A moving ‘reunion’ for descendants of Holocaust survivors

WESTLAKE, Texas (AP) – Anna Salton Eisen found the old pictures – wallet-sized, black and white pictures of Jewish prisoners who survived the Holocaust – in a folder that her late father, George Lucius Salton, kept for most of his life.

The Texan woman recognized the names of some teenagers and young men from stories her father told. For three years the baby-faced prisoners lived among the dead and dying in barracks and freight wagons when Nazi prisoners brought them from Poland via France to Germany. The Skeleton Friends said a tearful kaddish – a Jewish funeral prayer – after learning that their parents had died in the gas chambers.

But suddenly the familiar names had faces.

“Seeing the faces of all of them really brought the story to life,” said Eisen, who discovered the photos when she moved her mother, Ruth Salton, 99, from Florida to the Dallas area last summer.

Eisen, 62, said she felt compelled to learn more about the confidants who had meant so much to her father, who died in 2016 at the age of 88.

George Salton was 17 when the US Army liberated the Wobbelin concentration camp in Germany on May 2, 1945. In the next few years the survivors scattered all over the world. Most of them lost touch with each other.

But 76 years after American soldiers tore down the barbed wire and fulfilled the prisoners’ impossible dream of freedom, Eisen set about bringing the relatives of the survivors together.

When Eisen began her research, she relied on names that were written in pencil on the back of the picture or mentioned repeatedly in Salton’s 2002 book “The 23rd Psalm: A Holocaust Memorial”.

As she combed through data from the Nazi era, official documents, concentration camp lists, and post-war records stored online in the Arolsen Archives at the International Center for Nazi Persecution in Germany, Eisen checked the names and dates of birth of the survivors.

Through Ancestry.com, she examined passenger lists of ships that took Holocaust survivors to other countries, social security cards that document name changes, and obituaries and family trees.

Some assumed new identities when they made a fresh start after the war. Eisen’s father was born Lucek Salzman in the city of Tyczyn in Poland. But given the dangers he faced, when he arrived in New York in 1947, he chose a less Jewish-sounding name.

Searches on Google and Facebook led Eisen to the children and grandchildren of her father’s friends, most of whom – until now – never knew the full story of what their loved ones were experiencing.

Todd Nussen, a history teacher at Oceanside, New York high school, reacted with shock – and excitement – when Eisen texted him in late July to ask about his grandfather of the same name, Tobias Nussen, who died in 1973 at the age of 52.

“Now I have details. Now I have facts, ”said the 40-year-old educator.

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As a result of Eisen’s research, family members of eight Holocaust survivors met for the first time on a Sunday.

Some exchanged hugs and tears in person in a New Jersey hotel suite.

Others have connected through Zoom from Israel, Sweden, and Texas.

“It just gave me goosebumps,” said Bobbie Ziff, 67, a Jackson, New Jersey resident, of the emotional encounter that took place less than four months after the photos were discovered.

Ziff is the daughter of Tobias Nussen and the aunt of Todd Nussen.

Her father started a new life in America and owned a takeaway in Brooklyn, New York, Ziff said. He never talked about the Holocaust, but he often had nightmares and screamed in his sleep.

Eisen sent Ziff a copy of Tobias Nussen’s photo and his name in a tiny diary owned by Salton.

“It was just crazy, crazy,” said Ziff. “My only regret is that this didn’t happen when her father (Salton) was still alive. I would have liked to talk to him. “

Pictured on another of the photos found by Eisen: Motek Hoffstetter.

His daughter Aviva Findler, a retired high school teacher who lives in Tel Aviv, Israel, said her father, like many other survivors, refused to speak out about the Holocaust.

“During the meeting, I learned that he was very respected by his friends, which made me really proud and sad,” said Findler. “When we all saw each other on Zoom, I was amazed again at the power of life that enabled our fathers to start families and a life after all the losses they had suffered and what they had gone through.”

Anna Schlachet, 69, a doctor in Stockholm, also said that her father, Moses Ziment, said little about his Holocaust experience.

However, he told her that “the rest of the family were gassed.”

“Sitting in a Zoom meeting with people I didn’t even know existed before, and at the same time understanding that we largely share the same story was a very strange and unreal experience,” Schlachet said.

