Alice Lang Rosen - August 5, 1991
Learning Father is Alive
And, then one day I was called in the office, um, I remember 1945 when the war was over and everyone um, was celebrating, you know, and everything and we were told that the war was over and everyone was very happy and I thought there we were going to Israel now, I was so happy. And I was called into the office and the rabbi said that uh, he was contacted by the French Red Cross and that my father lived through the war and that he was looking for me and they traced me to the children's home. And this is exactly what my father did. He uh, lived and he went back--he went to Heidelberg when he was uh, released from the concentration camp. He was liberated by the Russians.
Auschwitz?
He was not in Auschwitz, no. He told me later on that just a few days after he had given me up--away to the Red Cross they were all put in a train, all together and after a while the train stopped and all the young men had to get off the train and all the children, women, and older mens stayed in the train and he saw a big sign that said Auschwitz--the train went, went to Auschwitz. And he was in labor camps and sur...survived barely. I, I saw a picture what he looked like and he really looked like what you see in the Holocaust movies. That's exactly what he looked like when he came back--on crutches, he said his feet wouldn't carry him and he was liberated by the Russians and--with a friend of his, um, a man, he had--his family was in America too and he befriended him and they would help each other out and they came back together and they went to Heidelberg and that's where they settled and that's where he started to search for me and that's how he, he found me, through them. So they let him know that I was there and he wrote a big letter to me in Ger...in--yeah in German and they translated it to me and I wrote a letter back to him in French and my father's friend had been in France and he could speak French so he would translate letters back to him. And that went on for--'til 1946, almost a year, that's how long it took for me to get a passport...
Husband: Yeah but the rabbi didn't want you to...
...to travel. At first--yeah that's true. The rabbi tried to sway me, he said that I could still go to Israel if I wanted to, I didn't have to go back to my father if I didn't want to. And for some reason I said, "No, I want to see my father," you know.
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