Page 28
Jewish Press, Omaha, NE
April 15, 2005
Destined to Live
One Determined Lady
Continued from page 27 broke out in several Polish Upon first arriving at Plaszow, cities. “Poles started shootLola continued her routine of being ing Jews in the street. They brought to the hospital to clean. didn’t want us. My uncle Later, she worked in a quarry breaksaid, “This is no place to ing stones with a hammer to make stay.’” Lola said. Like hungravel. Once, she switched jobs dreds of thousands of other with her ailing mother, who was too survivors, they wanted out weak to carry a yoke laden with of Europe. buckets of water. Lola briefly Ironically, they fled first to worked in a paper factory. Then, occupied Germany, where one day the factory was closed and displaced persons camps she and others loaded onto cattle were a way station out. Lola, cars and taken by train to the first of her uncle and cousins went two nearby camps whose German by way of Czechoslovakia, munitions factories she worked in. where they stayed a week It was 1944. Her remaining family and were treated royally. stayed behind at Plaszow. “The people were wonderAt Skarzysko Kamienna, Lola ful.” In Germany, they lived operated a machine making anti-airin the Foehrenwald refugee craft shells. “You had a quota to camp, where she fell in love make 80,000 shells per shift,” she 1987: Lola and Irving Reinglass and their children: with Irving Reinglas at first said. “If you couldn’t make your Jeanette Reinglas Baker, Stephen Baker and Ann sight. Married in 1946, they quota in eight hours, you worked Reinglas. lived in Munich until ’49, until you did. Sometimes, you worked 12-14 hours on when they came to America under the auspices of the one slice of bread and a cup of coffee.” Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS), a major supporter Unable to meet the quota any other way, workers of Jewish survivors in DP camps. mixed defective shells in with the good ones. Once, a The ship carrying Lola and Irving docked in New woman foreman discovered a bad shell in Lola’s batch York Harbor on Thanksgiving Day. Given the choice of and used a riding crop to administer “25 lashes on my staying in New York or relocating, they opted instead rear end,” Lola said. “I couldn’t sit for six months.” for a smaller, slower city. HIAS officials suggested In 1945, Lola went to Czestochowa, the site of anoth- Omaha, where the couple knew not a soul. With er munitions factory. There, she fell ill. “I could not eat. Jewish Federation sponsorship, they settled here and I could not drink. I was down to 60 pounds.” Later, she cobbled together a successful life. They learned found herself again in transit by train--this time to English. They ran their own business, Easy Chair of Germany--when the train stopped at night. By morning, Council Bluffs. They gave their two daughters, Jeanette the captives discovered their captors were no where to and Ann, a good education and every advantage. Lola be seen. The advancing American Army had set the eventually regained her sister and mother. Germans on the run and the emaciated refugees were Today, Lola is without her Irving, who died in 1988. soon rescued. The grandmother of two stays active. A longtime volThe war was over. “I was free,” Lola said. unteer at the Rose Blumkin Jewish Home, she now After months of rest and nourishment in an gives her time to the Methodist Hospital gift shop. American-run refugee center, she felt strong enough to Except for an occasional speaking appearance or travel. “I didn’t have money. I smuggled myself on a interview, she doesn’t revisit the Holocaust. “I don’t live train to Poland. It took me three weeks to get to in the past. It’s not that I have forgotten. I know I’ve Krakow.” She went to her family’s home, praying for been to hell and back,” she said, “but this is not my some sign of her family, only to find strangers. “The main subject. I think about today and tonight. If I lived woman there said to me, “Oh my God, you’re still in the past, I would have been in the nut house a long alive?’ I said to her, “You drop dead.’” Undeterred, she time ago.” found an uncle who’d survived and stayed with him. The Holocaust, she said, is an unfathomable episode Two cousins joined them. In Krakow, she learned the whose echoes, sadly, reverberate in latter-day oppresfates of her brother and father. Awaiting word on her sion and violence. “There is not a word in the dictionmother and sister, they located each other and began ary that describes the atrocities. And for what? corresponding. Wherever you look today, people are fighting. And for Just when it seemed the danger was ended, pogroms what? For power. For nothing else.”
by JOAN K. MARCUS Vera Dobin speaks with great joy about her youth. She was born in Russia in Kinel--Kuibyshev in 1942. Her father, Abram, was killed in action in World War II when Vera was only three months old. Vera and her mother, Esther Lipshyts, who taught Russian literature, moved in with her grandparents in Kislovodsk. Vera’s mother was for many years, a principal of the school there. Her grandfather, a watchmaker, provided a good home for Vera, her mother, aunt and a cousin. “I was a good student because my grandparents insisted that I had to be one of the best. I had all ‘fives’ and that was the highest mark that you could get,” she said proudly. She received a gold medal at her high school graduation in 1959 which she still has. “When we moved to the United States, the inspectors saw the medal in my purse and stopped me. When I told them what it was,” she explained, “they decided I could keep it. “Last year, I went back to Kislovodsk to attend my 45th high school reunion. The 28 of us were so happy and had such a good time,” she said, “but I think I came the farthest.” After graduation, Vera wanted to be a doctor. You know,” she added, “it was almost impossible for Jews to enter medical school at the university. Even with my gold medal, it was impossible.” In fact, one student put a notice on the wall that said, “all places sold,” a comment on the school’s acceptance policies. “After I was rejected from medical school, I was too ashamed to go back home and went to live with friends in Vorkuta, in the north,” she admitted. “I couldn’t imagine how it could be that I couldn’t enter the university with my high test scores.” Instead, she became an aide in the school for chemistry and physics. After a year, Vera decided to go to Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) to attend Cinema University, where movie engineers were trained. “I continued to work hard and when I graduated, I received a red diploma--that was the best.” In 1963, she married Joseph Dobin. Their son, Alex was born in 1964; Joseph died in 1986. Vera continued to work and study at Cinema University for 15 years. She then worked in a special university for another 10 years. “I was a special researcher at the Institue for Air and Space Photography. It was a fascinating job and I got to travel to interesting places and work with many geologists.” In 1991, Vera followed her son, Alex, to the United States. “In 1989, Alex had visited California; when he came back to Russia, he decided he wanted to move to the U.S. Alex wanted my mother and me to come with him in 1989, but I didn’t have anyone to substitute for me at work; I had to train somebody before I could move.” Continued on page 29
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