Rivka Kahana Weissberg, a Jewish survivor of the holocaust, told her life’s story to Phileleftheros as she depicted in her book “Shining in the Dark,” in which she describes the harrowing journey of her parents and her rescue as a child from the hands of the Nazis.
Born in 1943 at the heart of the Holocaust, she survived thanks to the actions of brave and selfless people. Rivka was recently in Cyprus for a series of lectures.
This was an interview we couldn’t overlook. With just a few Holocaust survivors alive today – Jews and non-Jews alike – their testimonies are history itself, unfolding before us in real-time, like a movie, full of elements: suspense, horror, death, betrayal, triumph, redemption.
Many survivors hid deep within themselves the horrific suffering inflicted by Hitler’s fascist regime. Their pain makes them struggle for words. The tragedy is unimaginable. For the dignified woman sitting before us, however, it is a duty to humanity. She owes it to the people who saved her and to God who, as she mentions, was there at every step.
The winds of war
When her mother was 90 years old, Rivka gained a more complete picture of her childhood experiences through a large bundle of letters she gave her, detailing everything with precision and completing the puzzle of her tumultuous life.
However, her own startling story began before her birth, with her parents, Benno Weisberg and Els Weinberg, two Jews born and raised in Germany.
In May 1935, when Benno graduated from dental school at the University of Bonn, Hitler was already in power, and months later, at a Nazi Party rally, he announced strict anti-Semitic laws that crushed Jewish lives. Conditions were not conducive for him to marry his fiancée, Els. Two years later, in 1937, on a rainy, foggy morning at the train station, the young couple embraced with tearful eyes as they parted. Benno was leaving for the Netherlands, where he could at least work.
Life for Els in Germany was extremely difficult and soon would become even worse. On the night of November 9, 1938, the Nazis attacked Jewish targets across Germany.
Ninety Jews were murdered, hundreds were injured, homes, businesses, and synagogues were destroyed, and 30,000 people were sent to concentration camps. This pogrom, known as Kristallnacht (The Night of Broken Glass), marked the beginning of Nazi brutality.
Among those arrested that night was Els, who managed to escape using various ruses and ended up in the Netherlands, where she finally married her beloved. They were safe there. Or so they thought.
But in May 1940, the German army invaded and occupied the Netherlands. Gradually, the inhumane laws against Jews, leading to the “final solution and final clearance,” began to be implemented there as well. They were barely allowed to breathe. Soon even that would change. The evil had no end. In May 1941, Els gave birth to a boy, Samuel, who died ten months later due to health problems.
The camps of hell
The hardship was great, with informers and German soldiers everywhere. In June 1942, the aktionen began. All Jews aged 16 and over were arrested and sent to the Westerbork camp in the northern Netherlands as an intermediate station before being sent to major concentration camps in Europe, such as Auschwitz. Benno’s father and Els’ mother ended up in Bergen-Belsen, where they lost their lives. The same fate befell the Weissberg’s siblings, relatives, and friends who were lost forever in the camps of hell.
In 1942, Els informed her good friend, Sietjie, that she was pregnant. Sietjie and her husband, Reiner, were members of the Dutch resistance who helped Jews hide or place their children with Christian families.
“The child has no chance of surviving if you keep it,” Sietjie told Els as the pregnancy progressed. “Save the child and yourself. Give it to a family.” Els wouldn’t even discuss it. She couldn’t bear it. “I have a friend in Amsterdam, Jet. She’s very good, she’ll take care of it!”
Rivka’s narration becomes sorrowful. It was evident that she felt her mother’s pain.
Juden, Raus!
One night in January 1943, loud knocks were heard on the door of Benno and Els’ apartment. Two German SS officers and two Dutch policemen: “You have ten minutes to get ready and come down!” Els was eight months pregnant. But they had no choice. “Juden Raus!” the German yelled, pushing people into the train. Els fell down, Benno helped her up, and an old Jewish woman almost prophetically told her, “Better to lose it than to bring a child into this world.”
At the Westerbork camp, Els was taken to the clinic due to her fall at the station, and Benno stayed by her side. Six weeks later, when they were told they could temporarily leave, their hearts nearly broke from joy. “Why do you think your parents were released, Mrs. Rivka?” we ask. “Maybe because my father was important to the Jewish community due to his job. Or maybe it was divine intervention,” she replies.
Shortly before giving birth, Els was warned not to go to the Jewish Hospital because a Nazi raid was expected. Els didn’t believe it, but she obeyed. Thus, at the height of the war, on March 9, 1943, Rivka was born in a Jewish home in Amsterdam. “What world have we brought a child into? How will we protect her?” Els wondered, tears streaming down her face as she held the newborn. The next day, the Germans raided the Jewish Hospital, rounding up patients and staff and sending them to concentration camps. “They were saved by a miracle again!” Rivka tells us with emotion.
The blue scarf
On April 25, 1943, the Weissbergs removed the yellow star from their coats, gathered a few children’s clothes and toys, and with heavy hearts set out to hand over their child to Jet, as Sietjie had told them about. What else could they do? They had no other choice if they wanted to save me, Rivka explains, moved.
The sign to recognise Jet was a blue scarf. They met face to face, Els left the baby stroller, and Jet snatched it. As they left in silence, Els burst into tears. Benno embraced her, and they disappeared into the street. From now on, little Rivka would be known as Haneke Emond, a Dutch Christian who had lost her parents.
Jet lived alone in a small apartment in Amsterdam. Her husband had been sent to a concentration camp due to anti-fascist activities. She rented one room to David and Janke. David helped her a lot with the child and often pretended to be the father to avoid suspicion. After all, an SS officer lived on the first floor.
