Never to Be Forgotten
A Young Girl’s Holocaust Memoir
by
Beatrice Muchman
Copyright © 1997 and 2016
Beatrice Muchman
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1-6028-0200-1
Published in eBook format by KTAV Publishing House, Inc.
Converted by http://www.eBookIt.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data*
Muchman, Beatrice, 1933-
Never to be forgotten: a young girl’s Holocaust memoir / by Beatrice Muchman.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-88125-598-X
1. Muchman, Beatrice, 1933– 2. Jewish children in the Holocaust—Belgium—Biography. 3. Jews—Belgium—Biography. I. Title.
| DS135.B43M83 | 1997 |
| 940.53’ 18’092—dc21 | 97-8828 |
| CIP |
* for the original 1997 edition of this book, published by KTAV Publishing House
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
DEDICATION
This book is dedicated to my parents, Julius and Meta Westheimer, whose love and courage transcend time. To my son, Robbie, whose beloved memory I will cherish all the rest of my life. And to my treasured daughter, Wendy, so that she may preserve her legacy and tell the story.
Of the 57,000 jews who lived in Belgium at the time of the German occupation, 29,000 survived. like all Belgian resisters, the members of the CDJ (The Jewish Defense Committee) paid a higher price than those they defended. Of its eight founding members, six were deported, and of those, only two survived.
Yvonne Jospa, a key figure in the jewish Resistance, recalled “I was the head of the jewish children’s committee within the CDJ. Of the 4,000 children the CDJ placed more than 3,000 were saved.“
Based on “The Rescuers“
by Gay Block and Malka Drucker
The suffering that exists here makes heaven cry!
— Walter Hurwitz, writing about conditions at Camp Gurs in France, December, 1940.
You don’t know it; no, you can’t grasp the misery that was spared you. You are outside luck itself.
— Frieda Hurwitz, describing life in Belgium during the Nazi terror, in a letter to her sister, October, 1945.
I will keep you as a treasure, and later on, when my hands or the hands of my children open your pages ... it will be a reminder to everyone about a little country far away called Belgium.
— Béatrice Westheimer, age thirteen, making the last entry in her Belgian journal, October, 1946.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
In the beginning my accomplished student, Kathy Stamp, gave each letter that I translated a resting place, spending untold hours at her computer. In her capable hands the letters were categorized according to the years in which they were written and the family members who wrote them. Together we worked to unravel a seemingly endless maze and arrived at a chronological list of letters that became alive to tell the tragic, yet inspiring story of a resilient family in search of one another and a path to safety in America.
Professor Henri Hurwitz, my cousin, is part of the story. He helped me decipher his own father’s minuscule handwriting so we could translate his letters. Henri is the family historian, his recall and wealth of knowledge never ceases to amazes me.
Maxime Steinberg, Belgian historian and the author of many valuable volumes on the period of the Holocaust offered me the background and encouragement to write and have the memoir published.
My agent, Muriel Nellis, took this project to her heart. She introduced me to Paul Engleman who became my editor. Paul is a Catholic of German ancestry well qualified to work on the story of a German-Jewish girl who was once converted to Catholicism. We became immediate friends. Without his literary talent and dedication this book might still be in the making.
Although she lived long and wisely, Anita Muchman, my mother-in-law and loyal fan did not live long enough to see this book in print. It would have held a place of honor in her extensive library.
Never too busy to answer my phone calls to her office at Encyclopedia Britannica, Marilyn Klein, acted both as critic and fact finder whenever her schedule permitted.
Good friends and family members read some of the early drafts of the manuscript. They managed to compliment the book so skillfully that I hardly realized I was being corrected.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, now holds in its treasure trove my beloved family history in photographs and documents. Suzy Snyder, a curator at the museum, and my friend, gave this memoir its legs. Her tireless efforts to make certain these donated documents became acceptable images on the pages that follow are beyond appreciation.
Ryan Levesque, President of eBookIt.com, his invaluable associate Karen Carpenter, and his staff worked diligently on this revised edition, patiently tolerating my numerous questions and emails.
For his enduring patience, vivid humor, love and support, I remain ever thankful to my late husband. He gave me the courage to carry out the process so the story would not be forgotten and could be shared.
With genuine understanding, never trying to replace the past but rather joining in my future endeavors, my husband, Lawrence Abrams, has been a steady presence in my life. A loyal companion and “chauffeur” accompanying me to my speaking engagements. He continues to be my editor in chief.
To them all I am deeply grateful.
PREFACE
The first time I saw my father cry was the second-to-last time I saw him. I was nine years old. That was more than fifty years ago, during the summer of 1942.
We were in the Belgian countryside, in the town of Ottignies, about twenty-five kilometers from Brussels. My father had brought my cousin Henri and me there on a long train ride that morning. We were at the home of two Catholic women, where we were to spend the summer.
My father began weeping when he kissed me goodbye. The women, who were sisters, looked on awkwardly. Or maybe I was the one who felt awkward, wanting so much to look like a grownup and embarrassed to see my father, of all people, acting like a child.
I understood a lot of things by the time I was nine years old. After fleeing our home in Berlin and moving to Brussels three years earlier, after learning to speak French and, more importantly, not to speak German, after being forced to quit school and hide in our cramped apartment for fear of discovery by the authorities, I understood things that a child that age should not have to know things that too many children my age, at that time, knew all too well.
But on that beautiful summer day I did not, or perhaps would not, understand why my father was crying.
My parents had prepared me for the trip, telling me I would enjoy life away from the city—the fresh air, the sunshine, the flowers, the trees. But the way my father was behaving, spending my summer in the country seemed like anything but a good thing. He was spoiling