Holocaust horrors recounted
Auschwitz survivor speaks to eighth-graders
By Ben Saylor
Rocky River
Published May 7, 2008

“No one can take away what you have in your mind.”

Those words of wisdom were imparted to Gita Frankel by her parents when she was growing up, and she’s never forgotten them. Frankel addressed the eighth grade at Rocky River Middle School last Thursday about her experiences in the Holocaust during World War II.

Frankel said she was “not quite 14” when World War II broke out in 1939. When the war began, Frankel said she attended school in Poland, and was raised in an observant Jewish household. Education was always important in her family, something Frankel imparted to her own children.

“I don’t know how it feels to be your age,” Frankel told the students, “because my life was destroyed.”

Frankel spoke of witnessing her father shot to death before her eyes. He was killed by German soldiers when he attempted to go to Frankel’s younger brother, who had been separated into a group of Jews to be executed.

Following this, Frankel, her mother and older brother struggled to survive in a Jewish ghetto. During this time, Frankel said her hunger was so great that she couldn’t fall asleep. Trucks came and took men away every day.

Eventually, Frankel’s brother fell ill, and before dying implored his sister to take care of their mother, and to not lose faith. Frankel and her mother were later ordered, along with others living in the ghetto, to march to a train station where they were packed into cattle cars. Frankel said there were 100 people in her car, and that many of them suffocated because the only source of air came from the slits between the planks of the train’s siding.

The train took Frankel and her mother to Auschwitz. Frankel said she could see the flames of the crematorium from the cattle car. At the camp, Frankel described waking up one morning to find two friends of hers hanging on the electrified wires surrounding the camp.

She and her mother were eventually moved to Stutthof, another concentration camp. Frankel said conditions at Stutthof were even worse than those at Auschwitz in part because there were no beds to sleep in, whereas at Auschwitz there were bunk beds into which people were crammed. She said she recalled praying that Allied bombers flying overhead would bomb the crematorium at Auschwitz and/or the railroad lines so that the Germans would not be able to transport Jews.

As the Soviets advanced through German-occupied territory, Frankel and her mother, along with other inmates, were put on a death march, the destination of which was the Baltic Sea, where the inmates would be drowned. Those who couldn’t keep up were shot. Frankel and her mother were able to escape when Frankel’s mother, exhausted from the strain of the forced march, collapsed in a ditch. Frankel doubled back, found her mother and took her to an abandoned house in a village. Frankel said they subsisted on pickles and marmalade they found in the house’s basement until a Soviet soldier found them there.

But Frankel’s troubles did not end with liberation. While  being treated for illness as a result of her ordeal, a naked German girl came into the room where Frankel was staying. She was naked and crying, telling Frankel her life was in danger. Frankel, who knew that the Red Army soldiers had been given free reign to do what they wished to Germans they encountered, hid the girl under her bed. Before long a Soviet soldier appeared, asking Frankel if she had seen a German girl in the area. Frankel said she hadn’t, and the soldier moved on. Frankel said the German girl kissed her forehead and told her she saved her life, and went away.

For a long time, Frankel said that she and her husband, also a Holocaust survivor, could not speak about their experiences. Eventually, Frankel began to open up about those years, and since then she has spoken at various schools in Ohio and the statehouse as well.

Frankel also spoke glowingly of her home in America.

“I love this country,” Frankel said. “I never knew what freedom meant until I came to this country.”

After her talk, several students lined up to thank Frankel for speaking, and many gave her hugs. The eighth grade at Rocky River Middle School takes a trip to Washington, D.C., every year, and one of their stops during the trip is the Holocaust Memorial Museum.