The Girl with the Apple -- A Coincidence?
A true story by Herman Rosenblat
August 1942, Piotrkow, Poland – My father had just died of typhus.
The rest of us—my mother, three brothers, and I—were herded into a square with
other Jews from the ghetto. Rumor had it we were being relocated. My brother Isidore
whispered, “Say you're sixteen,” though I was only eleven. I was tall and
passed for older. An SS officer asked my age. “Sixteen,” I lied. He motioned me
left with the other healthy young men. My mother was sent right—with the women,
children, and elderly.
Panicked, I ran to her. “Go with your
brothers,” she snapped. It was the last time I saw her.
We were packed into a cattle car bound
for Buchenwald. I became number 94983, working in the crematorium.
Later, we were transferred to Schlieben, a sub-camp near Berlin.
One morning, I dreamt I heard my
mother’s voice: “I’m sending you an angel.”
Soon after, behind the barracks near the
barbed-wire fence, I saw a girl—blond curls glowing behind a birch tree.
Desperate, I whispered, “Do you have something to eat?” In Polish, she
understood. She pulled an apple from her jacket and tossed it over the fence.
“I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
And she did—day after day—for nearly
seven months. Apples. Bread. Hope. We never spoke more than a word, and I never
knew her name. But her kindness sustained me.
Then we were moved to Theresienstadt in
Czechoslovakia. “Don’t come back,” I told her. “We’re leaving.” I never said
goodbye.
May 10, 1945 – I was scheduled for execution. At 8
a.m., chaos erupted. Russian troops had arrived. We were liberated just two
hours before I was to die. All my brothers survived. I owed my life, I
believed, to the girl with the apples—my angel.
After the war, I moved to England,
trained in electronics, then joined my brother in New York. I served in the
U.S. Army during Korea and opened a shop in 1957. Life slowly rebuilt itself.
Then came a blind date. My friend Sid
introduced me to Roma, a kind, beautiful nurse. We hit it off instantly. As we
talked, she told me how, as a girl in hiding near a camp in Germany, she used
to throw apples to a starving boy on the other side of the fence.
“What did he look like?” I asked, heart
pounding.
“Tall. Skinny. Always hungry. I saw him
for months.”
“Did he tell you one day not to come
back because he was leaving?”
She stared at me. “Yes.”
“That was me.”
On that very night, overwhelmed, I
proposed. She laughed but didn’t say no. A week later, I met her family for
Shabbat dinner. Eventually, she said yes. We married, had two children, and
three grandchildren. Nearly 50 years later, I still hadn’t let her go.
__________________
My
PostScript:
Do you see this as a Coincidence or a plan from a Higher Level?
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