Ella Blumenthal shares her experiences and deliver s a cogent message
I was born in Warsaw, the youngest in a family of seven children. I had seven nieces and nephews. My father was a chasid, a respected and well-to-do textile merchant. My mother and the entire family were very frum. I was a happy teenager until the invasion of Poland. I will never forget the images in the Warsaw ghetto – of starvation, epidemics, streets lined with corpses, starving children in rags begging for a piece of bread, human hunting, roundups, raids and deportations. In spite of surviving three concentration camps, after the liberation I tried to integrate into a normal society and after getting married, raised and educated my four children. But, I wasn’t able to talk about my suffering and fight for survival because the open wounds were still bleeding.
Now after many years, the tears have dried up and the scars have healed and I am now able to share it with you. It is now a few days after Pesach. At this exact time but in 1943, 65 years ago, the Warsaw ghetto was set alight and I was there.