Silent Refuge

by Margrit Rosenberg Stenge

  My friend Celia had told me the previous year that both she and I would be eligible for a certain amount of money that Norway paid its Jewish citizens as retribution for pain and suffering during the war, provided that they were at least sixteen years old at the end of the war. When I was in Norway in 1998, I mentioned to Marit’s daughter and son-in-law that I did not feel that I was entitled to apply for this money as Norwegians had literally saved my life. Knut was adamant: it would be ridiculous of me not to accept what was being offered, and furthermore I should apply to the Norwegian government for a pension. He convinced me, I filled in applications for both and in no time, and without any further questions, I received $35,000 in retribution. As for the pension, when I was advised of its amount, another questionnaire was included for my husband in the event that he, too, had lived in Norway during World War ii. And so it is that both Stefan and I receive small amounts each month from Norway. Strangely enough, Stefan receives twice as much as I do. I guess he deserves it more.

  Stefan had promised Shmoo when he was still in Montreal that we would visit him in Israel that winter. I never made such a promise because I was not at all sure that I wanted to revisit the place that reminded me of so much sorrow. But I gave in and planned our trip, which would take us to Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and Eilat, as well as Petra in Jordan. We visited Shmoo at his yeshiva in Gush Etzion, and we all had dinner together with my cousins David and Ruth and my friend Celia. We then visited remarkable sites in Petra, spent two wonderful days in Eilat and saw Shmoo again in Jerusalem when he joined us for Shabbat.

  Back in Montreal, I had finally retired from the work I had done for the last forty years. My son-in-law, Murray, took over my position. That winter was the first time in years that I was not working, although I continued doing translations. What seemed remarkable to me was that I did not miss my work then or even in the spring when we came home from Florida. I had genuinely enjoyed being part of the business for so many years, but once I turned over my work to Murray, I never looked back. I suppose that was just part of aging.

  Over the years, Stefan and I proudly celebrated all of our children’s and grandchildren’s milestones and achievements. Helen became vice-president of a Washington-based pharmaceutical company, and eventually she and Murray established their own company. Marvin and Allegra got married, and Marvin took over the management of all of our properties. Motti graduated from McGill, made aliyah and married a lovely woman named Sara — they had a son, our first great-grandson, Yehuda Tzvi, who was born in 2005. Ashi and Ben both became a bar mitzvah. Shmoo attended a yeshiva in Israel. Shooshoo graduated from Hebrew Academy and then from Dawson College and eventually made aliyah. Erin and Ben both graduated from high school; Erin also graduated from university and Ben from community college. Allegra’s daughter, Corinne, married a wonderful man named Yechiya.

  •

  In the spring of 2002, our family attended a breakfast at the Beth Ora synagogue to commemorate the Holocaust. The speaker, Karin Doerr, was a petite woman, dressed in a long black dress. I was sitting too far off to one side to hear her speech in its entirety, but what I heard was of great interest to me. She was the co-writer of a Nazi-German–English lexicon that had recently been published, and I knew immediately that this was exactly what I had been looking for in the past two years. Kristian Ottosen, whose books I was translating at the time, used many German expressions for which I had not been able to find satisfactory counterparts in English. After the breakfast, I approached Karin Doerr and asked where I could buy this dictionary. Her reply was that it had not yet reached the university bookstores but that she would be glad to get a copy for me. We would meet as soon as a copy became available.

  And so it was that I made a new and most unlikely friend. Karin, who is not Jewish, was born in Germany. She obtained her PhD in Montreal and, now in her fifties, teaches German language and a course called “Feminist Perspectives on Genocide” at Concordia University. Besides being a professor, she works tirelessly to spread the infamous history of the Holocaust, and has befriended many survivors in the course of her research. Strangely enough, we seem to have a common bond — the German language and books we read in our childhood. When we meet for lunch, we always have a great deal to talk about.

  A website called “Women and the Holocaust” was established in 2001 by Judy Cohen, a Hungarian Holocaust survivor, and is used for educational purposes. During one of our meetings, Karin asked me if I could write down three short episodes from the war years that were especially memorable, to be posted on this website. That did not take me long, but even though Karin liked the stories, she said that they should be more explicit. Karin made suggestions and asked questions, and when my short memoirs were eventually published on the website, Judy Cohen asked if I could write my entire story, which I did some time later. It has now been published on “Women and the Holocaust,” under “testimonies,” as well as on a website called “Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors in Canada,” which is under the auspices of professors Kyle Matthews and Frank Chalk of the Montreal Institute for Genocide and Human Rights Studies at Concordia University. I also wrote a review of the Nazi-German–English lexicon, which is also published on “Women and the Holocaust” under “reviews.”

  At a brunch that year at Karin’s house, she briefly introduced me to a Holocaust survivor named Olga Sher, among other people. The following year, she mentioned to me that Olga had not felt comfortable telling her story to Steven Spielberg’s foundation (usc Shoah Foundation, The Institute for Visual History and Education) and that she would prefer that someone write it for her. I became that someone. (I had written several such stories in the past years for friends Anne, Cila and Sigmund.)

