International Remembrance Day: “I have an obligation to tell my story”, the story of a survivor

irene shashhar She is 85 years old, full of energy and obligations to herself, tell the story of your life, the one that was truncated and scarred by the Holocaust, which wiped out virtually his entire family. But after the years, he feels he has defeated Hitler, as the title of his book says.

On the occasion of the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Shashar spoke to the EFE news agency in Madrid.

This survivor was born in Poland, grew up in Peru after the end of World War II (1939-1945) and still settled in Israel today, where she recounts her past with the conviction that she is doing what she must.

In the Spanish capital he was participating in various events organized by the Sefarad Israel Center on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Month.

“I feel in my system, in my being, in my soul, that in order to survive I have to tell, I must speak for those who cannot and they will never speak, I have taken it upon myself to speak on behalf of one and a half million children like me,” he explains.

Shashar spent his early life in the Warsaw ghettoicon of Polish resistance to the Nazis’ Jewish extermination strategy, where he saw his father and hundreds of children die while she hid so as not to suffer the same fate.

And she wonders why she survived and not other children: “Did I take the place of another child? All kinds of ideas that, night or day during 80 years, go through your head: why you, me, we , why does it depend on us?

Despite all those questions that accompany her, she assures that, every time she tells her story, “the backpack becomes more bearable”.

“Since I talk and talk a lot, as a witness of what happened in Poland, it’s like a backpack that is somehow more bearable, maybe lighter, it doesn’t disappear completely, but it gives me internal satisfaction if at least a young person listened to me” , he reflects.

A childhood without being a girl

Shashar naturally remembers his past and his first years of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, where he saw his father die, many other relatives and He suffered from hunger and intense cold.

From there he managed to escape with his mother; Outside the ghetto, in the city, he would have had to hide hours, days and years in a small closet.

“I consider myself a girl hidden, in a closet, with everything that can cover you and hide you so that the enemy doesn’t see you,” she describes, before recalling that life at the time was based on “getting the most basic things”.

“Sheltering from the cold because Poland is very cold in winter, hunger, being able to see the light, because my childhood memories are that most of my days they lived in the dark“, hidden.

This is why she spent her childhood without being a girl, without being able to “go out, be free to have fun, swing, walk, jump, play…”.

“All of this was unknown and forbidden to me, because Hitler decided that, having been born a Jew, I had no place in this world“, he sums up.

A final victory over Hitler

Despite everything, no one erases the smile from Shashar’s face. His story, which he tells naturally today, did not tell his children until the eldest turned 19 and his sister 17 because she wanted to continue to “protect” them.

“I wanted to protect them from my mind and my concept, from what I was different from the parents of other children, because he came from the war,” he says.

And although he has broken his silence with his relatives, he insists that with those with whom he has found “a common language” he is with those who have gone through his own hell.

Now, holding the book in which he recounts his experiences, “I Defeated Hitler” in his hands, he claims his right to tell stories and the need for society to remember not to repeat these crimes.

“That I defeated Hitler is reality, my victory is here, with two children and seven grandchildren who have a normal and happy life (…), I enjoy myself and that enjoyment is my victory over Hitler, who wanted to make me disappear from the face of the earth”.

The author is an EFE journalist

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