Sam considers it his duty to tell his story of how he vanquished death.
At first he describes for us the “before,” when Chorostkow was a typical Jewish shtetl with its characteristic customs and traditions. It could be called by any other name. They were so alike, all those small towns and picturesque villages, where our grandfathers and grandmothers dreamed about the coming of the Messiah who was forever late in coming. They were all swept away in the tempest of fear and fire.
“I was nineteen when the Russian tanks arrived in Chorostkow . . .” Thus Sam relates the end of Poland. Its army, though gallant and valiant in its resistance to the German onslaught, was forced to surrender. As a result of the infamous Hitler-Stalin pact, Poland was divided. Chorostkow became Russian. Life quickly changed and was marked by a series of hardships. Zionist activities were forbidden. Large businesses were nationalized. Sam Halpern went to Lvov to involve himself in business to be able to support the family in Chorostkow. Eventually he returned home. How did Sam cope with the upheavals? Rather well. Initiative, courage, luck: he combined them all. When Germany invaded Russia, Sam could have followed the Red Army but his father was against it. “Remembering the German occupations in 1917, he argued that they had not been so bad.” Says Sam: “I sometimes wonder what would have happened to me and my family had I gone to the Soviet Union. . . . Would we have spared ourselves years of horror under the Nazis? Could we have saved my mother and my father? . . .”
They were not saved. The atrocities began as soon as German SS soldiers made their appearance in Chorostkow, murdering thirty-four Jews and terrorizing all others. Local anti-Semites collaborated with them. At one point, the Halperns went into hiding. A Christian friend of the family gave them shelter. Sam’s description of all these episodes is evocative and poignant.
As is the day he tells of his new life in America. He made good in business and found a place of distinction in the Jewish communities in New Jersey, and in Israel. These postwar episodes are uplifting in more than one way.
Many immigrants, Jewish and Gentile, have written autobiographical success stories about the opportunities they have found or invented in this new world’s greatest democracy.
Halpern’s is special.
That Jewish men and women from many lands and cultures could find enough energy and ingenuity in themselves to overcome bitterness and rancor is an inspiring tale in itself; it does honor to themselves and to their adopted countries.
Instead of wallowing in anger and hatred, they became community leaders and friends of humankind, they chose social involvement instead of selfish pursuits. They are now determined to remember the past and fight for its sacredness, all of which represents a victory for Jewish memory.
Therefore I congratulate Sam Halpern for sharing with us his tragic wartime experiences and his subsequent achievements. They proved that, indeed, it is possible to build on ruins. They constitute an unusual testimony. I hope it will be read by those Jews and Gentiles who, in spite of everything, still believe in man’s right to hope and to have faith in humanity.


Chapter 1
Chorostkow Childhood
I was liberated by the Red Army on March 22, 1944. Although the war would go on for another fourteen months, on this day, when the Nazis retreated from our town, my brother Arie and I were finally able to leave the hayloft in which we had been hiding since we escaped from Kamionka, the forced-labor camp where we had been imprisoned. We walked into the light of day feeling hopeful, lucky, and thankful to have survived the worst. We were also stunned to learn how many of our people—parents, family, friends, neighbors—had not been so fortunate. We counted our losses and mourned them. While the murders were occurring, the horror was too great for us to comprehend fully. When the bestialities were finally over, we could feel the terrible weight of what had happened to our people. Spring had come, and the air was sweet with blossoms. But for us there was just bitterness. Only twenty-six of over two thousand Jews from our shtetl, Chorostkow, had survived the Nazi slaughter.
Cut off from the past, I thought about my future. I reasoned that there must be some purpose to my survival. Through all the darkness of the Nazi years, I held onto the hope that in the end, no matter how unlikely it seemed to us during the years of horror, out of the evil some good would come.
Among our people, there were many Jews who were smarter, richer, stronger, and more educated than I. But Arie, whom I call Zunio, and I lived through the war when many others did not, and I realized the importance of mazel (luck). In the face of the arbitrary nature of life and death, we find purpose and create meaning for our survival through what we do—what we take from the world and, more importantly, what we give back.
In the concentration camp—even as people were selected for death—they would say to me: “If you get out, tell the story.” I know that one of the main reasons I survived was to relate what happened to the Jewish people in Europe during the Second World War. By describing what I and my loved ones endured—by recalling the ghettos, Aktionen, labor and concentration camps—I am fulfilling the promise I made to those