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Through almost six decades of marriage, Rachel and Adam Shtibel have taken vastly different approaches to managing the trauma of their Holocaust childhoods.
As a young girl, Rachel Milbauer spent 18 months living in a cramped earthen dugout beneath a barn in eastern Poland to survive the darkest days of the Holocaust.
The man she would later marry, Adam Shtibel, fled the liquidation of a Jewish ghetto in Poland and spent months hiding with other desperate children in forests, barns and cellars. He would ultimately survive the Nazis by passing himself off as a Polish orphan, Jozef Rycuniak.
Rachel Shtibel has spent years coming to terms with her experience and giving voice to it. She has offered videotaped testimony to the Shoah Foundation for Visual History and Education, and — against her husband’s strenuous objections — authored an emotional memoir, The Violin, which was among the first books published by Canada’s Azrieli Foundation as parts of its Holocaust survivors memoirs program.
Holocaust survivor Rachel Shtibel.
She has recounted her story in front of countless audiences as part of her commitment to “tell the world what happened.”
Adam Shtibel, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, told his story immediately after the war to Poland’s Central Jewish Historical Commission. For the next six decades, however, Shtibel preferred not to talk about it.
“After the war, I was never talking about my survival,” he explained in an interview. “And will I will tell you why: If I would have to think about the war all the time, and if I would have to be sorry for my survival, I would not be capable to live a normal life. I had to move ahead.”
On Wednesday morning, however, 86-year-old Adam Shtibel joined his wife, Rachel, onstage at the Algonquin Commons Theatre to relive his childhood experiences for the first time in public.
He told his story to 800 Ottawa high school students invited to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rachel also told her story as did Toronto’s Paul Freund, 85, who survived a death march from Auschwitz in the late stages of the Second World War after suffering under Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia.
Holocaust survivor Adam Shtibel.
The event, which will be repeated Thursday for a second audience of high school students, was organized by the Azrieli Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa.
Asked why he decided to tell his story to an audience after so many years, Adam Shtibel struggled for an answer. “I guess it was time,” he said finally.
Shtibel told students that the Nazis marched into his small Polish town, Komorow, in September 1939, within weeks of the outbreak of the Second World War. They put in place a series of anti-Jewish rules, and confiscated their property and valuables. Jewish children were not allowed to attend school. Many were forced to work as slave labourers.
Shtibel’s neighbourhood was turned into a Jewish ghetto, and displaced Jews from surrounding towns crowded into the homes. Typhus spread through the community and Shtibel’s father, Chaim, died of the disease in 1941.
Shtibel’s mother sent him to work as a shepherd on the nearby farm of a friendly Polish couple. He would sneak back into the ghetto to visit his family on weekends.
In the spring of 1942, he said, the Germans raided the ghetto during one of his visits. Shtibel convinced his mother to hide in a crawl space below the family’s home, but before he could make his own escape, German soldiers captured him and brought him to the town square.
Shtibel managed to slip away from the crowd and fled the town. The Komorow ghetto was liquidated months later when his mother and brother were rounded up and shipped to the Belzec extermination camp.
Local farmers were then warned that they would be shot if they were found to be harbouring Jews. Shtibel’s employer reluctantly told him he had to leave.
“It was a cold December night when I left my farmer’s house and walked into the forest,” he recalled. Shtibel encountered a small band of Jewish children, and they spent the next six months begging and scavenging for food at night, and sleeping during the day. “I was always hungry and I was covered in lice,” he told the students.
In 1943, Polish police caught him stealing food and he was taken to a displaced persons camp, where he registered under a Polish name. Shtibel would live as a Polish orphan until two years after the war, when he finally revealed he was a Jew.
He joined the Polish Air Force and became a fighter pilot, then went to work in the aircraft industry. In 1955, he met 20-year-old Rachel Milbauer at a friend’s home in Wroclow, Poland. Milbauer had survived the war by lying down inside a bunker — three metres square — along with nine relatives and family friends. The bunker was below a straw pile in a farmer’s barn. Two men went out every night to steal food, sometimes from the troughs of pigs.
Rachel and Adam quickly fell in love.
“It was good that it was another survivor because we shared: I told him about my survival and he told me about his,” said Rachel. “It felt good to meet someone with the same past and the same needs.”
They married the following year. The couple moved to Israel, then settled in Canada in 1968. Rachel worked as a research scientist in Toronto and Adam found another job in the aircraft industry. They raised two daughters.
Their different approaches to the past, however, were underlined in the 1980s. Adam Shtibel was never certain of his birth date because his childhood had been so tumultuous. He had invented a birthday when he registered as a Pole, but he had no interest in pursuing the truth. Unbeknownst to him, however, his wife wrote to Polish officials in 1984 and received his certified birth certificate.
It turned out that Adam was older than both had believed. “This was a big disappointment to her,” Shtibel smiled. “I was two years older. I didn’t know.”