Another survivor, Emil Ringel, also moved to the United States. Ringel and his wife Clara introduced Salton – Eisen’s father – to his future wife Ruth, whose own Jewish family had fled Poland and worked in labor camps in Siberia during World War II. Ringel died in 1979 at the age of 52.

Daughter Barbara Ringel, from Queens, New York, enjoyed meeting the children and grandchildren of her father’s friends.

“This strength of mind, this courage, this resilience, this ability to encourage each other to survive – that was what distinguished all of our fathers,” said Barbara Ringel.

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For much of his life, Eisen’s own father believed in leaving the past in the past. He preferred to focus on living the American dream.

Fellow survivors did the same, unwilling to dwell on their rotten teeth or explain why they refused to waste a single piece of bread.

“It’s a wound,” said Ruth Salton of what she and her 63-year-old husband experienced growing up. “We didn’t want any of our kids to wear the stuff we’ve been through. We thought, ‘It’s going to hurt them. We want them to be happy. ‘”

George Salton proudly served in the same US Army that saved him. He earned degrees in physics and electrical engineering. He worked in a senior position at the Pentagon and held senior positions in the aerospace industry.

But eventually his three children – especially Eisen, named after a grandmother they never knew – demanded answers about his childhood.

As a result, George, Ruth and the three adult children traveled to Poland in 1998 to visit old concentration camps and ghettos, the remains of synagogues and cemeteries across the Central European country.

With Iron’s help, Salton recounted the details of his family’s Holocaust experience in his 2002 memoir.

“Each day mingled with the next, filled with hunger, sleepless nights, hard work and the constant threat of beatings, selections and executions,” he wrote.

The book – and the New Jersey congregation – helped Miriam Kershner, daughter of Holocaust survivor Moses Tuchman, understand her father in ways she never had, she said.

“We all felt so connected through our parents and we all knew our parents survived because of each other,” said the retired teacher, 65, who lives in Marlboro, New Jersey.

“I felt like I knew her all my life,” said Kershner of meeting Eisen. “We are sisters to another mother. In fact we will meet again. ”

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For her part, Eisen is writing her own book “Pillar of Salt: A Daughter’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust”, which is due to appear next April. She is working with filmmaker Jacob Wise on a documentary based on her father’s experiences and their impact on the second generation.

Eisen, a member of the Beth Israel Congregation, a Reformed Jewish community in Colleyville, Texas, said the book title reflected their beliefs.

“I felt compelled to look back, even though I was warned not to,” she said, referring to the biblical account of Lot’s wife turning into a pillar of salt. “I knew I was risking being changed, but I had to face the past for my father’s sake.

“It has not been easy for me to bring the truth to these other families. It was painful. But it was their story and it was theirs. “

It is important that the younger generations keep the reality of the Holocaust alive.

Aaron Eisen, Anna’s 30-year-old son and co-author of Pillar of Salt, said he was proud of his mother’s efforts.

“My grandfather said when he made speeches that the Holocaust was incomprehensible, that we couldn’t understand how it happened,” said Aaron Eisen, who attended the meeting in New Jersey. “But I think in time we will begin to understand, and my mother says there is still so much to learn. There are so many more lessons to be learned with technology and archives. ”

As Ruth Salton approaches her 100th birthday, even she now understands the importance of telling the story, she said.

“This is the only way to continue,” she said. “I am very happy that the children are interested. The children want to tell the story, and the children can now live and feel what we have felt all our lives. “

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Not all of Anna Eisen’s research had a happy ending.

One of the pictures showed a young man named Izok Rypp.

Izok – Yiddish for “Isaac” – survived with George Salton and the other 10 concentration camps, apparently the only member of his family to escape the gas chambers, when Nazi Germany systematically killed 6 million European Jews.

But after the prisoners were liberated, he never made it out of a camp for displaced persons in Germany. According to his death certificate, he died in July 1947 at the age of 19. No cause of death was given.

He was the same age as Eisen’s father.

“He never had a chance to have a life or a family,” said Eisen. “But his picture and his story in my father’s book have preserved his memory and his story.”

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Associated Press religious coverage is supported by the Lilly Foundation through The Conversation US. AP is solely responsible for this content.

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