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The way that led to my salvation was a long and painful one: from riches to rags; from being the apple of my family’s eyes to being familyless; from a noble and honored home to displacement and homelessness. My way led me to search out the height and the depth, across borders, nationalities and races. I searched for the G-d Whom I did not want to know or believe in, because I thought He was responsible for the Holocaust. He kept me and watched over me until I reached a point even He could no longer comfort me --- the pit of an atheist’s despair without G-d.
 
 

Breslau, Silesia: age 2    xChieming, S-Bavaria: age 8         xx Age 12xxxxxxxx   Salzburg, Austria: 17
    I was born into a beautiful home in Breslau, capital of Upper Silesia, Germany. My first memories, however, are those of a small attic room over a blacksmith in a village in South Bavaria. In-between those two abodes was a displaced persons camp, and strange and miraculous happenings which kept us alive and safe. 

    My most cherished childhood memories are connected with this attic room. Afterwards, bitter loneliness and many hurts. My mother almost died from the consequences of eclampsia (a disorder occurring late in pregnancy) and negligence of the doctor; my beloved baby brother died from those same consequences when I was five. My parents divorced when I was six. 

    From that time on I was mercilessly exposed to the Jew-hatred the Nazis had fanned. The Allies’ denazification program of Germany was not able to undo it. To live as the lone child of the only Jewish and moreover divorced woman, in a village of catholic bigots and ex-Nazis, spelled hell for many years. My life in school was one of frequent humiliations and name-callings, ambushes, lies, slanders and vicious rumors about my mother and me. My mother was trapped in a trauma of fear, the ghosts of the Holocaust hunting her, incapacitated to deal with the reality of our Jewish heritage and its demands. Her exile neurosis left me groping alone in the dark, intensifying the harshness of my every-day reality, plunging me into deep depression. 

    Only sporadically did happiness shine - at Christmas and summer vacations. During the Christmas season everything and everybody suddenly turned lovely and loving, happy and kind, so that even this Jewish child received some measure of love. And summer vacations brought families of doctors, lawyers and other upper middle-class to the village, who took pleasure in me and allowed their children to play with me. They were the only real friends I ever had in that village. 

    As the years passed I learned to defend myself against the vicious attacks and slanderous lies. But I was alone; no one was by my side. 
     
     
     

       
       

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