However, less than an hour after handing over the child, Els was overwhelmed with guilt. “I want to see my baby!” Benno was adamant. “Impossible! You’ll put us all in danger!” They decided to consult a Rabbi friend, who responded with God’s words to Abraham about Sarah: “Do what Sarah says.” Little did they know that this advice would save their lives. That very day Els was holding her daughter in her arms.
Drastic measures
Before they had a chance to say goodbye, the resistance sent them a message that their neighbourhood had been cut off by the Nazis, and all the Jews, including the Rabbi, his wife, and their children, had been arrested and killed.
Jet took them in at her home. However, they couldn’t risk Rivka’s life and soon began moving from place to place until they ended up in the attic of a six-story Jewish building. When the Nazis raided, Benno and Els remained in the attic, and fortunately, the soldiers only reached the fourth floor. “They were saved again,” Rivka tells us, and once again, her eyes sparkled with the miracle of survival.
It was clear that drastic measures were needed. So, with heavy hearts, Benno and Els parted ways once again. Benno ended up in Amersfoort, where he hid in the house of two women and only went out at night with Engel, a resistance friend who helped him. Els, now Daisy Pereboom, found shelter in the house of Dutch doctor Meno Kip in the village of Gameren, working as his assistant.
“Why hasn’t this story been made into a movie?” we ask, interrupting the captivating narration. “There are so many survivor stories,” replies one of her grandchildren who accompanied her to Cyprus.
Judenrein
The last major Nazi raid against Jews in Amsterdam was carried out on September 29, 1943, and thus the city was now Judenrein, cleansed of Jews. Little Rivka, or Haneke, gradually began to speak – she called Jet “mommy.”
The hunger was so bad that even non-Nazi Dutch people betrayed their compatriots for a loaf of bread. One afternoon, two policemen knocked on Jet’s door. They had information that she was hiding a Jewish baby. They turned the house upside down and left. Just before, David had gone out for a walk with the child. Thus, she was saved again.
Throughout this period, Els sent food to Jet, and they corresponded as much as conditions allowed. Jet wrote to her about the baby because she wanted to be part of her life. In the summer of 1944, after months of separation between mother and daughter, Jet found the courage to take little Rivka to see her biological mother. The reunion was emotional, but the farewell was unbearable. Els swallowed her tears, kissing the little one over and over, wishing their embrace could last forever…
Liberation and Reunion
In May 1945, the Netherlands was liberated by the Allies. Once again, amidst the chaos of a train station, Els fell into Beno’s arms. However, little Rivka had to wait. The new Dutch government issued a decree stating that families who had hidden Jewish children could not return them except by a special committee’s decision on what was best for the child: 350 children remained with Dutch families. Jet would never do that.
A few months later, when the child was two and a half years old, Benno and Els were in Amsterdam. “There are no words. How do you thank someone who saved your child?” Rivka says somberly. “Give me a kiss and go with your uncle and aunt,” Jet told Rivka, who wouldn’t let go of her “mother’s” hand. Yet they watched the three walk away down the street. Then she collapsed.
Trying to rebuild their lives in the Netherlands, the Weissbergs had two more children. However, in 1949, they fulfilled a lifelong dream of settling in Israel. The bond and love between Jet and David with the Weissbergs would never break. Until the end of their lives, they kept correspondence and visited each other. The State of Israel honoured Jet and David as “Righteous Among the Nations,” an honour given to non-Jews for their selfless assistance to Jews.
In 1963, the now-grown-up Rivka married Michael Kahana, a Holocaust survivor who, after the war, spent six months at the age of 8 in the Jewish camp in Famagusta, and his story could be a separate interview and another dramatic movie. They had five children, many grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.
Before their death, when Jet and Sietjie were asked why they did what they did during the war, their answer was always the same: “We didn’t do anything special. Innocent people were in danger. We couldn’t remain indifferent.” Jet died in 1990. She never stopped considering Rivka as her own daughter. After all, she never had children of her own.
Untermensch
“It took years to realise that I was a child who survived the Holocaust,” Rivka answers when asked how she felt when she grew up and realised that millions of other children did not survive the war. “Growing up, my heart grew heavier. I felt it was my duty to tell my story and publish it in a book. So that it never happens again.”
“No one can understand how all this happened,” her husband Michael says, who had been patiently listening to his wife’s story until that moment. “I am 85 years old and still don’t understand. How would you feel if your country decided you were a donkey? That you are an untermensch (subhuman). It’s inconceivable. After the war, the Soviets sent my father to the Siberian gulags. It was 18 years before I saw my parents again. The Holocaust is not just Auschwitz!” he continues with intensity. “It’s also all that followed, the aftermath in the lives of the survivors, the lives that were destroyed.”
Never Again
When asked about the Israel-Hamas war, Rivka lowers her gaze: “War is a terrible thing. The price is high. But what can we do? We have nowhere else to go. In Europe, we were exterminated. Israel is our home,” she says, looking towards her grandchildren.
At this point, her daughter, who also accompanied her to our country, intervenes. “As Holocaust survivors, our parents taught us to always do good, to volunteer to help people. They still do, despite their age, to this day. Because the world must become a better place, people must help each other.”
“We just want to survive, to live, to have peace. That’s always what we wanted, always what we offered, but they don’t want it,” says her eldest grandson, Jonathan, referring to the war with Hamas. “80 years after the Holocaust, there is still antisemitism worldwide. If we don’t defend ourselves, there will be another Holocaust. Never again. That’s why we need the world’s support.” “We hear you, we understand, but the issue is big and complex,” we answer. “A discussion for another time…”
Of the 140,000 Jews who lived in the Netherlands before the war, only 5,200 survived, less than 4%. 2,723 Jewish children were killed in the Holocaust.
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