Rosenbloom Fela - Miracles Do Happen

MIRACLES DO HAPPEN

Fela and Felix Rosenbloom were both born in Poland in the early 1920s. They grew up in the same street in Lodz and became sweethearts, before their lives were devastated by the Holocaust. After the war, they reunited, married, and moved to Paris, France. They migrated to Australia with their son Henry in 1952, and settled in Melbourne, where their second son, John, was born. Felix died in 1995.

Scribe Publications.
1820 Edward St, Brunswick, Victoria 3056, Australia
2 John St, Clerkenwell, London, WC1N 2ES, United Kingdom

First published by the authors 1994
First published by Scribe in this edition 2017

Copyright Fela and Felix Rosenbloom 2017

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the publishers of this book.

The moral rights of the authors have been asserted.

9781925322309 (Australian edition)
9781925548525 (e-book)

A CiP entry for this title is available from the National Library of Australia.

scribepublications.com.au
scribepublications.co.uk

To our children, Henry and John, their spouses,
Margot and Kathy, and our grandchildren,
Miriam, Max, David, and Noah

Contents

Part One

Part Two

Publishers note

My father originally prepared this book for his close family and friends. He was working on it when he was suddenly diagnosed with cancer, and amid the shock of dealing with this I helped him finalise the text before he printed a small quantity in 1994.

Dad died not long after, in May 1995, and this small book became a poignant and treasured piece of personal testimony by him and my mother.

Inevitably, as the book was passed around, more people got to hear of it and asked if it was possible to receive a copy. I arranged for a couple of small reprints over the years, but secretly yearned to publish it professionally. My mother, who is now in her nineties and is an intensely private person, has always been traumatised by her experience of the Holocaust, so it never seemed possible to bring it to the public. However, a year or so ago, I happened to be reminiscing about the book with her, and I was very surprised when she urged me to publish it.

When my brother, John, heard of this, he also gave his consent, and later helped me a great deal by checking the dates and details of a vast number of historical facts and events, and by suggesting corrections to the spelling of placenames and personal names. I should explain here that our familys surname, originally spelled Rozenblum, was changed by deed poll at my request several years after we arrived in Australia to Rosenbloom.

So here it is, more than twenty years after it was first released. I have copy-edited it lightly, and inserted a few footnotes where that seemed relevant. It is a remarkable joint memoir, which speaks for itself.

Henry Rosenbloom

PART ONE

Fela

Preface

I SURVIVED World War II by a sheer miracle. When peace came at last, I still lived in constant fear. Time and time again, I asked myself: Is it true that I am alive? Am I the same person? After a long inner turmoil, I came to the conclusion that I had lost my previous self in the gas ovens of Auschwitz, and that a second life was given to me only to prolong my sufferings I had to come to terms with my new self. However, the nightmare of Auschwitz never left me and became a part of me.

In 1974, I was asked to contribute the story of my war experiences to a Yizkor Buch (commemorative book) called Jewish Lodz . My story, together with a photograph of a group of women, camp inmates, appeared on page 143.

Then, in 1987, I was approached by a journalist from The Age newspaper, Anna Murdoch, who had been working on a large article about Holocaust survivors in Melbourne. She asked me if I would agree to be interviewed by her. I consented, and we had two long sessions together.

As I told my story to Anna, I relived the horrors of Auschwitz. I felt as if my veins were bursting and the bleeding could not be stopped. Anna was deeply moved by my story, but I had many sleepless nights before and after the interviews. An edited version of the interviews appeared in the Saturday Extra section of The Age of 22 August 1987, in an article titled Survivors of the Holocaust.

When my husband and sons insisted that I write my memoirs, I felt that so many books had been written about the Holocaust that I had nothing new to add. However, being the sole survivor of my whole family, I owe it to the memory of my father, mother, brothers, and sister, who perished along with six million Jews, to tell my story.

Chapter One

MY FATHER, Chil Chaim Perelman, was born in 1888 in the small village of Bieliny in south-central Poland, about twenty kilometres east of the regional centre, Kielce, where his parents had an orchard. He once told us children that the orchard was so big that he could gallop on a horse around the fruit trees. I remember him as a handsome man with brown eyes, curly brown hair, a nice short nose, and a lovely, pink complexion. He always had a beard, and wore a cap and a dark Orthodox outfit.

When father married my mother, he was eighteen years old. He had no profession at the time. To earn a living, he started a cartage business. He bought carts and horses, and employed two people, distributing all sorts of goods from factories to warehouses and to large hardware and china shops. Some of the shops belonged to our relatives. Father was a very trusted person, and was given the keys to all the shops he serviced. He was a very good provider for his family until he had a stroke of bad luck. One after another, his horses died of food poisoning and, as a consequence, his business collapsed. That happened in 19281929.* Times were very tough then, and he struggled to make a living. He used to get up in the early hours of the morning and travel to nearby country farms to buy dairy products, which he sold on to shopkeepers.

[* There is a ghetto record showing that Felas parents moved into their flat in Mynarska St in Lodz in May 1918. This could well be around the time they moved from Bieliny to Lodz.]

My mother, Chaja Ruchla, was born in 1885 in the village of Nowa Supia, eleven kilometres east of Bieliny. Her maiden name was Cukier, and her father was the local cantor. My mother must have been pretty as a girl. She had beautiful green eyes and dark hair, turning grey, always covered by a wig, as was the custom of Orthodox married women. My girlfriends used to remark that my mothers face and expressive, longish nose were like those of an aristocrat. As long as I could remember, mothers face had deep lines which used to amaze me, because father, by contrast, had an exceptionally fresh complexion. At the same time, there was something majestic about her appearance; one could not help respecting her.

Mother once showed me her wedding dress, which she kept in a drawer all those years. It was a black, beautiful lace dress. I was astonished by how very slim my mother must have been as a bride. She told me that her future mother-in-law was afraid that, being so very slim, my mother would not be able to bear children. Even after giving birth to nine children, she stayed slim and tall. Her wrinkled, sad face gave the impression of a person in sorrow. This was most certainly due to the fact that she had lost five children, all of them born before me.

I can vaguely remember the death of an older brother. But it was the death of my sister Blime (Bluma), when I was six years old, that left a lasting impression on me. Blime was a very pretty young lady who wore pigtails, and she was liked by everyone. She died in hospital at the age of sixteen, due to complications after the removal of her appendix. At the time of her death, Blime was engaged and soon to be married.