“The aggressor will never be happy. The victim can be rehabilitated”: a testimony meeting with Ruth Haran, a Holocaust survivor from Bari

“Thank you everyone for coming, I’m a little embarrassed,” she began Ruth Hearn The 89-year-old attended the ‘Memory in the living room’ meeting with the teachers of the ‘Molad’ elementary school in Be’er Sheva last week. “I only knew about myself to tell,” she quoted the poet Rachel, “my world is as narrow as an ant’s world, you all know that.” In Haran’s case, this narrow and personal world was full of storms: after experiencing the Holocaust as a child and building her life as an educator in the State of Israel, she survived the October 7th attack in her home in Kibbutz Bari. In this attack, her son Avshalom was murdered, and seven members of her family were kidnapped by Hamas. Six of them returned in the kidnap deal, and one of them, Tal Shoham, is still a prisoner in Gaza.

Hern told the story of her life calmly, modestly, sometimes with humor, to the dozens of people who came to the school library. A story that gives perspective to difficult experiences that people go through in their lives, and an inspiration for the wonderful ability to deal with them from a deep inner resilience. People asked, shared thoughts, and she was happy to answer. In some, she caused excitement and tears, and in others, amazement at the inner strength and optimism of a woman who met human evil twice, without any filters, and could eat it.

Children find comfort in small things

“I was born in Romania, in Bucharest, the eldest daughter of three other brothers,” Haran said, “my mother honored me with a blessing and said, ‘You were born unlucky.’ And a place, and the Jews migrate. They migrate to Poland, then they are captured. They migrate to Romania, then they are captured or deported there.

“My father was born in Warsaw, a doctor of medicine and also a pharmacologist. He had large pharmaceutical laboratories and he was a wealthy man. Before Antonescu came to power in Romania, it was decided to deport all foreign subjects. My father was a candidate for deportation. We tried to hire lawyers, we tried to talk to acquaintances, we tried Talking to friends didn’t help much. One winter night Dad was deported. Traveling on the trains was very dangerous, because there were Romanians who were Nazis and they would throw him out of the window.

“The orphaned home, without a father is very sad. We searched for my father for three years, and we did not find him. Mother decided that she was not staying in Romania, and that she wanted to go to Poland, or to a place that would bring us closer to our father. She dressed us as villagers, we got into the wagon, and on the road, with many Bribery and money, we managed to reach the town of Tschernowitz in the Bukovina region (which was under the control of the Soviet Union – AC). A town that has been ruled by Germans since the World War, and much of the population speaks German.

“We arrived at a relative, a rabbi, who hosted us. In the meantime, mother corresponded with everyone she could to find father. For three years she searched for him. One night mother dreamed that she saw King Karol, the king of Romania. She went to the rabbi to ask her what the dream meant The rabbi told her, don’t worry, dear Ness, your husband will return.

“And it really happened. One day the door opened and my father appeared at the door of the house, it was very exciting. He arrived in Chernivtsi because the Germans had not yet arrived there. Since Communism was established, then father received a very important title, now he is a Bolshevik.

“Thanks to his skills, he gets a hospital to manage. The hospital hosts mainly military personnel and government officials who are on their way, because the Germans are making more and more progress. Now my father runs a hospital, he has many sick and wounded. We get a dacha, it’s a big and luxurious villa, but We can only use three rooms, and we have no wood for heating, it was near Odessa.

“In this house I discovered a wolfhound dog. I went into the kennel, played with the puppies. It was a happy time. I led my life under the table. We had a big dining room, but I put all the dolls under the table. I see them all, but they don’t You see me. Children find comfort in small things.

“My brother and I, when we were very hungry, we would chew the bread, and to preserve it we would make ‘candy’ out of it. Once I honored him with candy, once he honored me with candy, but it was bread.”

What did one apple do to me?

The happy life at home was interrupted as the wanderings continued. “The Germans are approaching, and the population is very worried. My father decides that he wants to escape to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, all of Hestan, where the Germans have not yet arrived. We get on the train with the whole hospital, about three cars. Every now and then the train stops, and we collect hot water for tea .

