Leah Frank and Ellie Rubin call their story of rescuing their sister from Holland nothing more than a miracle. On April 18, 1943, exactly 80 years ago, the girls’ parents decided to hide them from the Nazis.
“The day after I turned 7 and my 4 sisters (our birthdays are on the same day), strangers put us on bike trunks and took us away from our parents. After that, we never saw them again” , says Leah Frank, one of the sisters.
The girls were hidden in different families. The people who set out to save Leah and Ellie, the sisters recall, risked their own lives and then passed them off as their daughters.
“I was hidden by people who weren’t Jewish. I lived with them for more than two years and I still communicate with this family, their children were my peers at the time,” recalls Leah Frank.
“They hid me at the farm. This family was also not Jewish, but to this day their children wish me a happy birthday, considering me part of their family,” says another sister, Ellie Rubin.
Their real family was less fortunate. After the girls managed to hide, the Nazis took the rest to Auschwitz.
“Our parents tried to hide in a small village, our family was very respected there, but a girl betrayed them all,” says Leah. At that time, for every Jew who surrendered to the Nazis, a reward was given, just over 7 Dutch guilders. Ellie Rubin says that for the seven members of her family, this girl received just over 50 guilders. Later, all the family members: mom, dad, grandparents were killed in Auschwitz. Only their father’s brother survived.
It was he who later found Leah, then Ellie. He told them the fate of his parents and took the sisters to his family. In 1956, at the start of the Hungarian Revolution, they immigrated to the United States. The sisters, like other survivors of those years, tell their stories at the Los Angeles Holocaust Museum.
“The museum was founded in the early 1960s by Holocaust survivors. They knew better than anyone how important it is to create such a museum, not only in memory of their loved ones, but also as a warning to future generations.
There are now several thousand Holocaust survivors in Los Angeles. About 150 of them constantly visit our museum. Many are very active and tell their stories in the museum on Sundays. They come here to give lectures to students, to share their memories, ”says the vice-president of the museum, Jordana Gesler.
Every year in April, the museum organizes events for Holocaust Day, in Hebrew: Yom HaShoah – in memory of the millions of Jews who fell victim to Nazism during World War II.
“My friends’ parents were Holocaust survivors. As a child, I saw their tattoos and learned their meaning. The number of these people is decreasing every year, and these museums are more important than ever today. We must do everything to prevent all forms of hatred, violence and aggression, anti-Semitism and racism, such as the armed attack on two Jews in Los Angeles earlier this year,” said the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, who came to the Holocaust Museum. also honor the memory of the victims of this tragedy.
Those who survived those terrible years are convinced that in order for history not to repeat itself, we must talk about it and remember the approximately 6 million victims of the Holocaust, tortured, shot in concentration camps, poisoned in the gas chambers. Among them are the relatives of Leah and Ellie, whom they last saw on a hot April day on the 43rd.
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