Shviger is Yiddish for Mother in Law...though I can't swear to the spelling. But the story I will tell you I can swear to. It's my Mother in Law's story, as best we can determine, as she to this day is rather reticent about discussing it in detail. What I relate I have gleaned from my wife mostly, and partly from my Mother in Law. It is a real life version of Sophie's Choice.
Helen (my MiL) was born in 1928 in Slovakia, along with her sisters Grettie and Irene. When they were but infants, their parents left Slovakia and moved to a town outside of Antwerp, Belgium. They opened a small grocery shop there, and life was better than it had been in Slovakia, for awhile. They had no idea what awaited them at that time...But slowly, as events unfolded in Europe leading up to WWII, they saw the handwriting on the wall.
From what I've heard, they were not really very observant Jews...not particularly religious or tradition bound...But that's not to say that they weren't Jewish. They were. And even adhering to just a few traditions were probably enough to set them apart. Belgium at first thought that it might be relatively safe from Hitler's designs, as it was politically neutral and many there spoke German. In 1940 the Germans invaded the country.
My shviger and her family managed to live another 3 years there before the Gestapo arrived at the door. Her Mother was in the kitchen and saw the car coming down the street, and knew instantly what was about to happen. She had to think very fast.
After the Nazi occupation of Belgium, Jews could not find work in the aboveground economy. Helen's father managed to find employment, off and on, doing handiwork and odd jobs in the neighborhood for Gentile families who paid him under the table. Grettie, the oldest girl, had managed to snag a job as a seamstress doing sewing for various families. Helen and her sister Irene did not yet work. Leading up to 1943, Helen's Mother sensed the ill omens around her. She took Irene, her youngest daughter, to the local Monastery and asked if the Nuns would take her in and obscure her Jewish identity. They agreed to do so.
On the day that the Gestapo arrived, Helen and her Mother were at home. Her Father was away working for a family in the neighborhood, and sister Grettie was working at her job as a seamstress away from the house. The car pulled up in front of their house, and the uniformed men got out. My Schviger's Mother was looking out of her kitchen window, and knew immediately what was about to transpire. She told Helen to answer the sharp rap at the door....and quietly slipped out the back.
And she ran. Ran like the wind. She ran to her other daughter, Grettie, and told her needed to stop what she was doing and leave with her immediately. Together, they ran to where her husband was working, and told him what had just happened. They never went back home again. The Gestapo, finding Helen alone in the house, took her in custody and she eventually wound up in Auschwitz, at the tender age of somewhere between 15 and 16 years of age. Alone. Her family joined a caravan of other Jews trying to flee to France, but upon reaching the border they were turned back.
As to the details of what Helen experienced at Auschwitz, I know little. So, too, does my wife. Helen doesn't speak of it much at all. She has buried that episode of her life more than six feet under. Yet, she is a survivor. She has the tsttoo on her left forearm to show for it. And, in a strange way, her status as such has made her and the ever dwindling numbers of those like her celebrities of sorts in Israel. She attends all of the Holocaust memorial occasions, and quite frankly she derives a small measure of satisfaction in the attention that she receives at these events. But to speak from the heart, openly about her experiences...to her only daughter...that is something that she still prefers not to do.
She was freed from Auschwitz by the Allied forces towards the end of WWII, and spent some months in refugee camps in Europe, and was eventually reunited with her family. It was then that she found her "inner Jew", and became a zionist. Again, the details are hazy, but she managed to land herself upon a boat destined for Israel by the name of the Altalena. It was a boat full of radicalized zionists, who looked to a man by the name of Ze'ev Jabotinsky for their inspiration. The boat was loaded both with Jews looking to move to Israel, and weapons to arm them for the fight they anticipated upon reaching that place. Israel's government, at the time, was not particularly happy about the fact that the Altalena was departing Europe and destined for its shore. Ben Gurion saw the crew of the Altalena as a rival militia force that was not under his control or authority, and feared that it would undermine the unity of the fledgeling State. The ship was not allowed to land...and was ultimately sunk in a confrontation with the new IDF.
I don't know if Helen was arrested with the others and later released, as many were, or how exactly she made final footfall on Israeli soil. But she did. About a year and a half later her parents joined her there. She lived for awhile as a devoted Kibbutnik, but as she grew older her politics hardened, as they often do.
Today she is an unrepentant Likudnik. As right wing as they come. Still spry and full of piss and vinegar, as they say. She'll outlive us all. But for all she's gone through, her politics are bleak. Perhaps that's to be expected. She has a complicated relationship with my wife, that's for sure. Perhaps that's to be expected as well.
She reminds me a lot of my Grandmother on my Dad's side...hell to cross, but the best friend you could ever have once she lets you into her circle.