Fania Wedro, seen Oct. 27, 2009 at the Calgary Jewish
Community Centre
This fairy tale goes down alongside Jack and the Beanstalk and Misha Defonseca's story of living with the wolves.
Poor Fania escaped a Polish ghetto after a Rabbi lit a massive fire and urged the Jews to sacrifice themselves.
But Fania just ran away into the forest, surviving in the woods for a year and a half, keeping warm by wrapping herself in tree bark.
She also slept in pits filled with dead bodies.
Why? Weren't there better places to sleep in the woods? We'll never know. The ways of the Holy Holocaust are truly inneffable and unknowable.
Article: "Holocaust survivor shares story of escape"
Addendum:
Holocaust survivor shares story of escape
Symposium urges youth 'to fight racism'
By Eva Ferguson
Calgary Herald
October 28, 2009
CALGARY - During a year and a half of hiding from the Nazis in the cold, damp forests of Eastern Europe, young Fania Wedro and 10 other Jews did everything they could to survive. They wrapped themselves in tree bark to stay warm, stole food from nearby villages and drank water from a filthy swamp.
"It is like there is this beast within you, and you do anything just to survive," says Wedro, 82, who speaks annually at the Holocaust Education Symposium at Mount Royal University.
"But when you are young, you feel like you can handle anything."
Living in Poland during the Second World War, Wedro was 14 when she was sent to a work ghetto for Jews.
She remembers standing in a line beside her mother when a Nazi soldier demanded her age.
Before she could answer, Wedro's mother shoved her forward and said "she is 16," knowing they would put her to work instead of just killing her.
That was the last day she saw her mother. Her brother and father were also killed by Nazis.
She struggled alone in a work ghetto for months before a rabbi lit a massive fire, urging everyone to jump in and sacrifice themselves. But Fania just ran, escaping as Nazi soldiers were distracted by the chaos.
She walked for days alone, hiding and sleeping in open pits full of dead bodies, temporarily finding food at a neighbourhood farm, then venturing into the forest and finding cover with a small group of Jews.
Sleep never came easy, as horrific images of death raced through her mind -- soldiers shooting old women, or playing catch with babies until they fell hard against the pavement, and mothers screaming as they watched helplessly.
She found strength in the words of a family friend she spoke to briefly one day during her time in the ghetto.
"She told me, 'I've been having dreams about your mother. She is in a good, safe place. But it is very wet there for her. It is because you are crying all the time. You must stop crying."
From that day on, Fania hung on to those words, and found the strength to fight to the day the war ended.
A Russian soldier found her in a huddle in the forest. The ground had stopped shaking, the shelling had stopped, and he said to her, "You are safe now."
But tears come easily now for Wedro as she tells her dramatic story at the Calgary Jewish Centre.
She's been a speaker for several years with the Holocaust Education Symposium, which will celebrate its 25th anniversary next Tuesday.
The Calgary Jewish Community Council will host the celebration at the Beth Tzedec Synagogue, with guest speaker Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella, a judge with the Supreme Court of Canada and the child of Holocaust survivors.
The symposium, held every May at Mount Royal University, is a half-day program with guest lecturers, films and speakers like Wedro who are survivors.
Judy Shapiro of the Calgary Jewish Community Council said meeting with survivors is the most significant part of the program for students attending the symposium.
The kids hear about history from the perspective of someone who has lived through it and they're incredibly moved, she said.
But the most impressive thing about the speakers, Shapiro added, is "they don't hate -- all of them make a point of telling the kids that hate is destructive. They challenge the kids to work to fight racism, to protect human rights and work to make this a better world."
The symposium began 25 years ago as a response to the controversy surrounding Jim Keegstra, an Alberta teacher who told Grade 9 students in the small town of Eckville that the Holocaust did not happen.
He was stripped of his teaching certificate and convicted under Canada's hate propaganda law.
eferguson@theherald. canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
Yes, the Holohoaxer's "don't hate"...while spreading the most vile, slanderous, vicious lies to demonize the good German people.
