Lena's 'children' reuniting Wednesday
Photo: Gil Nechushtan
Her 100 children
Emotional meeting of dozens of Holocaust survivors takes place in Ghetto Fighters' House, all of whom are heroes of book My Hundred Children by Lena Kuchler
It was a particularly emotional meeting. Some 50 Holocaust survivors, all part of Lena Kuchler's "hundred children," convened Wednesday in order to mark the author's 100th birthday.
Lena, who passed away 23 years ago in Israel, was born in the town of Wieliczka just outside Krakow, Poland and survived the Holocaust due to her indomitable will to live and her indiscriminate love for children – Jewish and Christian alike. After evading the Gestapo and jumping from the train taking her to the Belzec extermination camp, she established a house for 100 children in the resort town of Zakopane.
On Wednesday, the children saved by Lena in her orphanage gathered from around the country. Some of them came together with their children and grandchildren. They embraced, kissed, and brought up difficult memories. They also looked at their childhood pictures projected on screens around the room.
Some 65 years on, they were most interested in hearing about each other's children and grandchildren.
Lena, who lived in Givatayim, was a mother to these ghetto and church survivors who managed to instill in them a sense of life and ultimately smuggled them from Poland to France, and from there to Israel.
In her acclaimed book My Hundred Children, Lena recounts the acts of heroism of the children, who joined the partisans – blew up train lines and laid mines; served as emissaries and spies during the war and the revolt; who snuck food into the ghetto.
Seven years ago, an Israeli documentary film was made from her book and was awarded Best Documentary in the Jerusalem Film Festival. Seven years ago, the movie's director, Oshra Schwartz, met with the survivors. Each one of them told her their stories from then and of their life in Israel. Each one with his own story, each one with a smile, memory, and pain.