A small incident on that train shaped, according to Haran, her adult life. “We are on the train for a month and a half. One day a villager gets on the train with two baskets of apples. Apples were worth their weight in gold. The villager offers me an apple. But I’m a big girl, I’m already four years old. I know you don’t take anything from strangers. I look at dad , he looks at me, and I understand that I will not take this apple.

“Later I realized what this apple did to me. Patience, delaying gratification, independence.”

There is nowhere to bury father

“We travel by train for days, months, arrive in Uzbekistan. Father accepts to run another hospital as a substitute, and we live for six months in Uzbekistan. In the meantime, the Russians manage to send the Germans back, reject them, that they will not come to Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan and the ‘Stan’.

“One fine day, father receives an urgent invitation from the communists. Stalin persecuted all doctors and all intellectuals. We are in constant danger. As much as we speak languages, we are Jews. It is difficult to hide. Father receives a new position – to be a medical inspector in Kishinev, a large city in Bessarabia. The typhoid epidemic is raging In the streets. Dad’s job is to eradicate the disease. But in one of the places he got to, he himself fell ill.

“We need to bury father. But where? There are no Jewish cemeteries. My mother wanders from village to village until she finds a Jew in one of the villages who shows her where the cemetery was. Not where the cemetery is, but where the cemetery was. We bury father.

Mom says, we are going to Romania. My uncle sends us suitcases with money, because there was a very big inflation in Romania. We manage to bribe all kinds of people, and disguised as villagers manage to travel a long way towards Bucharest.

In Israel: “My mother kept saying, ‘We came to Israel to build and be built'”

“The family received us well, a large and well-to-do family. Nevertheless, mother says, we will go to the Land of Israel. In Chisinau, the slogan (of the Zionist movement – OT) was to build and be built. The year is 1947, my brother and sister receive permission to enter the country, because the English ruled the country. Mom and my little brother don’t.

“Mother sold all the jewelry we had, mother gave it to everyone and somehow they put us on one of the ships in the belly of the ship. For ten days we floated in the belly of the ship. It was terrible, there was no air, pregnant women, wounded patients. We go through this too. Suddenly I hear: ‘We arrived It was so exciting.

“I go on board, and such an exciting sight for a 13-14-year-old girl,” she loses her voice for a moment, “I see the Golden Dome in Haifa, the stairs. They brought us tangerines, I still remember the taste to this day.

“My brother immediately went to Palestine, my sister went to work at Blumenthal Hospital, which is a hospital for the mentally ill, and my mother got a job like a drop of milk, because a lot of Holocaust survivors who were afraid to touch a baby came, and she guided them.

“I already knew how to manage myself in life. My mother insisted that I clean the house of two ‘yikes’ old women, ‘but don’t take money,’ she said.

“We were happy. My mother kept saying, ‘We came to Israel to build and be built.’ Aliza didn’t tell us ‘it’s forbidden, it’s allowed’, she let us behave our way, but mother kept kosher.”

“All my life I lived in the southern region”

“I went to study in Pardes Hana, an agricultural school. I enlisted in Nahal, I went to Nahal Oz. I was in the years when Roy was murdered (Rotberg, a son of Nahal Oz who was murdered in 1952 by Egyptian terrorists – OT). There were pedayoons, we were afraid to go to the bathroom even though we were soldiers. Children from Gaza would come to pick potatoes. The Egyptians ruled Gaza, if anyone was If he raised his head, he would have been shot.”

“There, in Nahal Oz, I met my husband. He was a member of Kibbutz Gavim, he used to come with a horse, with a bicycle to Nahal Oz. We got married, I got pregnant, and I didn’t like the education in the kibbutz. We are moving to the Borchov neighborhood, where my husband was originally from.

“Later, Ben Gurion announced that kibbutzim would help the new immigrants in the moshavim. We volunteered and we are in Moshav Tidhar. I was a kindergarten teacher, and he was an agricultural instructor. My husband went for a month in the reserves and then a month in a course. There were agricultural instructors who would bring me vegetables, I would cook soup. My neighbor used to say ‘Hey me, the guide’s wife, one goes one comes…’

“I really liked Tadhar. Moroccan people from the Atlas Mountains. We arrived in the fall, people go to the synagogue, the singers in the synagogue. The traditional clothing, the Texan. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, I was fascinated. Sometimes the neighbors, the Cohen family, took my son. Once they left He was in cotton after they sprayed Perthion, which is a very dangerous powder. I found him and he was fine.

