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'GSD' that Sala and Her Letters Survive
I have spent more than 15 years working on a collection of letters that my mother Sala received during her years of imprisonment in Nazi slave labor camps. These letters were so precious to her that she risked her life again and again to preserve them – yet when she arrived in the United States as the war bride of an American GI, she put them in a closet and said nothing about them, or about her experiences, for nearly 50 years, until fears of death forced her hand, and she gave the letters to me.
My mother overcame her illness, and is now 83. I have learned so much from her and from these precious documents, but there are still places I cannot follow her.
The youngest of 11 in a religious Polish-Jewish family, my mother was a bold and resolute sixteen- year-old when her older sister, Raizel was summoned to a Nazi slave labor camp. Sala volunteered to take Raizel’s place because she believed that her sister’s strict and uncompromising piety would make it hard for her to adjust to the unknown conditions of the camp.
It was Raizel who then became the family scribe, writing over 100 letters to Sala. Most of the letters were written in German, so that the Nazi censors could read them.
A team of translators and I had to puzzle through many codes and abbreviations, their meaning long forgotten by my mother. Raizel wrote about “weddings” to which she had not been invited: this meant that there was a deportation that she had escaped. “GSD” we eventually realized meant “Gottseidanken,” or Thank God.
But Raizel’s religious beliefs went far deeper than a simple abbreviation. Hardly a single letter was sent without a pointed reminder from the older sister to the younger to observe strictly the Jewish holidays, to remain true to their family faith, and always, always “remember God.” Raizel expressed some doubt only once, when she wrote that “God seems to have turned away from here.”
A few months later, she and another sister, Blima, were deported to a slave labor camp and my grandparents were taken to Auschwitz.
We inherit religion, not faith. Sala’s faith wavered after the war, as she tried to make sense of a world in which so many friends and family had been murdered. She did not stray far, however. As a young mother in New York, she returned to religious observance, first out of respect to her parents, until gradually, her spiritual equilibrium was restored.
I know the voices of my mother’s letters so well that I can recite some of them by heart. But still, there is that gigantic chasm that I cannot cross, the gap between what I merely read from a comfortable distance and what they experienced. The chasm is deepest when I try to cross to the realm of belief, and to understand how they sustained themselves spiritually despite the deprivations of the camps.
My mother’s letters were critical to her survival, and became in some ways essential to her faith that she would survive. In her first letter to Raizel after the war, she wrote: ‘’I have all the mail I received from home, starting from the first minute that I left for camp. All along, I watched it and guarded it like the eyes in my head, since it was my greatest treasure.”
She saved the letters, and the letters saved her.
Monday-Friday, ”Letters to Sala” will be on display in the Rotunda of the Russell Senate Office building in Washington. Ann Kirschner is the author of SALA’s GIFT, about the revelations of the letters saved by her mother. She is also the University Dean of Macaulay Honors College of The City University of New York.
By Ann Kirschner |
October 13, 2007; 9:46 AM ET
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Posted by: guebwjk ngrduxs | January 17, 2008 10:07 AM
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Posted by: guebwjk ngrduxs | January 17, 2008 10:05 AM
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Posted by: guebwjk ngrduxs | January 17, 2008 10:03 AM
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Posted by: Gxzkipu | December 13, 2007 5:36 PM
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Posted by: Gxzkipu | December 13, 2007 5:36 PM
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Posted by: Gxzkipu | December 13, 2007 5:36 PM
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Posted by: Gxzkizf | December 13, 2007 9:08 AM
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In grammatical German, GSD would be "Gott sei Dank", i.e. "Thanks be to God".
Posted by: Gilbert Adams | October 15, 2007 9:23 AM
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Anonymous has lost his/her mind!
"Ann,take the letters as BURN THEM let the past go as your mother learnt letting the past go."
Those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it!
Though I cannot claim, among what I consider to be the most horrible things that ever happened to me, to know what it was like to have survived a Nazi concentrartion camp, the worst things that HAVE happened to me I OWN and will not forget. I have learned from them and so can others.
What on Earth would burning those letters really accomplish?!
When I was a child my parents had a friend who had liberated concentration camps during WWII. Once he showed my sister and I snapshots he had kept from the time. They were horrific scenes that children technically should not see (I'm a little surprised that my parents allowed it). Through actual tears he said to us, "There will be people who try to tell you that this never happened. Do not believe them. I saw it myself."
What if he had burned those photos? Someone MIGHT tell me that it never happened, and I MIGHT believe them.
May God bless you and your family, Ann.
Posted by: Whatever... | October 15, 2007 8:42 AM
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jozeuv et al :...: The time for H to B the Q or B as all other V of S not as yet in the D or the H yet we live in hope trust as faith. As be it one D. ...at present it falls on the I, rather than the whole,thus doing that which being the most pleasing unto HQ in such we do that which right by G as M in respect to the S whom S.. all in the name of the F based on H as R as we must.
Posted by: CAESAR | October 15, 2007 4:31 AM
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I sorry your post didn't the the respect it deserves. You are a blessing and your mother was a blessing. You honor her memory.
“GSD” for you.
Posted by: AKA | October 14, 2007 8:44 PM
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Ann,your mother put letters away as they be no longer relevent,you must also understand,it be time to destroy letters as let the past go. No longer your mother,your mother but as anothers mother,as it be you will become anothers child. Ann,take the letters as BURN THEM let the past go as your mother learnt letting the past go.In lifes the spirit develops,its greatest gift that of forgivness your mother having learnt forgives it now for you in her honour,as request letting the past go.Ann,in fond wishes of mother as with respect,follow her wishes do not carry an load that she having unburdened,the letters,BURN THEM.
Posted by: Anonymous | October 14, 2007 6:48 PM
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Is this a book promo?
Posted by: Anonymous | October 14, 2007 3:25 AM
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Humble adoration of God. He allowed the gentiles to know Him as the Hebrews know Him, as Father. As the season approaches, "Come Let Us Adore Him."
Posted by: JD | October 13, 2007 11:40 AM
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