查看原文...
As a young girl, Rachel Milbauer spent 18 months living in a cramped earthen dugout beneath a barn in eastern Poland to survive the darkest days of the Holocaust.
The man she would later marry, Adam Shtibel, fled the liquidation of a Jewish ghetto in Poland and spent months hiding with other desperate children in forests, barns and cellars. He would ultimately survive the Nazis by passing himself off as a Polish orphan, Jozef Rycuniak.
Rachel Shtibel has spent years coming to terms with her experience and giving voice to it. She has offered videotaped testimony to the Shoah Foundation for Visual History and Education, and — against her husband’s strenuous objections — authored an emotional memoir, The Violin, which was among the first books published by Canada’s Azrieli Foundation as parts of its Holocaust survivors memoirs program.
Holocaust survivor Rachel Shtibel.
She has recounted her story in front of countless audiences as part of her commitment to “tell the world what happened.”
Adam Shtibel, who lost his entire family in the Holocaust, told his story immediately after the war to Poland’s Central Jewish Historical Commission. For the next six decades, however, Shtibel preferred not to talk about it.
“After the war, I was never talking about my survival,” he explained in an interview. “And will I will tell you why: If I would have to think about the war all the time, and if I would have to be sorry for my survival, I would not be capable to live a normal life. I had to move ahead.”
On Wednesday morning, however, 86-year-old Adam Shtibel joined his wife, Rachel, onstage at the Algonquin Commons Theatre to relive his childhood experiences for the first time in public.
He told his story to 800 Ottawa high school students invited to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day. Rachel also told her story as did Toronto’s Paul Freund, 85, who survived a death march from Auschwitz in the late stages of the Second World War after suffering under Nazi occupation in Czechoslovakia.
Holocaust survivor Adam Shtibel.
The event, which will be repeated Thursday for a second audience of high school students, was organized by the Azrieli Foundation and the Jewish Federation of Ottawa.
Asked why he decided to tell his story to an audience after so many years, Adam Shtibel struggled for an answer. “I guess it was time,” he said finally.
Shtibel told students that the Nazis marched into his small Polish town, Komorow, in September 1939, within weeks of the outbreak of the Second World War. They put in place a series of anti-Jewish rules, and confiscated their property and valuables. Jewish children were not allowed to attend school. Many were forced to work as slave labourers.
Shtibel’s neighbourhood was turned into a Jewish ghetto, and displaced Jews from surrounding towns crowded into the homes. Typhus spread through the community and Shtibel’s father, Chaim, died of the disease in 1941.
Shtibel’s mother sent him to work as a shepherd on the nearby farm of a friendly Polish couple. He would sneak back into the ghetto to visit his family on weekends.
In the spring of 1942, he said, the Germans raided the ghetto during one of his visits. Shtibel convinced his mother to hide in a crawl space below the family’s home, but before he could make his own escape, German soldiers captured him and brought him to the town square.
Shtibel managed to slip away from the crowd and fled the town. The Komorow ghetto was liquidated months later when his mother and brother were rounded up and shipped to the Belzec extermination camp.
Local farmers were then warned that they would be shot if they were found to be harbouring Jews. Shtibel’s employer reluctantly told him he had to leave.
“It was a cold December night when I left my farmer’s house and walked into the forest,” he recalled. Shtibel encountered a small band of Jewish children, and they spent the next six months begging and scavenging for food at night, and sleeping during the day. “I was always hungry and I was covered in lice,” he told the students.
In 1943, Polish police caught him stealing food and he was taken to a displaced persons camp, where he registered under a Polish name. Shtibel would live as a Polish orphan until two years after the war, when he finally revealed he was a Jew.
He joined the Polish Air Force and became a fighter pilot, then went to work in the aircraft industry. In 1955, he met 20-year-old Rachel Milbauer at a friend’s home in Wroclow, Poland. Milbauer had survived the war by lying down inside a bunker — three metres square — along with nine relatives and family friends. The bunker was below a straw pile in a farmer’s barn. Two men went out every night to steal food, sometimes from the troughs of pigs.
Rachel and Adam quickly fell in love.
“It was good that it was another survivor because we shared: I told him about my survival and he told me about his,” said Rachel. “It felt good to meet someone with the same past and the same needs.”
They married the following year. The couple moved to Israel, then settled in Canada in 1968. Rachel worked as a research scientist in Toronto and Adam found another job in the aircraft industry. They raised two daughters.
Their different approaches to the past, however, were underlined in the 1980s. Adam Shtibel was never certain of his birth date because his childhood had been so tumultuous. He had invented a birthday when he registered as a Pole, but he had no interest in pursuing the truth. Unbeknownst to him, however, his wife wrote to Polish officials in 1984 and received his certified birth certificate.
It turned out that Adam was older than both had believed. “This was a big disappointment to her,” Shtibel smiled. “I was two years older. I didn’t know.”
查看原文...
