SUSTAINED BY CONFIDENCE IN GOD

Reunited With Fellow Witnesses

After our liberation 14 days later, the Red Cross took us to a school near Malmo, Sweden.  There, we were kept in quarantine for a while. I asked one of our caregivers if she would let Jehovah's Witnesses know that I was in the refugee shelter. A few days later, my name was called out. When I told the woman that I was a Witness, she began to sob. She was a Witness too!  After she calmed down, she told me that the Witnesses in Sweden had always prayed for  their Christian brothers and sisters in the Nazi concentration camps.

From then on, a sister came every day with coffee and something sweet. After leaving the refugee shelter, I was transferred to a place near Goteborg. There the Witnesses organized an elaborate afternoon gathering for me.  Even though I was not able to understand them, I was heartwarming to be surrounded by my brothers and sisters.

While In Goteborg, I received a letter from a Witness in Amsterdam informing me that my children Silvain and Carry and all my relatives had been picked up and had never returned. Only my daughter Johanna and my youngest sister had survived. Recently I saw the names of my son and my daughter in a register of Jews who were gassed in Auschwitz and Sobibor.

Next time: SUSTAINED BY CONFIDENCE IN GOD - Postwar Activity

From the AWAKE! magazine, 2001