  Olga and I spent hours at my computer during the summer of 2003 and the winter of 2004 in Florida. By the time the story was finished, we had become friends. Olga was born and grew up in Poland. By some miracle, her whole family, consisting of her parents and her sister, managed to stay together in Poland throughout the war. Hers is a fascinating story of survival. The family left Poland after the war, lived in France for a few years and came to Canada in the late 1940s. Olga soon married a Canadian-born young man, Ben, with whom she could barely converse, since English was still a new language for her. Olga and Ben have two sons and a daughter. Both sons are professional writers. When her children had reached school age, Olga went back to university and obtained her Master of Arts degree. Subsequently, she became a teacher at the Jewish General Hospital, where her students were mostly children with emotional problems. She always kept busy with various activities, mainly relating to the Montreal Holocaust Museum. Olga’s story is also published online through Concordia’s “Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors in Canada.”

  For several months, I had been thinking of my long-time friend Beks’s upcoming ninetieth birthday in October 2002. Should I go to Norway again? Stefan was very encouraging, and when Beks asked me during a telephone conversation a month before her big day where I was going to stay when in Oslo for her birthday, I knew what I had to do. And so it was that I spent six incredible days in Norway. However, I seriously doubt that I will ever go back again. Beks died in December that year. Beks’s daughter Renée has taken over where her mother left off, corresponding with me through email, and I am happy that she, too, feels that there is a special bond between our two families.

  In early December 2004, I received an email from an unknown source, Richard Oestermann, with the subject line “translation.” He had obtained my email address from Celia in Jerusalem, who had recommended me highly as an accomplished translator (she has actually never read anything that I have translated). Richard explained briefly that he was an Israeli journalist, born in Denmark, who wrote articles for the Norwegian newspaper Norge idag. The editor of this paper had liked his articles about Israel so much that he had decided to publish a collection of these articles. The book would come out in Norway before Christmas. Someone in the United States had of
fered to finance the translation of the book from Norwegian into English, as well as the subsequent publication by an Israeli publishing house. He asked whether I would be interested in doing the translation, and, if so, he would send me a few pages of the book in Norwegian so that I could mail him a sample of my translation.

  This was very exciting. But I wanted to be honest and told Richard that I had never translated anything professionally and therefore never had had a deadline. His reply was that, in this instance, I would be well paid in exchange for a three-month deadline and that the book, including many pictures, would consist of only about two hundred pages. I sent Richard the sample of my translation he requested, and he emailed to say he liked my work. A few weeks later, Richard advised me that I would be the translator of his book and that he could now tell me that I had competed with others. I was thrilled.

  I received the Norwegian manuscript in January and devoted almost all the time I had to this project. I finished the translation in less than three months. I still have the copy of the cheque for $3,000, which I, at the age of seventy-six, received for my first professional translation job, and also, I thought at the time, my last. It is now September 2005 and the book has still not been published, but I understand that it will be published soon.4

  So much has been written in these pages about the people in my life, but so little about Stefan, the person who has been at the centre of my world for so many years. It is now almost fifty-six years that we have been together, and today it is impossible for either of us to imagine life without the other. Now more than ever before, the phrase “until death do us part” has become a dreaded reality in our lives, and we are grateful for each day we spend together.

  Stefan has been and still is the most generous of husbands, who wants only the best for me, his children and his grandchildren. Our grandchildren respect and love him, and I know they recognize that he is a special kind of grandpa, of which there are few. He is incredible for his age, eighty-three. He reads the newspaper from cover to cover, enjoys good books and music, and looks years younger than he is. His posture is still straight, he still plays golf — in short, he leads a very active life. He dresses extremely well, is slim and trim and is the best-looking elderly man I know.

  I, on the other hand, am feeling my age. My movements are slow, I get easily tired and I miss the energy I once had. My waistline disappeared years ago, and I am often unhappy with my image in the mirror. I have few friends and have definitely become somewhat of a loner in the last few years. My computer plays a major role in my life, whether it is for writing, translating, playing bridge or seeking information on the internet.

  And this is where I will end my story. True, I have had my share of regrets and disappointments, but overall my life has been rich and satisfying, and in many respects a life that people only dream about. Stefan and I have been blessed with good health, and, because of his foresightedness, we have been able to live extremely well. And even though I am sad that so few of our loved ones have remained near us, I do have wonderful memories of the times when we were all together, which will serve me well in the months or years to come.

  Montreal, October 7, 2005

  * * *

  4Richard Oestermann’s Every Second Counts: True Stories from Israel was published in 2006 by Gefen Books, with the English translation by Margrit Rosenberg Stenge.

  Epilogue: Stolpersteine and a Growing Family

  Around 2010, a German-born friend told me about the Stolpersteine project. Stolpersteine (stumbling stones) were being installed in front of homes that had been owned in the past by Jews and others who were victims of the Nazis. I was not particularly interested in this project at the time and didn’t investigate the significance of these stones.

