“Hitler lost…we’re still here.”

SANTA FE, N.M. – Brenda Rabinowitz presented a lecture to New Mexico National Guard personnel at the Regional Training Institute here April 18 as part of the Holocaust Days of Remembrance.

Her talk was entitled “The Holocaust and My Family: 1933-1945.”

Rabinowitz is the daughter of German Jewish parents who fled Nazi Germany in 1938.

Her father’s lineage has been traced back to Spain. The family left Spain to escape the persecution of Jews during the Spanish Inquisition. The family resettled in Germany.

Rabinowitz discussed how Germany – like most countries – was suffering in the Great Depression. Germans were also faced with an impossible task of paying reparations for World War I and severe restrictions on maintaining a national military.

This set the stage for Adolf Hitler’s rise to power.

To give the German people a common enemy, “Hitler selects the Jews as a scapegoat,” Rabinowitz said.

She then described how the Nuremberg Laws went into effect on Sept. 15, 1935, codifying national discrimination against Jews. Jews were permitted to shop only in stores owned by other Jews and forbidden to gather in public places.

Romantic relationships between Jews and non-Jews were outlawed. Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David on the front and back of their clothing “so you could see them coming and going,” Rabinowitz said. “Nazi soldiers and the Hitler Youth were allowed to abuse them.”

Public humiliation of Jews became the norm.

Besides placing the letter “J” on identification papers, the German government added the name “Sarah” to the birth certificates of all Jewish women to further identify them as Jews.

“Jews were not allowed because they had impure blood,” Rabinowitz said. “If you had even a little bit of Jewish blood in you, you were considered a Jew. They (Germans) were very good at finding out.”

Delegates of 32 nations met at the 1938 Evian Conference to discuss increasing quotas for accepting Jewish immigrants fleeing Germany.

“What happened at the conference? Nothing. Nothing changed. They were blaming the Jews for everything that was wrong in Germany,” Rabinowitz said.

After learning that she would not be allowed to attend college in Germany, among other restrictions, Rabinowitz’s mother fled to Holland at age 20. The Gestapo detained her at the border, but for an unknown reason decided to release her.

“That was a miracle,” Rabinowitz said. “It was another miracle that she caught that boat to Holland.”

Rabinowitz’s paternal grandfather was a rabbi who decided to send her father to the United States.

“Somebody has to survive,” the elder Rabinowitz told his son.

Rabinowitz’s parents met aboard a ship bound for the United States.

“My father was sick the whole time, and my mother nursed him,” Rabinowitz said. “That’s how my parents met.”

Life for Jews in Germany got even worse on Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass), Nov. 9-10, 1938. Jewish businesses were vandalized and looted. Temples were set on fire and destroyed.

“That was the beginning of the end,” Rabinowitz said of Jewish life in Germany.

In the United States, her father wrote “one or two letters” to relatives in Germany and initially received replies.

“Then it went silent,” Rabinowitz said. “They found out that Jews were being rounded up.”

Her paternal grandfather was arrested but released. Rabinowitz surmises he was released to pacify and control the Jewish population.

“A lot of people never got out,” she said. “They were sent to the (concentration) camps and never heard from again.”

Some, including Rabinowitz’s relatives, were sent to the Kaiserwald concentration camp near Riga, Latvia. Living in the Riga ghetto, they were forced to finish constructing the camp and then imprisoned within.

Jews were transported to the camps in cattle cars so crowded that they had to stand for days during transit. At some stops, Rabinowitz said, civilians would spray water on top of the cattle cars to cool the prisoners. They continued this practice during winters when the water would freeze and form icicles from the roof. The Jews would break off and share the icicles for water.

Upon arriving at a concentration camp, prisoners were issued a bowl, a cup, a blanket, prison clothes, and wooden shoes.

Showing a picture of Jewish prisoners sleeping with their heads on their bowls, Rabinowitz explained, “Those bowls were very important. If you lost your bowl, you didn’t eat.”

Upon arriving at the concentration camps, prisoners had to endure “selection.” The first selection separated prisoners by sex. Boys aged seven or more were kept with their fathers. The next selection weeded out the elderly, sick, and women with infants.

“Some mothers tried to give their children away,” Rabinowitz said.

At some camps, parents tried in vain to keep their children with them.

“They (prison staff) would tell the parents not to worry, that they would take the children to a children’s camp,” Rabinowitz said. “Once the (children’s) camp was full, they would lock it up and leave.”

Forced to fend for themselves, the older children tried to provide for the younger ones without resources.

Sick prisoners received little to no care.

“My grandmother died, quote-unquote, of ‘natural causes.’ She was 68, in failing health, but she was helped to her death,” Rabinowitz said.

She spoke at length about the horrors of Auschwitz, perhaps the most infamous of the concentration camps.

Showing a picture of Auschwitz, Rabinowitz pointed out the words “Arbeit Mach Frei” over the gate and provided the translation: “Work sets you free.”

“If you were selected for work, they worked you until you couldn’t work anymore, and then they killed you,” she said.

Auschwitz was also known for tattooing numbers on the forearms of prisoners, including children.

“Once they tattooed you, they (prison guards) called you by your number, not your name. If you didn’t know your number, they were going to kill you,” Rabinowitz said. “If you didn’t answer at roll call and weren’t already dead, they were going to kill you.”

Rabinowitz showed pictures of warehouses full of items taken from prisoners: human hair for stuffing pillows, shoes, eyeglasses, suitcases, and clothes – including prayer shawls.

“Some of these clothes were sent back to Germany, so the Germans who were suffering and cold could wear them,” she said.

Auschwitz was where Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death,” carried out his experiments.

“He was fascinated by twins, especially conjoined twins,” Rabinowitz said, showing a picture of twins Mengele conjoined himself. She showed other pictures of Mengele’s victims and amputated legs.

“He (Mengele) was fascinated by blue eyes. He would inject blue dye into the eyes of prisoners, trying to turn them blue. Many of them went blind,” Rabinowitz said.

As the war came to an end, Allied forces discovered and liberated the camps. Despite their best efforts, Allied doctors and nurses found that some prisoners could not absorb food, water, or medicine.

“Many of the survivors died with months of being liberated, but not just months – within days, hours, and minutes. My father never heard from his parents or his sister again,” Rabinowitz said.

“Six million Jews died in the holocaust,” she said. “1.5 million of them were children.”

Rabinowitz’s parents married in New York City in 1941 and resided in a neighborhood populated with Holocaust survivors.

“All of my parents’ friends were Holocaust survivors,” she said.

One of her aunts, a survivor of Auschwitz, lived nearby. Rabinowitz and her mother arrived at her aunt’s home unexpectedly one day.

“She always wore long sleeves,” Rabinowitz said. “She loved to bake, and this day she was baking. When she opened the door, she had her sleeves pushed up past her elbows. I asked her about the numbers on her arms. She quickly pulled her sleeves down and said something to my mother in German.”

Rabinowitz came to New Mexico to attend school in 1974.

“I never left,” she said.

She married and now has two children and three grandchildren. She retired from teaching seven years ago. She now splits her time between taking care of her grandchildren and volunteering at the New Mexico Holocaust Museum and Gellert Center for Education.

At the end of her talk, Rabinowitz said, “Hitler lost. Not only did he lose the war, we’re still here.”

The audience, which had been quiet and attentive, gave her a standing ovation.

Brig. Gen. Jamison Herrera, the Deputy Adjutant General, was first in line of those waiting to speak with Rabinowitz. He presented Rabinowitz with his challenge coin as he thanked her for the lecture.

Herrera said, “History will repeat itself unless we have lessons learned.”