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Photo: reproduced by AP
Warsaw Ghetto
Photo: reproduced by AP

Another Holocaust voice silenced by time

A few hours before the flag was lowered to half mast and the Holocaust Martyrs 'and Heroes' Remembrance Day events began, 96-year-old Hella Rufeisen-Schuepper, a Warsaw ghetto fighter, was laid to rest.

The cypress tree avenue at the entrance to the cemetery on Moshav Bustan Hagalil, near Acre, seemed to stand taller than ever. As if they, too, were giving a final salute to Hella Rufeisen-Schuepper, the brave liaison who had participated in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and Sunday, on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, passed away and laid to rest.

 

 

She was 96 years old at the time of her death, which took place on such a symbolic and sad date, leaving behind a life story of Holocaust and loss, but also of rebellion and rebirth. Seventy four years have passed since the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, which became the symbol of the uprising.

 

Hella Rufeisen-Schuepper
Hella Rufeisen-Schuepper

 

"Life has suddenly become pointless, why continue fighting?" She wrote in an article about her feelings when she received news of the fall of the bunker in the ghetto and the death of the rebels there. "So many young people have perished, millions of Jews are murdered in various ways, poisoned with gas, death is the best and easiest way to go. May death come already." And it did. On Sunday morning.

 

"My mother wanted to die there," said her son, Eli Dotan. "Her whole life was connected to the fighters, the memories and the thoughts never left her, and now she can reunite with the group she left behind." Hella served as a courier for the Jewish Combat Organization (ZOB), which worked mainly in the Warsaw ghetto and in the Krakow ghetto, testified at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem, was among the torchbearers at Yad Vashem 14 years ago, and wrote an autobiographical book Farewell to Milta 18: The Story of a Courier. "Mother always said that they could never overpower the Germans, but (they did this) for three lines in history: to prove that they didn't go like sheep to the slaughter," the son said of his energetic, caring and loving mother.

 

Rufeisen-Schuepper with two of her grandsons (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)
Rufeisen-Schuepper with two of her grandsons (Photo: IDF Spokesperson)

 

In the past four years, several Holocaust survivors who have been engraved in the national memory as brave fighters who led a revolt in the ghettos against all odds, passed away; among them, the late Prof. Israel Gutman, who fought in the Warsaw ghetto and became a renowned Holocaust researcher, Pnina Grinshpan-Primer, who was a courier for ZOB in the Warsaw ghetto and died a few months ago, and the late Ḥaṿḳah Folman-Raban, who was also a courier in the ZOB and active in the Warsaw and Krakow ghettos.

 

The number of survivors of the ghetto fighters is rapidly diminishing. Aliza Vitis-Shomron, who was also a courier for ZOP, expressed her great sorrow over the death of Hella. "She was a friend of mine, I knew her long before the revolt," said Vitis-Shomron, 89, of Kibbutz Givat Oz. "Hella was a courageous fighter, she worked in Israel to commemorate the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, she was a real heroine."

 

Another former ghetto fighter who expressed his sorrow yesterday is Yehuda Maimon, 93, who traveled the long way from Ramat Gan to the north to accompany Hella on her way to her final resting place. They had met in the Krakow ghetto, and kept in touch over the years. "She hid five pistols under her coat, which for us were like what US missiles are today," he said.

 

The tales of heroism do not belong solely to the survivors. Tsafrir, one of Hella's grandchildren, described Sunday how his grandmother's stories about smuggling weapons, money and documents captured his heart and influenced his becoming an officer in the IDF Magellan unit.

 

The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Photo: Getty Images)
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (Photo: Getty Images)

 

On one of the family tours in Poland, he recalled, Hella sat on a boulder, looked down and said: "I should have been with them, but here I am." "Now she is with them," he eulogized sadly. "She was the heroine of my childhood, and thanks to her, I, along with some of her other grandchildren, enlisted in combat units. Her wish was not to take revenge on the Germans but to build a home in Israel."

 

She left behind three sons, nine grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. In recent years, she lived in the shadow of Alzheimer's disease and had trouble identifying those close to her. "My mother had run out of words, but when we held her hand and saw the laughter on her face, that was enough," said the eldest son, Eli.

 

Shortly before Hella's funeral, her friend and fellow Moshav resident Zehava Reinholdt, 94, had been laid to rest. Reinholdt was a Holocaust survivor from Hungary, who fled with her sister to Budapest and hid under a false identity as a Christian until the liberation. She immigrated to Israel in 1946. She was one of the founders of Kibbutz Yasur and one of the first settlers in Moshav Bustan Hagalil, where she married Hillel Reinholdt, who escaped from Germany in 1938. She left behind three children, seven grandchildren and a first-born great-grandchild, who she unfortunately did not get to meet.

 


פרסום ראשון: 04.24.17, 17:10
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