Four years ago, at the age of 88, Renee Siegel’s mother, Helen Zelikovich Rieder, closed her eyes, went to sleep and never woke up. It was a peaceful end for a brave, resilient and hopeful woman who had survived forced labor at five Nazi camps, including Auschwitz, and who lost her entire family, with exception of one brother, to the Holocaust.
On February 26th, Siegel shared details of her mother’s past with an audience of 11th-grade history and English students at Washington Township High School. Her visit was arranged by WTHS English teacher Melissa Leskie.
“My mother openly shared her experiences, even though they were painful,” Siegel said. “She thought it was her mission to share her story so that people could learn from the past. She also wanted to refute Holocaust deniers. She was proud to provide first-hand testimonies to the horrors of this period in our history. And when she asked me to continue this storytelling, I was admittedly hesitant. I thought it was her story, but she assured me that it is my story as well. It is my family history.”
Siegel recounted her mother’s “simple but joyful” childhood as the oldest of nine children in the Carpathian Mountain region of Czechoslovakia. After her country was annexed to Hungary and with the rise of Hitler, her family was eventually relocated to a Jewish ghetto in the region where they lived for six weeks before enduring a three-day ride in cattle cars with 2,200 Jews to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
“My mother told me of the constant cold, hunger, brutality, and worry of what was coming next,” Siegel recalled. “Her job there was to break up stones that were used to build roads. She was eventually moved to four subsequent camps – Horneburg, Porta, Fallsben, and Salzweder – until April of 1945, when she was liberated. She was like a skeleton and riddled with typhus, and the Americans nursed her back to health over two months in a Red Cross hospital.”
Her mother moved to refugee settlements, first in Ireland and then in Israel, where she met Abraham Rieder, also a Holocaust survivor. They were married within three months and immigrated to the United States in January 1958, settling in California.
“I had no grandparents, no aunts or uncles,” Siegel said. “When I was born, my mother said in the Jewish tradition, you usually name your child after a deceased member of your family, but since she had lost so many people, she named me Renee, a French derivative for Renaissance or rebirth. My mother had every right to be a bitter person, but she chose instead to remember kindness and those that showed her kindness, even when it was a risk.
“The Holocaust is a prime example of what can happen when people remain bystanders and when bigotry goes unchecked,” she said. “My mother would want you to know that nothing good comes from hatred. She would want you to be kind to one another and respect other’s differences. She would want you to make something of yourself and to remember that life is precious and should not be taken for granted.”
“As time marches on and we have fewer and fewer survivors able to give testimonies about their experiences, it has become increasingly urgent to provide this bridge between our younger generation and the survivors and their families,” Leskie said. “Today was a cross-curricular effort, as all 11th graders work through a Holocaust unit in History and then read Elie Wiesel’s memoir, “Night”, in our 11th grade English classes. In the spirit of Wiesel’s mission to ‘never forget,’ we emphasize the power of the words, the importance of telling one’s story, and the impact we all have on those around us – highlighting the idea that storytelling becomes our legacy, and literature often documents our history.”
Following the visit, the WTHS 11th grade English and History teachers, including the 11th-grade History and English resource room teachers, teamed to raise $250, which along with a $250 grant from the Washington Township Education Association which Leskie secured, will be donated to the Esther Raab Holocaust Museum and Goodwin Education Center in Cherry Hill, N.J. in memory of Helen Zelikovich Rieder.
