SOUTH BRUNSWICK – Six million people died in the Holocaust.
Francine Angstreich, who as a young girl lived in Poland during the Nazi uprising, was not among those. Now, she tells her story to others so that something as destructive and as damaging as the Holocaust will never happen again.
Angstreich told her story to a group gathered at the Chabad of South Brunswick on Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year took place May 1.
“It’s something we’ll never understand,” said Rabbi Levi Azimov. “Hopefully this will motivate us to think back and to look back to see what they went through and ultimately will get us to behave better.”
Angstreich’s story begins in 1937, the year she was born in Tarnow, Poland.
“My father came from a very wealthy family, so we were living it easy,” she said.
When Hitler invaded Poland, Angstreich’s grandparents were not worried. According to Angstreich, they told her, “They’re only going to put us to work and that’s it. It’s no big deal.”
But in 1941, it started: Hitler started his quest to cleanse the world of Jews. Angstreich’s parents knew they had to leave, but her grandparents refused to go.
As Angstreich and her family were picked up in one of her father’s limos, the Germans spotted them.
“Bullets came through our car,” she said. “We wound up going to Otwock [a town in Poland.] My uncle and father reserved a little hotel.”
They stayed there for about six or seven months.
“The Germans were not interested in that area,” Angstreich said. “They were not even there.”
However, her father was caught and put on a Nazi truck while checking in with one of the factories that he owned.
“My father would never let any grass grow under his feet,” Angstreich said. “He said he had to get out of this truck or he was not going to live.”
He bribed one of the guards with a watch, so he was able to sit at the front of the truck, close to the door. He eventually escaped, jumping into a ravine. However, two Polish soldiers picked him up after he jumped off.
Eventually, it got too dangerous for Angstreich and her family to stay in the hotel and they boarded a train to Bochnia, Poland.
“My mother said, ‘Don’t open your mouth, make believe you’re sleeping and just keep quiet,’”Angstreich said. “We had papers that said we were citizens of Argentina.”
They rented a house in Bochnia, where Angstreich stayed, narrowly escaping imminent death on more than one occasion.
One time, they were all marched outside.
“They said, ‘Line up and start walking,’” Angstreich said. “Thank God my uncle came by with his limo, so they went after the limo and left us alone.”
Other times, it took plain luck for her life to be spared.After being taken outside one night, everyone was hysterical.
“People were crying; it was scary stuff,” Angstreich said. “A message came through the loudspeaker that said, ‘It’s not your time,’ and they let us go.”
That wasn’t the only narrow escape from death for Angstreich.
There was a boat that was to be leaving soon, so that some children could be shipped to Israel. Angstreich’s mom begged her to get on the boat.
“I refused to go because I didn’t want to leave my mother,” Angstreich said. “I have always had intuition.”
The boat was blown up, killing everybody onboard.
While rooming with another family, Angstreich had to live in a closet for about two months.
“I wasn’t able to do anything; I just sat there,” Angstreich said. “Unfortunately, I wound up with pneumonia. So they had to get someone to come and save me.”
Luckily, she pulled through. However, her parents were not so lucky and soon after were caught and taken to a concentration camp.
Angstreich lived in the basement with an Aryan family during this time, and she was raised as one of their own.
“I went to church, I wore a cross,” Angstreich said.
However, she again had health problems.
“I became crippled and we couldn’t get a doctor to help me,” Angstreich said. “Thank God, I pulled through. I still suffer; I have a rheumatism.”
Her parents did return in 1945, after Angstreich was living there for over a year. She said her first reaction to them coming home was a desire not to be Jewish anymore.
“I didn’t want to be Jewish,” Angstreich said. “I didn’t want to be attacked again. I didn’t want to be shot at again.”
She was eventually convinced that the troubles were over, but at just eight years old, it was difficult.
When Angstreich’s mom had left, she gave a beautiful four-carat diamond to the man who helped take care of her. She said that he could keep the diamond, but that when she returned, she wanted her daughter back.
When she finally returned from the concentration camps, the man gave her the diamond back, telling her to give it to Angstreich when she is to be married, as an engagement ring.
Angstreich’s mother wrote to the family that protected her daughter after they left.
“One day, my mother wrote a latter and never heard from him again,” Angstreich said. “My uncle told my mother not to write to him because she was jeopardizing his life.”
Angstreich says she does not harbor any ill feelings toward Germans.
“I don’t hate them,” Angstreich said. “You can’t blame a whole country because of what some stupid people did.”
Now, Angstreich loves educating people about what happened so that no one will ever forget. She often talks in schools, and one time she got a surprising response from a middle-schooler.
“This little kid said to me, ‘Excuse me, lady, all you Jews are liars,’” Angstreich said. “He said his dad said so. I had a meeting with the father. I said, ‘You have some nerve teaching your son that Jews are liars.”
Angstreich wants people to never forget, so that her favorite mantra, “never again,” will come true.