Holocaust survivor bears witness

UPPER BURRELL — Holocaust survivor Francine Gelernter shares a memory of Nazis luring Jewish men away from their families with the promise of work.

Her uncle was one of 1,000 "lucky" men who responded to the call for engineers, doctors and others with higher education. If they volunteered, their families would get extra food stamps and sugar.

When the men got to their destination, there was a huge hole. They were told to take off their clothes and put on work clothes.

The illusion of work didn't continue much longer.

"Then from nowhere German shepherd dogs appeared. And then suddenly, as I was told by my family, German soldiers came out," Gelernter said. "They started to realize they were not going to work. They would be shot.

"You were lucky if the bullet hit you. If the bullet did not hit you, you would be thrown in the grave and buried alive."

Gelernter, now 80 and a resident of Pittsburgh's Squirrel Hill neighborhood, was 13 when she and her mother were liberated from the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.

She shared her childhood memories of the Holocaust at Penn State New Kensington's annual "Holocaust, in Remembrance" program Wednesday.

"I'm the voice who speaks to you on behalf of all the voices that were silenced," Gelernter said. "One day my voice will become silent, too.

"You're the voices that will speak for us."

Lois Rubin, an associate professor of English, has organized the program since 1992. She has brought more than 15 Holocaust survivors to the campus to speak in April. Holocaust Remembrance Day is April 19.

Rubin told the audience of students and campus visitors that they are the last generation that will be able to meet living witnesses of the Holocaust. They, like World War II veterans, are quickly dying off.

"The lesson of respecting others and avoiding hatred still needs to be learned," Rubin said. "The world still has too much hatred in it especially for people who are different."

Jeanette Matthews of Plum brought her friend, Shirley Holtzman Schwartz of Wilkins Township, to hear Gelernter speak.

Matthews, 67, who isn't Jewish, said reading "The Diary of Anne Frank" as a child sparked a lifelong interest in Holocaust history.

"We have to keep it in people's minds. There are people who don't believe it happened," she said. "People say this can never happen again, but it has.

"Humankind doesn't seem to learn well from its mistakes. It's the hope they'll learn. We all have an obligation to know what has happened."

Schwartz, 75, hadn't seen Gelernter in 40 years, when Gelernter was her children's teacher at Parkway Jewish Center in Penn Hills.

Schwartz said her father was born in Hungary, her mother in Poland. As far as she knows, her family was not involved in the Holocaust.

"You can never learn too much because you don't want to repeat what happened so many years ago," Schwartz said.

@body-subhead:Francine Gelernter's story

@body-text:Born in Lithuania in 1932, Gelernter and her family were first persecuted by Russian communists for being upper class. In 1940, after the Russians invaded Lithuania, her father was sent to Siberia. She never saw him again, and was told he died there.

Later that year, invading Germans forced her family into a Jewish ghetto. Gelernter's older sister escaped into Russia; she and her mother could not follow, because Gelernter had the mumps.

She recalled how life began to change.

Jews could not own a business or go to school. After being allowed to stay in their own homes for a while, the Germans started to "resettle" them.

They had to wear the Star of David, on the front of their clothing and back, to identify them as Jews. The stars had to be positioned precisely; if not, they were beaten.

They had to walk where the horses walked. They were not allowed on the sidewalks. They had to surrender all their gold, silver, fur coats, pictures and Persian rugs.

The ghetto was being slowly liquidated.

Her uncle, who had responded to the call for volunteers, lived thanks to a Lithuanian police officer who knew him and helped him escape. That's how Gelernter's family knew what had happened.

But her uncle later killed himself.

Gelernter, her mother, grandmother and two aunts were sent to Stutthof, near Gdansk, Poland. After arriving, they were separated.

Her grandmother was put to death because of her age. Her aunts died as prisoners from a fever, which was common in the camp.

Gelernter does not bear a number on her arm. The Nazis did not waste time marking children, who were not expected to survive.

Gelernter and her mother survived for five years before they were liberated, ironically, by the Russians.

With few children left, women were taking children who were not their own.

Gelernter said her mother was able to claim her because they shared a birthmark, and only her mother knew the lullaby she sang to her daughter.

Not wanting to go with the Russians, they went west with American soldiers.

Gelernter, her mother and a stepfather immigrated to the United States in 1950 and relocated to Pittsburgh, where two years later Gelernter married Simon Gelernter, a survivor of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

"If there was not a war, we would never have met," she said. "Our paths would never cross."

Gelernter had two children with her late husband, and now has four grandchildren.

"I was fortunate to get married," she said. "I have children. I have grandchildren.

"They'll be the voice when I'm gone."