Dear Eli and the Gang,
On Wednesday April 28th 1993 I received a long distance call from Toronto. The man identified himself as Eli Rubinstein, of the Jewish ... (the rest was lost in a quick staccato.
He continued to state, "I know that you will say no, but on Wednesday May 5th 1993, I am leading a group of university students from 9 different points in Canada (on a mission to Poland). This is the first university students group of its kind and they have expressed a wish to have a Survivor come with them". I had been recommended to him by Bernie Farber, the Executive Director of the Public Relations Department, Canadian Jewish Congress,Toronto, Canada (if I got the title wrong, please forgive me and correct it).
Bernie and I go a long way back. Active in Jewish community Centre in Ottawa, contemporary of my daughters, a son of a survivor, then a worker in Children's Aid Society in Ottawa, Bernie was active in the Workers Union and I represented management. We weren't exactly on the same side, all the same we had a great deal of respect for each other. Berne went on to better and bigger things, I retired.
In 1984 I had visitors in Ottawa. Marta Ciege from Brussels, Belgium, and her son Sam came to visit. Marta's expressed reason for the visit was to light fire under me. Marta had saved my life on numerous occasions both during the execution of my sister Ester in Auschwitz on January 5 1945, and her three unfortunate collaborators, for their acts of sabotage in Auschwitz, and soon after on January 18 1945, when the Germans decided to evacuate Auschwitz, and took us on the infamous death march, I was out of my mind, refused to budge, and Marta dragged me bodily.
Marta, an avid reader, came to me personally to demand justice. She said that a lot has been written here and there about smuggling of gunpowder from Union, but the stories are incomplete and sometimes distorted, because those that wrote knew about the hanging, but did not know the names of the girls involved, other than Roza Robota, or their roles leading to this event.
I owe Marta my life so I had to obey. Rationally I knew that she was right, emotionally I was angry and resentful that the past is catching up with me.
The appearance immediately after the war of a larger quantity of instant heroes who fought in the Warsaw Ghetto, than the actual fighters in the ghetto, stupefied me, enraged me and catapulted me into 40 years of silence.
40 years later at Marta's insistance, and at the inspiring example of a small group of "Union" survivors, who undertook and carried through, against enormous bureaucratic obstacles, the erection of a monument honouring our Four Heroines, in the Memorial Garden of Yad Vashem in Jerusalem for posterity. I became more vocal and more active, part of me still resenting the meotional burden and the amount of work, time and expense it involved still, the sense of responsibility and duty prevailed.