Survivors should tell their story: Miriam Grossman
By Lynda Frank
"To feel hate is only to poison yourself," said Miriam Grossman, who feels it is important for survivors to tell their story.
"It puts on my and any fair-minded individual the responsibility to witness to others what hate and injustice did, and if not curbed, will do again."
Born in Konin, Poland, Mrs. Grossman was one of nine children in a middle class family. However, she said even before the fall of Poland in 1939, conditions had become bad.
She was in her 20s when the blitzkrieg of Poland occurred and she spent the next five years in a ghetto. "We were given rations, barely enough to sustain life. People were starving and many were beaten for no reason at all. We were cut off from the outside world just waiting for it all to end."
In the ghetto she worked in a hospital with very few medical supplies and shared a small room with her father, mother, younger brother and younger sister. "We slept on mattresses and used a makeshift stove, burning the wooden beds to keep from freezing."
Most of her older siblings and their families were taken from the ghetto and she never found out what happened to them. Her mother and father starved to death.
When the ghetto was cleared in 1945, she was taken to Auschwitz in a cattle wagon. Here she described conditions as "not even suitable for animals." Fortunately for her, an order came that more women were needed in the factories.
"They lined us up naked before a group of soldiers with Mengele pointing either right or left. While her sister, sister-in-law and a cousin were loaded in a truck, Mrs. Grossman was showered and shipped to an airplane parts factory.
After liberation, she was in a displaced persons camp in Linz-Bindermichel, Austria, where a nurse she had worked with in the ghetto helped her to function again. Mrs. Grossman worked with the camp ambulance and also met her Ignac, "I.G." Grossman, from Ruzomberok, Czechoslovakia.
A trained mechanic, Mr. Grossman had been working in a factory before joining the Czech air force during World War II. When he was shot down, he was captured by Nazis and spent 1939 and 1940 in a prison. Along with other soldiers, he was then sent to Auschwitz, where he worked as a machinist in a factory, Deutche Ausristung Werke.
After 18 months, he was transferred to a rubber products plant, Buona. He then was relocated to Buchenwald, Mauthaussen and Gussen II, an underground Messerschmitt airplane factory.
In 1945, he was liberated in Gussen II by the Americans and went to Lodz, where he worked as a machinist for the American Army.
"They wanted me to go to Japan but I refused," he said. "I wanted to go back to Czechoslovakia." He did go home, but finding everything and everyone gone, he returned to the camp. He worked as a sheet mechanic and met Miriam, whom he married in 1947.
"We wanted to start life again," Mrs. Grossman explained.
"There was no dating, no falling in love, just a dedication to be good to each other."
Their son, Alex, was born in the camp in 1948 and the following year they came to the United States. "It didn't matter where we were going," Mrs. Grossman said. "We just wanted to start a normal life."
Not knowing the language and having almost nothing, they still refused charity. All Mr. Grossman wanted was a job. "I wanted to make money myself," he said. Mr. Grossman worked as a mechanic at a motor company for 28 years. While he admitted he may have been taken advantage of, being a foreigner and not knowing the language, "I was just grateful for the opportunity to work. It felt good to be independent."
Although he is retired now, he still has a shop in the back of his home. "We worked very hard. We had no luxuries, no furniture," Mrs. Grossman, his helper, said. They are proud they made it on their own and were able to raise Alex in a free country.
Today, he is an eletrical engineer at Boys Town Institute; his wife, Mary, works in a bank and they have two children, Sarah and Joshua.
Even with their lifetime of struggles, the Grossmans remain open-minded. "People are people," Mrs. Grossman said. "We stayed in our home while everyone (whites) moved," she said of their north Omaha home.
However, she is aware of the great prejudice that exists. "I think if the Christain people don't change their attitude toward Jews, I don't see a better future."
She also said people should not ignore the venom of the Ku Klux Klan and the neo-Nazis who go beyond freedom of speech and kill.
Mrs. Grossman has no desire to go back to her homeland which she said was very anti-Semitic even before the war. Her husband, however, still has good memories of his homeland because he was not persecuted as a Jew in Czechoslovakia.
"I can't blame my country," he said, "only the Nazis, for losing my whole family."
Left, Ignac and Miriam Grossman celebrate Hanukkah with their grandchildren, Joshua and Sarah. Right, Ignac Grossman before the war.
