She passed away in her sleep on Good Friday, the night before Passover, spot on the 76th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. Just a week before, she was delighted to see the latest 3D ultrasound of her first great grandson. The day before, she seemed comfortable, but sadly it was time. At 96, she held the dubious honor of being the longest residing resident at her assisted living facility.
Rose Bliman was a holocaust survivor who led a long and remarkable life. But seventy-six years ago, she endured unspeakable horrors that forced her to completely reinvent herself.
Born in 1923 in Grodzisk, Poland, my mother’s early childhood was happy and carefree. Her father was a successful wheat broker and her mother a devoted homemaker. Although her parents never finished high school, they were progressive for their time. They sent their daughters to a secular high school, where my mother excelled in history and Latin and her sister excelled at math and science.
My mother enjoyed a privileged childhood, but she never missed a chance to chide her older sister who always got the latest fashions while my mother wore hand-me-downs.
But in November, 1941 everything changed. Nazi soldiers arrested the family and trucked them twenty miles to a tiny apartment in the Warsaw Ghetto. Six months later, my mother came home to an empty apartment and found out that her parents had been sent to a death camp.
That night, she joined a small group of young people living next door who survived by their wits. But by Passover 1943, over a quarter million Jews were squeezed into less than a square mile, and conditions in Warsaw Ghetto got so bad that a desperate uprising broke out.
Facing stiff resistance, Nazi troops set the ghetto ablaze. Soon it became a raging inferno, and nearly everyone died, but my mother climbed down from a window above the fence and in a hail of bullets, made her escape!
She ran eighteen miles to her deserted home, where she found her mother’s hidden jewelry and traded it in for false papers and a new identity. This paved the way for her to become a foreign worker in the heart of Germany, where her sewing skill was exploited to repair Nazi uniforms.
But in a harrowing close call, one of her Polish co-workers accused her of being Jewish. Of course, she denied it, but she was jailed anyway. Despite solitary confinement, meager rations, and daily interrogations, my mother stood her ground.
The Gestapo couldn’t break her. Fluent in Latin, she could pray like a nun. This confused the authorities, and after a month in jail, she returned to work.
When the war ended, she returned to the ruins of her hometown, where her childhood girlfriend, nurtured her broken soul and restored her faith in God. But living in postwar Poland was extremely dangerous for displaced Jews, and like many others, these survivors moved to a displaced persons camp in West Germany.
That’s where she met and married my father, Morris. My parents hoped to start new lives in America, but a strict US quota prevented immediate Jewish immigration at the time. So in 1948, they immigrated to the new state of Israel, where my father became a machinist and where five years later, I was born.
When US immigration informed them their turn had arrived, my parents didn’t know what to do, but in view of my mother’s strength and my father’s determination, they decided to immigrate to the land of opportunity in 1960. My father worked 16-hour days as a master tool and die maker, and within two years, he was able to save enough money to buy a small apartment building in North Hollywood.
Throughout my life, my parents showered me with love and attention (sometimes too much attention). They made it possible for me to go to college, become a doctor, and travel abroad. In 1980, I married Pam and a few years later, my parents got their legacy grandchildren, Jennifer and Daniel, whom they showered with love and attention.
Traumatized by the Northridge earthquake, my parents packed up and moved to Las Vegas, where they enjoyed the good life—a brand new townhouse, exciting night life, and all-you-can-eat buffets. It was idyllic for two years, until my father developed pancreatic cancer, which led to his untimely demise in 1996.
To be closer to family, my mother moved to assisted living in Thousand Oaks, where she enjoyed the love and attention of dedicated professionals, frequent house calls by her son, periodic visits by devoted friends and family, hugs of a successful grandson, and horn concertos of a talented granddaughter.
However, she did have flashbacks, nightmares, and bouts of depression. But Mom’s message is a message of hope. Never lose hope! Because against all odds, she got a new lease on life, and when the holocaust tried to take it away, God renewed that lease for 76 more years!
Mom’s passing represents the end of an era. In 1995, movie producer Steven Spielberg recorded Mom’s story for posterity, because as he put it, “generations [should] never forget what so few lived to tell.”
I love you, Mom, may you rest in peace!
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