Chana Szpilman Wallace, 107, has died. She was one of the world's oldest Holocaust survivors; she lived nearly 70 years after the Holocaust had ended in 1945. Two other Holocaust survivors also lived to remarkable ages and died recently. They were Austrian Leopold Engleitner, 107,and England’s Alice Herz-Sommer, 110.
She was born in 1907.
Born in 1907 in Ostrowiec, Poland to Reuven Szpilman and Chaya Rosen Szpilman, Wallace was the second youngest of eight children. She lived for many years in what she described as a very happy home. “Every Saturday night, my father brought out his violin and all eight children would sing and dance around him as he played,” she said. Her father was a renowned violinist and teacher. He taught the violin to the father of Wladyslaw Szpilman, on whom the book and movie The Pianist was based, and who is Wallace’s first cousin. By the age of 18, as was common then in Poland, Wallace was engaged through an arranged marriage to Jankiel Lustig. By 20, she had her first son, Liebela, and by 22, she had a second son named Uris, who died of pneumonia at two and a half weeks old.
But in 1940, their happiness was shattered as the German War Machine took over and the whole family was taken first to the ghettos and then to the labor camps. At one point, Wallace was nearly executed.
By 1940, the Nazis were beginning to take over Poland, and Wallace was soon forced to leave her home for the ghetto, and then placed in a labour camp. She would never see most of her siblings or her father again. From 1942-1944, she worked in the Yegev camp. “One time they made us all line up and they shot every 10th person. I was ninth,” she recalled. Along with over 1000 people, she suffered without food, while painting and making cement blocks and iron, until she was transported by train to the Auschwitz concentration camp.
When she disembarked there, Josef Mengele himself, the brutal Nazi doctor who tortured prisoners through scientific experimentation, was directing the newly arrived to the right for work and to the left to enter the gas chamber. Wallace was sent to the right. She had her left arm branded with a blue indelible number, her head shaved, and was forced to work in Auschwitz from September 1944 until she was transferred to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in January 1945.
She said the reason for her survival was her spirituality.
Wallace consistently cited her spirituality as one reason for her survival through the Holocaust. “Every morning I would wake up and another friend next to me would be dead. We were starving, we were freezing. The only reason I survived is because I had dreams every night that my mother brought me food. And when I woke up, I wasn’t full, but I wasn’t hungry,” she said.
Also at the age of 100, Wallace explained her own secrets to long life. “From childhood, I always said that you should never give up in your life. Have faith in God and don’t give in. Never say ‘I can’t’ and don’t look for trouble. Most importantly, don’t say ‘I had a bad day yesterday.’ Think positive. Be grateful. Live for today and tomorrow, live for others before yourself, and be kind to people. Then you’ll be happy,” she said.
These peoples' lives should serve as a reminder that there should be no place for far-right extremism in government ever again. It should not be encouraged, tolerated, supported, or engaged in any way, shape or form. Racist, sexist, homophobic remarks or any other sort of intimidating actions directed against anybody should not be tolerated.
Prevention all starts with families willing to teach their children right from wrong and governments which are willing to provide for the welfare of all the people and willing to facilitate this process. Then, it starts which schools where teachers are taught to nurture children and develop them into productive adults by the time they reach 18. And then colleges have a responsibility to help one interact with people from all different types of backgrounds and experiences so that when they graduate, they can easily find a job.
And at the international level, prevention means cooperation between other countries. It is really interesting to get on the White House Youtube Channel and listen to President Obama interact with foreign leaders. We learn a lot of history along the way. For instance, during Obama's talk with Prime Minister Rutte of the Netherlands at the international nuclear conference, PM Rutte talked about the shared values that our two countries have. The Netherlands also successfully declared independence and was one of the first countries in the world to sign a friendship agreement with the US after it became independent. The notion that countries could exist in peace and make deals in those days without conflict was a revolutionary idea at the time. Our first ambassador to that country was John Adams, afterwards President.
While the main focus was nuclear disarmament, a lot of other business was conducted as well. President Obama and President Xi of China met together as well. President Xi of China talked about his country's foreign policy values of respect, non-confrontation, and stability. The US and China have gotten closer despite the recent flare-up over the NSA spying on one of China's biggest companies; Michelle Obama paid a visit to China with the family's two daughters. Among other business conducted, gleaned from various news sources, John Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergi Lavrov had a productive conversation with Kerry agreeing with Lavrov that the far-right extremist elements in Ukraine needed to be reigned in. And even Lavrov and the Ukrainian foreign minister talked to each other.
In the final analysis, preventing another Holocaust means remembering the stories of the survivors of this one. It also means prevention at the local, state, national, and international levels through international cooperation. There will be plenty of differences, but the lines of communication always have to be open so that misunderstandings can be avoided. And diplomacy means respecting the legitimate national interests of other countries so that red lines are not crossed.