“Hitler wanted to exterminate me. “I survived, but a million and a half children didn’t”: a girl’s dramatic memory of the Shoah

Irene Shashar was three years old when her mother took her out of the Warsaw Ghetto through a sewer in 1941 and He hid it for years in some friends’ closets. to save her from certain death. At 86, his mission is to tell the world that he defeated Hitler and ensure that another Holocaust never happens again.

Cheerful and lively, Shashar spoke to the EFE agency from the European Parliament, where a special session was held for the International Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust.

He wears a bright red jacket, blue-rimmed glasses, a yellow ribbon calling for the return of the hostages to Gaza, and a pendant with a metal tag that repeats the same wish in English: “Bring Them Home.”

-In front of Parliament she spoke about her guilt as a hidden girl. Why?

-I didn’t understand why I was punished. The Germans entered Warsaw in September 1939. I was 1 year and seven months old. After a year and a half I became a hidden girl. What sins could I have committed to be put in a black hole and told “don’t call me or complain”?

-And what do you think the answer is?

-Today we know that this was due to the fact that she was born Jewish. Hitler wanted to exterminate me. I survived, but a million and a half children did not. Sometimes I wonder, could it be that I took the place of another girl? That if they killed me, she would survive? I ask myself this not out of guilt, but rather out of the mission I have of having survived.

-You’ve been telling your story for decades. Does it help you ease the burden of the past?

-Hundred percent. Whenever I talk to students, teachers or diplomats, I find it difficult to get into the topic at first, but once I get into it I feel relieved when I finish. It’s as if the heavy backpack I’ve been carrying on my shoulders is being dumped onto future generations, in the hope that they might follow the message I’m trying to convey, the warning that this will never happen again in future generations. .

-He also raised an alarm in Parliament about the increase in anti-Semitism. Do you see a parallel between what you felt as a child and the attitudes you see now?

-There is no comparison, because the Holocaust was a barbarism that lasted six years and was multinational. It can’t be compared, but it was a massacre. I talked to other survivors and for us it was like a real, living thing that brings back memories. The hiding place, the German standing with the rifle, the German shooting, killing one after the other and then taking out a bottle of liquor and taking a few sips of alcohol to forget what he had done. Here the ‘déjà vu’ becomes the terrorist who calls his father and tells him: “dad, dad, I killed fifteen Jews”.

-He reopened the wounds.

-If you burn yourself a second time it reminds you of the previous burn. I saw the faces of those terrorists in the videos. Sad memories come, painful memories. It is impossible to understand how a human being could achieve such barbarity.

-How have you experienced the last four months in your country, Israel, aware of both sides of the conflict?

-Very difficult, especially very difficult because I have a nephew in the (Israeli) army. Do you know what my daughter feels every day without hearing from her? It’s a martyrdom. We didn’t choose to attack them, they attacked us. I understand that the people of Gaza are not guilty of what happened and what is happening, but the people have their voice. They had to raise their voices knowing that they were dominated by Hamas, that Hamas was building tunnels when the money sent to them should have been for the prosperity of the country, so they could sow and reap. That they hide behind those innocent people hurts me a lot. What is happening hurts me a lot, but it is the only way to never repeat it again.

Source: EFE