6/1/00

Sisters

    When the most impossible became possible, it was life, not death, that was most astonishing. Grotesquely, six million dead is by now believable; six alive, unbelievable.
    The day they were herded into Auschwitz, the Schreiber family was hacked in half: the three youngest were ordered to one side, along with their parents and grandmother; the six older children went to the other side.
    From that moment on, miracle and madness intermingled.
    Recalling what happened is awful, says Miriam (Schreiber) Mosesson, 71, now living in Stockholm. Indeed, she breaks down in fresh anguish every time she tells it; but she never shirked the responsibility of passing down the story of the Holocaust to her children and grandchildren. Last year, her ordeal was told to the Swedish people in an extraordinary TV documentary, ג€œIf One Of Us Should Die.ג€
    They were a very close family, eight girls and a boy, Yankele, the youngest. From their home in Karei-Mare, Transylvania (then part of Hungary), they were removed to a ghetto. Five weeks later, they were stuffed into a cattle car.
    "They said we were being sent to work, but my mother knew it was something bad. Yankele knew. Yankele was eight, a sweet boy." This is the worst of it for Miriam. She weeps, still brokenhearted. "He said 'Mommy, I want to live, I'm a little boy, I haven't lived yet.' Many people heard and everyone cried. It was terrible. Terrible."
    Miriam's husband Max comforts her. Her daughter Madeleine leaves the room sobbing. Her grandchildren, Yaniv and Liron, 11 and eight, are ashen and wide-eyed, though they have heard the story before.
    Composing herself, Miriam continues.
    "When we got to Auschwitz, someone separated us: 'You! Left. You! Right.' My mother was sent to the other side with Yankele, and Goldeleh, she was 10, and Bracha, 13. My mother called to the oldest sister: 'Fradeleh, take care of them. My children are now your children.' I didn't see my mother again.
    "That was the first day."
    Nothing was ever known about her father's fate. "Papa was not old, only 54, but he had white hair and a beard, so he looked old. Maybe he was sent to work, maybe right to the gas."
    Six now presumed dead. Six still alive, but in constant, mortal danger.
    Adding to the terrible peril was the fact that Miriam and Dora were twins -- identical twins. In Auschwitz, they were in the long shadow of  Mengele, notorious for his horrific experiments on twins.
    This was the beginning of their supernatural luck: the new inmates were formed into rows of five. One of the six sisters had to be separated, and a twin, Dora, wound up three rows behind.
    "Mengele didn't know we were twins. They were looking for twins. They said any twins should come forward, you'll eat well, live well, sleep in a good bed. They said it many times. Even the Jews urged us to go. But Fradeleh, she was smart, she said no, if they want twins, they want to do something to them. You'll be killed. If we are to die, we'll all die together."
    Togetherness was their lifeline, yet providence separated them when it served their survival. Sleeping arrangements at Auschwitz were six to a bed.
    Miriam and Dora were 15, Gabriella 19, Lili 21. The two oldest were Chana, 23, and Irena (Fradeleh), 27.
    "We were in Auschwitz for half a year, then we went to Frankfurt am Main where we had to work hard, chopping down trees in the woods to prepare for an airfield. We would wake at four in the morning, wash in cold water. It snowed all the time, and I had just a thin dress, a rag; we had to walk 20 kilometers to and from work.
    "The Allies knew there was a lot of ammunition in the woods, so they dropped bombs, where we worked, and a lot of the workers died."
    But not the Schreiber sisters. After four grueling months, the six were packed off again, to the Ravensbruck concentration camp.
    They suffered, but suffered together. "There was little to eat or drink, it was very cold. We had lice all over us, oh, it was awful. We used to go out into the snow and rub it on our bodies for some temporary relief from the terrible itching."
    Inmates at Ravensbruck slept six to a bed.
    After three months, they were sent to another concentration camp near Hamburg. "In the morning we had coffee, but it wasn't really coffee; in the afternoon, one small slice of bread with a tiny bit of margarine; and in the evening, soup." By then, they were weakened, ill, emaciated, faltering. Irena had a serious stomach ailment, Gabriella, heart disease.
    "We didn't have much strength, but we gave each other strength. If one sister said she didn't want to live anymore, Doreleh would say, 'We'll get through it together.' We understood: if one dies, we'll all die; the others wouldn't have the will to continue. When one was sick, the rest of us would give her the potatoes from our soup, to give her more nutrition."
    They were called the Six Twins, because they were inseparable -- even by the Nazis.
    "Once at Auschwitz, they took Gabriella away. She was 'selected.' One of the sisters was about to jump out the window to join Gabriella, so she shouldn't be alone.
    "But as she was jumping, that very second, she saw Gabriella coming back. For some reason, the Germans had changed their minds."
    "When we were leaving Auschwitz, I was separated from my sisters. I was in a row three rows away from them, and they rounded up 100 of us, but I was left out." It didn't matter where they were, as long as they were together. "Suddenly I was alone. My sisters were put on an open wagon, and I cried and begged to go with them. They cried to a Nazi, saying we're sisters, we don't know where she is. At first he said he couldn't help them. But then I heard a voice, 'Is there a Miriam Schreiber?' Yes, yes! And he gave me to my sisters, and again we were together."
    They believed the end had come when one day, the Nazis called for 50 Jews. Six of them were the Schreiber sisters. "It was very cold, and my sister gave me her blanket. The German said, 'You won't need that where you're going, because Heaven will be your blanket.' We thought we were about to die."
    By now, there wasn't much life left in them anyway. Miriam, then 16, weighed 27 kilo; Gabriella's ailing heart couldn't take much more, and Irena had contracted typhoid fever. 
    "We were sent to underground bunkers for a few hours, then they told us we're going on a train -- a real train. We thought, this can't be! Maybe the war is over!"
    It was. 
    The six sisters were routed to Denmark, freedom and salvation. After a short time, they were sent to their new homeland, Sweden.
    When Irena wanted to travel back to Transylvania two years later to see her fiance again, her sisters urged her to go. We're safe now, they agreed; we don't need each other anymore.
    For the first time, Irena -- the eldest who had been appointed Mother by her own mother on that first day in Auschwitz -- left her five sisters behind.
    But she couldn't get back: the Romanian authorities would not let her out of the country. When finally she could leave, in 1973, she immigrated to Israel. Two months ago, Irena passed away.
    Miriam, Dora, Gabriella, Lili and Chana live in the same neighborhood in Stockholm.
    They are still together.