Two Alaska residents were honored Saturday at the ninth annual Jewish Cultural Gala in Anchorage, held to benefit the new Jewish Cultural Campus, for being sparks of light in the darkest chapter of human history.
Rachel Gottstein, married to Barney Gottstein, is a Holocaust survivor being honored Saturday. Dan Cuddy, president of First National Bank Alaska, is also being honored. Cuddy is a World War II veteran who fought under General George S. Patton and assisted in the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
The Holocaust remains one of the world’s largest genocides. More than 6 million Jews lost their lives and many that lived through it refuse to speak about the atrocities they witnessed. Gottstein was willing to talk about her experience, and shared her story with Channel 2 about surviving three years in concentration camps.
Originally from Krakow, Poland, Gottstein was taken into the camps at age 5 after Germany invaded the country.
“One day my mother took me and brought me to a neighbor and then she hugged me and kissed me and she left,” Gottstein said.
That was the last day Gottstein saw her parents. It was the height of World War II and Gottstein, like most Jews living in Poland, was captured by the Nazis. For the next three years Gottstein spent her life in concentration camps.
"I saw every day people being killed and beaten and tortured, and children being taken for all kinds of medical experiments and it was scary, scary, scary," Gottstein said. "You never knew whether you were going to survive to the next day, and being little and having with me three other cousins that were younger than me and an aunt who took care of us the best she could. [It] was just living in fear every minute of your day, and you never knew that day whether you going to survive to the next day."
Gottstein said didn’t hold on to the fear -- instead she held on to faith. She said her parents taught her a prayer when she was young and every day she repeated it.
"Sh'ma Yis'ra'eil Adonai Eloheinu Adonai echad," Gottstein said, "which means, 'Listen, Israel, your God is one.' I always felt in the camp that this prayer always came back into my mind and that there is one God, and that this one God will watch over the Jewish people. So even though I saw all this going on, these terrible things, I always hoped that this God is going to save some of us and I was always hoping that among the some of us, I'll be, with my aunt and my three cousins."
Unfortunely Gottstein's aunt did not survive.
"She died a week before liberation," Gottstein said. "We were three years, she suffered all the three years and a week before liberation she was killed."
Liberation from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp came just in time for Gottstein and her three cousins, all of whom were very sick. Gottstein had typhus and two of the others had tuberculosis. After a stay in a British infirmary Gottstein eventually moved with family to Israel, where she said her pride in Jewish culture was restored.
"When I went to Israel and I saw how the Israelis were such a proud people, so independent and so able to manage and so not relying on anybody but themselves, I really realized that what I knew before [was] all this fear, and always seeing Jewish people walking with their heads down and in fear," Gottstein said. "Here I saw proud people and happy people -- then that gave me a lot for hope, that there is life after death."
Gottstein said she forgives Germany and Poland, and prays for others to learn tolerance and love.
"It's very difficult to talk about but... I think it's good for you to know what happened because to this day I don't understand why this happened," Gottstein said. "I always keep thinking 'Why, why, why? Just because [you're a] certain religion, is that a reason to kill six million of you?' I mean, no matter how long I'm going to live, I will always ask why. So far, nobody can tell me."
The Jewish Cultural Gala will be held Saturday, at the Dena'ina Center in Downtown Anchorage, at 6 p.m. More information on the event is available on the gala's website.
Contact Mallory Peebles
