{"id":6473,"date":"2013-06-26T16:30:11","date_gmt":"2013-06-26T23:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/?p=6473"},"modified":"2013-06-26T16:33:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-26T23:33:46","slug":"two-local-women-who-resisted-the-nazis-cant-forget","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forallevents.com\/reviews\/two-local-women-who-resisted-the-nazis-cant-forget\/","title":{"rendered":"Two local women who resisted the Nazis can\u2019t forget"},"content":{"rendered":"

Some things we should never forget.<\/p>\n

Like, the Holocaust wasn\u2019t limited to Jews. And, Jews did fight baWe certainly must remember the six million dead. But the Nazis also killed millions of non-Jews \u2014 Soviet prisoners of war, Polish citizens, Gypsies, the disabled, political and religious dissenters, gays.<\/p>\n

Decades ago, my first day at the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California, a man who’d survived Auschwitz-Birkenau and four other World War II camps pleaded, “No matter what else you do, don’t let anyone forget the Holocaust.”<\/p>\n

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Sonia and Paul Orbuch. Photo: Woody Weingarten<\/p><\/div>\n

I never forgot him, or the slogan \u201cNever forget!\u201d \u2014 the rallying cry for Jews the world over.<\/p>\n

But it was a while before I\u2019d encounter anyone who\u2019d joined the resistance.<\/p>\n

They, too, bear scars \u2014 physical, emotional.<\/p>\n

A month ago I met octogenarian Sonia Orbuch. She fought Nazis as a teen, part of a partisan unit whose mission was resistance and sabotage, including the mining of train tracks.<\/p>\n

Mostly she was an impromptu field nurse, helping doctors amputate limbs, treating the wounded with skimpy supplies and blood-soaked bandages \u2014 and cradling the dying.<\/p>\n

The Corte Madera resident can\u2019t forget the nightmare, or a brutal winter hiding in a Ukrainian forest.<\/p>\n

She lived fearfully \u201call the time\u201d then, and knows she\u2019ll never forgive. \u201cEven when it\u2019s a happy moment or a holiday, I cannot smile, cannot laugh,\u201d she told me. \u201cThe pain is tremendous.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a book aimed at teenagers, Sonia said, \u201cEvery day my heart aches for the loss of my mother and two brothers, dozens of other relatives, and nearly all of my childhood friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

But she also knows it\u2019s crucial to dispel the myth that Jews didn\u2019t resist the Nazis.<\/p>\n

Her son, Paul, a San Anselmo resident, actualized his legacy by co-founding the Jewish Partisan Educational Foundation, www.jewishpartisans.org<\/a>. It, he noted, is \u201cseeking 100,000 teachers, Jewish and non-Jewish\u201d to inspire new generations by showing \u201cthe history and life lessons of the Jewish partisans.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s it like being a survivor\u2019s child?<\/p>\n

\u201cI always go back to what Sonia\u2019s said, \u2018You have to stand up early against tyranny, oppression, discrimination, anti-Semitism, whenever and wherever it occurs, and you have to teach the kids.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet even as his messages spread hope, others dispense hatred: The Associated Press reported a 30 percent worldwide surge in anti-Semitic violence and vandalism last year, economic nosedives again making Jews scapegoats.<\/p>\n

Paul once told a Marin Jewish Community Center audience about hearing Sonia\u2019s friends reminisce \u201cabout the war, their losses and their survival experiences. They did so with tears and sometimes with humor. And almost always there was anger and the refrain\u2026of \u2018never again.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

His daughter, Eva, who lives in San Jose, subsequently recalled that she\u2019d told her bat mitzvah tutor she \u201cunderstood what my grandmother had gone through. My tutor challenged me\u2026and I came to realize\u2026I may never be able to truly understand or feel what my family and millions of others endured. I will only be able to ask questions and grapple with my past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another resister, Paula Ross, lived in Fairfax since 1990 but just moved to the Veterans Home of Yountville.<\/p>\n

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Paula Ross outside Whistlestop in San Rafael. Photo: Yvonne Roberts.<\/p><\/div>\n

The Vienna-born 92-year-old can\u2019t forget either \u2014 how she fought with the resistance to retaliate: \u201cThey killed my uncles, aunts, cousins and friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

She still doesn\u2019t \u201clike to talk about it, because it was very traumatic,\u201d but, despite misgivings, she returned to Austria two years ago \u201cand taught teenagers about the Holocaust, telling them exactly what the Nazis did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan Blum, a Tiburon native, is director of education for the Holocaust Center, part of Jewish Family and Children\u2019s Services in San Francisco. She says a survivor once was defined as someone who\u2019d been in a death camp but now signifies \u201canyone who was targeted for death and survived.\u201d<\/p>\n

That means they \u201cmay have been in an extermination camp, may have been a hidden child, may have been a Partisan, may have fled in 1936.\u201d<\/p>\n

Morgan recently gathered \u201c600 students and teachers from 101 private, public and parochial schools to participate in our annual Day of Learning. About 95 percent were not Jewish. Over 70 percent had never heard a survivor before, but meeting one, they could make a connection.\u201d<\/p>\n

One attendee, after hearing about Rwandan, Cambodian, Bosnian, Darfur genocides, vowed \u201cto prevent this from happening again, to not be a bystander.\u201d<\/p>\n

Another told Morgan it\u2019s critical \u201cto carry on this story because the next generation won\u2019t be able to hear from a living survivor.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yes!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Some things we should never forget. Like, the Holocaust wasn\u2019t limited to Jews. And, Jews did fight baWe certainly must remember the six million dead. But the Nazis also killed…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"yasr_overall_rating":0,"yasr_post_is_review":"","yasr_auto_insert_disabled":"","yasr_review_type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-6473","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-woody-weingarten"},"yasr_visitor_votes":{"stars_attributes":{"read_only":true,"span_bottom":"