April 15, 2005
Jewish Press, Omaha, NE
Page 7
For My Mother: A Survivor’s Story by LEO ADAM BIGA the compound reserved for males. himself to stay alive in order to keep an oft-repeated Helena Tichauer was Occasionally, the family was able to vow he made--that he would live to see the day the tempted to give up more visit each other before curfew, but oth- Germans were “beaten. Yes, he had strong will power,” than once. If she had, no erwise Helena and Karolina were on she said. His daughters did, too. “If I didn’t have, then one would have blamed their own. I would be six feet under a long time ago,” said Helena. her. For persecuted Jews Being smart and self-sufficient, Still, there were times, she said, when “I was thinking like her and her family, reaHelena was well-suited to be her to give up. I could have. I could have thrown myself in sons for despair were everymother’s caregiver. Except for one the electrified wires and been finished with my life. But where in Nazi-occupied short interval, the two remained I couldn’t, because I had to live for my mother.” Poland. Her family’s pleastogether throughout the entire Shoah Weakened by disease and malnutrition, Karolina was ant, comfortable life in nightmare and even for years after its a pale shell of herself. If she were unable to work or if Krakow had been wrenched conclusion. Their time together at even she appeared unfit, Helena knew her mom would away in the looming darkPlaszow and, later, at the death camps soon be disposable and, thus, a sure target for externess of the Holocaust. of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen mination. She’d already lost her little forged a mother-daughter survivor’s “My mother was very sick. She had thrombosis in brother, Nathan, when he bond of unusual depth. both legs. She had terrible bronchitis and TB (tubercuwas seized by the Gestapo This symbiosis began at Plaszow. It losis),” said Helena. “I forced my mother to work. from the clutches of their was 1942. Helena was 19. Her mother There was not any other way. I pushed her and she mother in the Krakow 41. Officially a forced labor camp pushed herself, even though it was very hard for her. I Ghetto and sent to his death then, Plaszow was--for all intents and said, “If you’re not going to work, they’re going to kill at Auschwitz. No sooner did purposes--already the concentration you.’ She knew if she was not going to do it, it was her remaining family arrive The street where Helen and Walter Tichauer lived camp it would later be designated as. going to be the end. She wanted to live.” in Plaszow, the forced labor in Monevideo, Uruguay after the war--Helena Escape was useless. An electrified To fool the guards into thinking her mother stronger camp and eventual concen- took sons Fred, left, and Carl and their families fence ran around the perimeter. The and ruddier than she really was, Helena used a ruse tration camp depicted in there to visit in 2001. commandant, Amon Goeth, ruled like that, if discovered, could have meant death for both of Steven Spielberg’s film Schindler’s List, than her pater- the despot and sadist he was. People were executed for them. “Everything was taken from me. Everything,” she nal grandmother fell victim to Nazi atrocities. the slightest infractions or no reason at all. Prisoners said, except for one item she hid from the humiliating “She was pulled out of line with many others and were ill, overworked, underfed. strip searches conducted in camp--a tube of lipstick. ordered to dig graves. Then, they had to go into the Amid such conditions, Helena’s own survival is amaz“I carried the lipstick here,” she said, indicating graves. She took her bible with her. She was a very reli- ing enough, but that she pulled her mother through the between her bosoms. gious person. She said to us, ‘The upstairs is calling.’ ordeal with her is even more remarkable. The fortitude “Mother was very white, like no blood was left in her And she was shot with the others.” and fate that brought Helena and her late mother out face. She was very frail. Each morning, I tried to put on After seeing this, Helena, who’s lived in Omaha since alive is shared, too, by Lola, a fellow survivor who was my mother’s cheeks the lipstick, so that she would look 1963, said she thought, “This is our end. I prayed to the not reunited with her sister and mother until many healthy for the Germans. Every day...I made her look Lord that maybe I don’t get up the next day.” In years later. Lola was the first of the sisters to come to healthy. I saved my mother this way.” Continued on page 8 Plaszow, she watched as her mother wasted away. She Omaha and she still lives here. knew she must do something before it was too late. “I (Read Lola’s story of survival in the Second Section was the one that looked after her,” said Helena, who of this Passover issue, starting on page 26.) had to fight through her own malaise. “I didn’t have Much of their strength came from the sisters’ any spirit. I vegetated. But I had my mother, and I had father, an educated man who, despite their unimagto live for her.” inable plight, they recall as never losing hope. The eldest of Karol and Karolina Schulkind’s three Through it all, he remained “always” optimistic. children, Helena took charge of her mother’s well“He said every day, “The war is over tomorrow.’ I being because someone had to. Her mom was a rather wanted to believe him,” Helena said. She recalls he fragile woman, whose delicate sensibility and privi- somehow managed secreting a radio inside the leged background ill-prepared her for the rigors of camp that he kept hidden and listened to for news enforced manual labor and starvation rations. of the Allies’ advance on Axis Germany. “He’d come “She never did work before the war. She was spoiled,” and cheer us up, telling us the war would be over is how Helena described her pampered mother, whose soon. Sure that helped. Wouldn’t that help you if stately Krakow home was run by servants. Helena’s you were down in the dumps? He lifted our spirits younger sister, Lola Reinglas, was at Plaszow, too, but in and the spirits of others, too. It’s true.” a different barracks. Eventually, Lola was shipped out of He survived the Holocaust, tragically dying two Lola Reinglas, left, and her sister, Helena Tichauer, and their husPlaszow altogether. Their father was in another section of days after liberation. She said her father also willed bands: Walter Tichauer and Irving Reinglas in Omaha in 1981.
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