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“The redhead of Auschwitz” Nechama Bodner‑Birnbaum

Fabian Van Samang et Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum
p. 22-25

Notes de la rédaction

Interview: Fabian Van Samang

Texte intégral

Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum

Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum

© Nechama Bodner

Over the last few weeks, I read and reread the remarkable story you wrote about your late grandmother, Rosie Greenstein, which has recently been translated into Dutch as ‘Het roodharige meisje van Auschwitz’. It’s a well-written and moving book about innocence, racial persecution, loss, injustice and hope. For those who are not familiar with your historical novel (if I can call it a novel?), could you tell us briefly what the story of your grandmother is about?

Thank you so much, Fabian, for reading the book and for your kind words. It was my grandmother’s dream to get her story out there, so people remember and work towards it never happening again. Thank you for helping to realize her dream.

My grandmother’s story is a story about a young girl who refused to give up. In 1944, over the course of a year, she was taken from her house and sent to a brickyard ghetto, Auschwitz, Bergen Belson, Duderstadt (an ammunition factory), a death march and Terezin where she was liberated. When she got to Auschwitz, she was working hacking at boulders under the smoke of the burning bodies, when her friends discussed how they were going to heaven from there. She said: “You can go to heaven, I am going home from here.” The book is how she fought to do just that. It is also about her childhood, growing up in an idyllic mountain town, loving family, dance, and life.

If you were to describe your grandmother’s character and personality in one word – which word would that be? What kind of a person was she? In your book, it seems to me, you describe her as a rather cheerful lady, who liked to laugh, sing and dance. On which occasions and in what manner did the Holocaust resurface in her life? Or was it constantly present?

If I had to choose one word, I would choose light. She truly was the happiest person I knew. She lit up the room and she radiated joy and love. Her love for life was infectious. She was always making me laugh. I always told her that I could come to her in the worst of moods, and she made me feel instantly better. She made every person she met feel loved.

In terms of the Holocaust resurfacing, I don’t want to whitewash it. The Holocaust did leave a wound that I don’t think ever fully healed. I also knew her years after the Holocaust. She told me, “I lost myself after the Holocaust, but if you are lost, you can always be found”. Even years after she was constantly anxious that something bad was going to happen, she didn’t trust people easily which makes sense being that all the people she knew turned against her from one moment to the next. She was always telling us to eat more, cross the street carefully and when we were sick, we got many phone calls making sure we were ok. She cried every time she spoke about her mother and her brother who were murdered in the gas chambers. I don’t think the Holocaust can ever be under the surface for someone who experienced it, yet her broken heart was still whole with light.

When I read your book for the first time, I was particularly touched by the vivid description of hunger and thirst, the constant fear, the murderous pace, the exhaustion, but also the sudden, unexpected expression of altruism during the so-called ‘Death March’ (chapter  37 of your book). Is there a part of your grandmother’s testimony you cherish more than others – and why this one in particular?

I always loved hearing her story of how she told her friends they can go to heaven; she is going home. I also loved how she changed lines to get a neat tattoo when she saw the tattooist on her line was tattooing large soppy numbers and the one on the parallel line was doing them small and neat. She believed so strongly that she was going home, and she didn’t want sloppy numbers for the rest of her life.

I loved hearing about her unapologetic belief in herself and how she had grit and tenacity but always with a sense of humour. In the time of greatest despair, she was a blaze of hope.

What did ‘being Jewish’ mean to your grandmother? Was it a matter of tradition and culture, like celebrating Passover or Yom Kippur? You portray her as a religious woman – but how did this religion materialize? She missed the opportunity to migrate to Israel, as her sister did, because at the time she suffered from tuberculosis. Did she feel emotionally connected with the state of Israel? Or did she think of herself above all as a European or an American woman?

She loved being Jewish. She had a strong relationship to God. She said she had questions for Him on how such a thing could happen, but she said her questions are allowed. She would say: “Sometimes it is hard to believe, but it is even harder not to”. Ultimately, she would say, God took away so much from her but He gave her so much more. She loved praying and saying psalms, and cooking for Shabbos and the holidays. She would tell all her grandkids to keep study the Talmud. Judaism was a source of joy for her.

She did have a strong connection to Israel. She would always say where there is a disaster in the world, Israel is the first to go and help.

I met a number of Holocaust survivors who, in a certain way, blamed themselves for talking to their children about their wartime experiences too soon, at a time when their children were still too young. They felt sorry they had to burden their children with this almost unbearable emotional load. Do you remember when and how your grandmother talked to you for the first time about the horrible experiences she went through? Was she reluctant to do so? Did she wait until she could talk to you alone, or was she candid and open about it, in the company of others? And could you tell us what you thought or felt when you first heard about her life‑story?

