Remembering the Holocaust

Ilse Loeb remembers that day clearly. It was 1938 and she was 13. She was standing at the train station saying goodbye to her parents for the last time.

“If anyone asks you anything, tell them your mother’s dead and you don’t know where your father is.”

That was one of the last pieces of advice her mother gave her before Loeb went into hiding as one of the Hidden Children of the Holocaust.

Loeb was at the Thursday, APril 19, to commemorate Yom HaShoah/Holocaust Remembrance Day to share her students with the students there, something she has been doing for years with the hope that her message of hope, and vigilance, will be remembered.

“This is what happened to me, and it happened for one reason only, the Holocaust and because I’m Jewish,” she told a group of students, most clad in black and white to commemorate Yom HaShoah. “I’m very fortunate to be one of the ones who was helped, because there were only a few of us.”

Loeb was born in Vienna, Austria, and remembers having a happy life with her mother, father and brother. But all that changed when Hitler came in 1938, and her father looked out the window and said “We are in for bad times.”

Loeb’s father was right. Soon after, Loeb began changes in people she'd known for years. “The next day, a friend, not my best friend, but someone I knew, said ‘You dirty Jew.’ Now why would she say that?” Three months later, Nazis came and took her father’s store.

“They came in and said that in five minutes he had to leave everything behind. They put a swastika in front of the place and he lost his livelihood. He just stood there every day staring at the store.”

After months of tension and fear, things came to a head on Kristnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, when Jews were assaulted and murdered and their homes and businesses destroyed or burned. Loeb’s brother was nearly caught that night, but managed to eventually escape to the United States. He and Ilse were the only members of the family that survived the Holocaust.

“That was the official night that the Holocaust began,” Loeb said solemnly. “Jews were rounded up and sent to camps and several friends were arrested that night and never came back.”

Loeb’s family was later forced to give up their home and possessions and move in with another family that they didn’t know.  Eventually, her parents realized that they had to get her out of the country.

“I went to Holland at 13. That is how I ended up at the train station, saying good bye to my parents for the last time.”

Of course, she didn’t know that that day would be the last time she saw her parents. She continued to write to them, waiting for the day they would arrive. But it wasn’t until the 1980s that she found out why they never escaped. After searching records from concentration camps and archives, she eventually discovered that her father was being used to help the Germans create counterfeit English pounds in an attempt to destroy that country’s economy.

“It wasn’t until the 1980s that I found out about my parents. They were being held in a camp in Poland. They were taken to Belzec. It was only open for 10 months. Two people tried to escape, but no one got out alive. Six hundred thousand Jews were killed in 10 months.”

In Holland, Loeb received a fake passport and identity thanks to the Dutch underground, and for a time she spent her life being someone else, a girl who wasn’t Jewish. She spent so much effort “becoming” that girl that when the time came, she had trouble remembering a lot of the litle things about who she used to be.

During her time in hiding, Loeb told the children, life was difficult. But she was glad to be alive, even though that if she wasn't dilligent, if she wasn't careful, she would be found out.

“I was thinking, every moment of every day, not to do something that would give me away,” she told the students.

But now she isn't worried about being careful. In fact, she wants everyone to remember her story and the story of the millions who died in the Holocaust, which is why the Monroe resident has been traveling for years telling it.

“People all the time say the Holocaust didn’t happen,” she said. “I compare it to bullies, the victim, and the people who do nothing. Don’t’ be a bystander. If you see something is wrong, get help…I count on you students to speak up for us in case we won’t be around and when you have your own family, tell them to speak up.”