  At the end of 2015, our son, Marvin, happened to watch a TV program showing a journalist reporting on the installation of a Stolperstein in front of his childhood home. Stolpersteine are cobblestone-sized concrete cubes covered with brass plates, which are fitted into the existing sidewalks in front of such houses in Germany and in former Nazi-occupied countries. Each stone is recognizable by its inscription that always begins with the German words Hier wohnte (here lived) and includes the name and birth year of the individual, the year the person was either deported or escaped, and the countries of the individual’s deportation or escape. This project is the largest memorial in the world and was initiated by the German artist Gunter Demnig in 1992.

  Marvin has always been interested in my past, and he decided that the house on Marienburger Strasse 52 should be recognized as having been my parents’ property and my childhood home. He searched the internet for contact information and got in touch with an individual named Ibrahim who was in charge of this project for the city of Cologne. It did not take long for Ibrahim to find out that my father, Markus Rosenberg, had in fact owned the house at Marienburger Strasse 52 and that we had lived there until 1938. He also quickly found all pertinent data, including my parents’ birth years and my mother’s maiden name. Both my husband and Marvin decided that a third stone should bear my name as well.

  It occurred to me that two more stones should be added, one in the name of my aunt (my father’s sister), Karolienchen Plaut, and one in her husband’s name, Natan Plaut. This suddenly became very important to me. My aunt and uncle had remained in our house after my parents and I left quite suddenly in 1938, and following the death of my grandmother in Cologne and the departure to the United States in 1940 of my Uncle Gustav and his family. I knew that there were no graves for my aunt and uncle, and I felt that these stones bearing their names would prove to the world that they had not been forgotten.

  In the meantime, Ibrahim had researched my story and noticed that the information I had written on the application for the Stolpersteine about my aunt and uncle’s deportation was incorrect. For so many years I had thought they had been deported to Theresienstadt and Auschwitz. I learned only now that after they were forced to leave Marienburger Strasse they were sent to live in a Jewish house in Cologne and then deported to Riga in 1941, where they perished. Ibrahim also found their birth years. He advised us that the stones could be installed as early as April 2016, provided that sponsors could be found. It turned out that relatives were not supposed to pay for the Stolpersteine and now, more than seventy years after the end of World War ii, unrelated people or companies had to be found that would pay for their installation. Much to our surprise, sponsors were located in no time, and the date for the installation in front of Marienburger Strasse 52 was set for April 12, 2016, at 11:20 a.m.

  To my great regret, I was unable to join Marvin and his wife, Allegra, at the installation of the Stolpersteine. They later told me that the few hours they had spent in Cologne had been remarkable. It did not take long for the artist Gunter Demnig and his crew to fit the stones into the sidewalk outside the imposing house. The two sponsors had been present, as had the owner of the house and a journalist from a local news magazine. After two bouquets of flowers had been placed on either side of the stones, Marvin and Allegra had been invited to see the inside of the beautiful home surrounded by a lush garden. My fountain was long gone. The remainder of Marvin and Allegra’s stay in Cologne had been spent in the company of one of the couples who had sponsored the installation.

  Since my parents are buried in two different countries, these Stolpersteine are particularly meaningful for me. My father’s grave is in the small Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Oslo, Norway, and my mother’s is in Montreal. Sadly, the cemetery in Oslo has been vandalized countless times. I have not visited my father’s grave since 2002 and do not know its condition today. Now that the Stolpersteine carrying my parents’ names are side by side, I feel that my parents are reunited.

  •

  When Stefan and I stood under the chuppah in the small synagogue in Oslo more than sixty-seven years ago, we could not have imagined the twists and turns our lives would have in store for us. No
w that Stefan is ninety-four and I am eighty-eight years old, we often speak with wonderment about everything we have seen and done in our long lives.

  I had thought in 2005 when I was writing this book that nothing worth mentioning would happen to me anymore, but I was wrong. In 2006, I was asked by the editors at Osprey Publishing in Oxford, England, to translate a Norwegian book originally written by the wife of a Norwegian Holocaust survivor and published in 1946. My English translation was published as Counterfeiter: How a Norwegian Jew Survived the Holocaust, and I was beyond excited when copies of the beautiful hardcover book were delivered to me in August 2008. That was the end of my translation career.

  I also became a survivor speaker at the Montreal Holocaust Museum. I found my voice late in life, but after I got over my initial nervousness, I came to enjoy speaking to the young students who visit the museum. I have met many wonderful teachers and students and even received an award from the museum in September 2016.

  In July 2013, Stefan and I moved to Westmount One, a home for seniors. Now that we have been living here for almost four years, Westmount One almost feels like home. We are able to lead the quiet and independent life we enjoy.

  None of the above events can possibly compare with the growth spurt our family has undergone. Sara and Motti, who live in Beit Shem­esh, Israel, are now the parents of eight, five boys and three girls. Shmoo married Raizel in Montreal in 2010, and they now have three boys and one girl, all also living in Beit Shemesh. Shooshoo married Roy in October 2010 in Israel, and they live in Petah Tikva with one daughter and two sons. Ashi married Dassy (Hadassah) in Israel in 2011, and they now live in Baltimore, Maryland, with their three boys. Since Dassy was born in Israel and has a large family there, Ashi and Dassy have one foot in Israel as well. Erin and her fiancé, Mike, are getting married in Toronto in June this year. Corinne and Yechiya have three daughters and live in Modi’in, Israel.