“We left Tadhar, and decided to move to Be’er Sheva. I was a kindergarten teacher in a welfare farm. There were hard times there as well. Children would come without food, without clothes. I lived in the southern region all my life. I was involved in education, I was a consultant.”

Barry

“I moved to Bari four years ago, after my husband died, and my eldest son, Abshalom, insisted that I move to Bari. I moved there to be close to him.

“I loved kibbutz life,” Haran stops and cries for a moment, “Fields, orchards, orchards, blossoms. Simply paradise. The people, the community. Hardworking, bright, creative people. You know that Kibbutz Bari was one of the most established kibbutzim in the south.”

October 7: “I saw a cot soaked in blood”

Then came Shabbat Simchat Torah, October 7. Haran was alone in her house. “Absalom’s sons were murdered, his body was desecrated. I opened the window, I shouted, wow, this is terrible, it’s like the Holocaust. I saw my neighbor’s body thrown on the grass. I sneaked out of the house, I saw a baby bed soaked in blood. I saw children murdered in front of their parents’ eyes Murdered in front of their children. Blood, horrors in every corner. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do in this situation.

“Babies, women, old people, sick, wounded, were taken captive to Gaza. In the tunnels of Gaza, without water and without oxygen most days. My family was also taken captive. My daughter-in-law Shoshan was taken, with her daughter, her husband and her two grandchildren (Shoshan Haran, her daughter Adi Shoham and her husband Tal Shoham, and the grandchildren Neve and Hael – my daughter was taken (Sharon Avigdori and her daughter Noam – Ach). Tal Shoham, my granddaughter’s husband, you will see him again .

“We were picked up in the morning, parts of us, and brought to Sderot. It is impossible to describe the welcome we received in Sderot. Pots of food, mattresses, blankets, whatever could be given was exceptional.

“I decided to go to Be’er Sheva and stayed at Eti’s house, in Omer. I have known her husband since he was a naughty boy, because he was a good friend of my son.”

“In both cases there was deliberate, systematic destruction. Absolute evil”

Lehren has a complex position on the line that connects the Holocaust to the October 7 massacre. “When they asked me to speak on Channel 12, the first thing I said was, ‘It’s a holocaust.’ There. The degradation of human value as a human being.”

“I will ask you a question,” she addresses those present, “Why do you think the Nazis stamped a number on the hand?”
“For the record,” someone answers, and another says: “Like animals.”
Ruth continues: “It means that you are no longer a person. You are not a writer, you are not a senior doctor, you are not a composer, you are a zero. You are just a number.”

And at the same time, she sees the Holocaust as a unique event. “The Holocaust is a dark spot in the history of the 20th century. The events of the Holocaust affected the perception of humanity, the design and view of man as a person. The Holocaust left its mark on all of humanity. It was a human trauma. The events of the Holocaust and its methods cannot, and cannot, be compared with other oppressive situations. , because then we will flee to banality and untruth. The Holocaust, it was unique.”

“One thing scares me: a war between brothers”

It is important for her to emphasize that in situations of extreme evil there is an aggressor and a victim, and the difference between them is that the victim can be cured. “The aggressor and the victim are not the same personality structure. The aggressor, the one who did such things to women and children, his personality structure can never ever be happy. The victim can be rehabilitated.

“The survivors of the Holocaust, and I among them, saw in the immigration to the Land of Israel a need to build and be built in this land. A need for healing for the soul. The survivors of the Holocaust belonged and were part of the building of the land and of creativity. They knew how to rehabilitate themselves from the vision of violence. They came to the Land, built families, gave birth to children, established settlements.

And because of her age and experiences, she also has a warning. “We’re here and I’m very optimistic, except for one thing that scares me, a war between brothers. It’s dangerous, and it’s bad for all of us. Thank you for listening to me.”