My grandmother did tell me many times that she felt bad she burdened her children with the stories of the Holocaust and that she didn’t know how to go about it in a different way. For me it was different because while she always told me her stories of perseverance, she didn’t tell me the details until I asked for it. I think she found so much purpose on making sure her story was never forgotten, so that people do better in the future, that she felt like it was worth telling the painful stories.

When I was young, all her stories were told to me from the perspective of strength and pride. I never felt like she was a victim. She filled me up with stories of how she refused to give up and how she fought for life. When I visited Auschwitz at the age of 18, I somehow walked away thinking the Nazis were the victims because they had no value of their own lives that they were able to do something like that with it, while the people they killed at least had a life worth fighting for. That is what her positivity did for me.

Although ‘the redhead’ is definitely the main character in the book, more than once remarkable people who had a major impact on your grandmother’s life crossed her path – mostly by coincidence, one might say. Boris Raizomovich, who tried to bolster her dancing career by introducing her to an eccentric dance master. Ediger, the German soldier in Duderstadt, who tried to inform and reassure her and saved her life at least once. The doctor who helped her tremendously by cutting away three, four, five benign tumours. The man who opened the door of the Theresienstadt bunker and told her and the other prisoners that they had been liberated by the Russian army. Did she know what happened to them after the war? Did she ever try to track them down, to discuss the experiences they unwillingly shared?

I am not sure about the others, but I know she did try to find Ediger, the German soldier, but she was unable to track him down. She told him more than once that if she would have been able to find him, she would not be able to stop thanking him because his kindness saved her life, physically and emotionally. While doing research for the book, I found testimonials of other women in Duderstadt factory, and they all spoke about the kindness of this Ediger. Maybe we can try and find his descendants together! They should know of the greatness they come from.

After the Second World War, some Western countries organised a number of trials against perpetrators of the Holocaust: the Auschwitz trials in Frankfurt (German Federal Republic, 1963–1976), the trial of Klaus Barbie in Lyon (France) in 1987 and the proceedings against John (Iwan) Demjanjuk in Israel in the same year, to name only those. Did these trials in any way affect the life of your grandmother? Did she read about them in the newspapers, or watch the reports on television? Or did she try to avoid the confrontation with these judicial proceedings and the stir they caused?

I believe she found comfort in them. She always had a strong sense of justice. I did think she felt they were paltry in respect to the damage done. She once told me she would rather they realized what they did, change for better and apologize. She thought that would be a greater thing and she said she would be able to forgive if that were the case.

What did writing this book do to you? Did it change you, or the way you look at the world and the people who live in it?

I am an emotional person and writing this book was harder on me than I thought it would be. Like I said, the stories she told us growing up were more about her perseverance and will to survive so hearing the gruesome details, the hunger, the fear, the pain, was truly overwhelming. I struggled to understand how such evil could exist in the world. That was one of the reasons I wrote about her childhood; I wanted to show the simple beauties of everyday life. As humans we have a strong negativity bias, and I didn’t only want to write about the pain in this world. If there is anything my grandmother taught me, it was that life is beautiful, and worth fighting for, and I wanted to write about that. Still, I viewed life through the lens of the Holocaust through the years I wrote the book. Anytime I saw a group of Jewish people together, even in happy gatherings, I would think, if this was 70 years ago Europe, you would all be dead! Thankfully my mind doesn’t jump there right away now, but it took a few years.

If there is one message your grandmother would like the reader to remember, one thought worthwhile practicing, what would that message or thought be?

Her main reason for writing the book was to teach unity. She always said it doesn’t matter what race you are or what you believe, we are all one. She wanted to show what happens when we view people as other. Her message would be to treat people with love.

Your grandmother passed away on 8 May 2022, on the exact day that most European countries commemorate the end of the Second World War. She had 5 children, 28 grandchildren, 120 great-grandchildren and seven great-greatgrandchildren. We wish you and your family a lot of strength in dealing with this great loss. She definitely was a remarkable woman, who lived through the darkest of times. Thank you so much for this interview.

Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum

Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum

© Nechama Bodner

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Table des illustrations

Titre Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum
Crédits © Nechama Bodner
URL http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/11795/img-1.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 614k
URL http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/11795/img-2.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 597k
URL http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/11795/img-3.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 951k
Titre Rosie Greenstein and her granddaughter, Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum
Crédits © Nechama Bodner
URL http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/docannexe/image/11795/img-4.jpg
Fichier image/jpeg, 284k
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Fabian Van Samang et Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum, « “The redhead of Auschwitz” Nechama Bodner‑Birnbaum »Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire, 136 | 2023, 22-25.

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Fabian Van Samang et Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum, « “The redhead of Auschwitz” Nechama Bodner‑Birnbaum »Témoigner. Entre histoire et mémoire [En ligne], 136 | 2023, mis en ligne le 10 avril 2024, consulté le 10 novembre 2024. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/temoigner/11795 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/temoigner.11795

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Fabian Van Samang

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Nechama Bodner-Birnbaum

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