Pregnant in Auschwitz: Toronto Holocaust survivor recalls split-second decision that saved her and unborn son

Miriam Rosenthal was four-months pregnant, starving, bone-tired, cold, filthy and afraid when an SS officer in big black boots and a crisp uniform appeared before the barracks in Auschwitz with a loudspeaker in hand.
All pregnant women line up, he barked. Line up, line up — your food portions are being doubled.
“Can you imagine?” Miriam asks. “Even women who were not pregnant stepped forward. I was standing with my younger cousin, but I wouldn’t go. She says, ‘Miriam, what are you doing?’ ”
“Something was holding me back. Someone was watching over me. I feel maybe my mother, maybe God. Two hundred women stepped forward and 200 women went to the gas chamber. And I don’t know why I didn’t step forward.
“I have asked rabbis. I have asked some big people and no one can give me an answer. If you believe in God, then God did it. If you believe it was my parents, then it was my parents, which is what I believe.
“They were such good people, generous, kind. And maybe for their sake, maybe that’s why I didn’t step forward. I have asked myself this question so many times as I lay in bed upstairs.”
We are sitting in the dining room of a tidy home in north Toronto. Tears are welling in Miriam Rosenthal’s eyes. Talking about those long ago days “rips at her guts.” She remembers everything. “Every step.” Every horror. Her body might be shot through with arthritis, her legs barely work, her neck aches and she is turning 90 on Sunday, but Miriam remembers.
“I don’t have dementia yet,” she says, smiling.
Not stepping forward at Auschwitz was a beginning, not an end. There were other mysteries of fate that, in the dying months of the Second World War in the deadened landscape of Nazi Germany, brought seven pregnant Jewish women together in Kaufering I, a sub-camp of Dachau, where seven Jewish babies would be born.

The Germans murdered over a million Jewish children. Like the sick and the old, they were viewed as useless mouths to feed and often among the first killed. Some were used in medical experiments, but newborns were typically murdered at birth.
Almost seven decades after the war, the seven Jewish babies of Kaufering — three boys, four girls — are still alive, scattered about the globe, the youngest living survivors of the Holocaust.
“Here is my miracle baby now,” Miriam says, pausing mid-sentence, grinning at the appearance of her 67-year-old “baby,” Leslie.
“And here is my miracle mother,” Leslie Rosenthal chimes back.
Miriam Rosenthal was born Miriam Schwarcz in Komarno, Czechoslovakia, on Aug. 26, 1922, the youngest of 13 children. Jacob, her father, was a gentleman farmer.
“I was spoiled,” she says. “I had a beautiful life. I was always asking my mother when is it my turn to get married?”

A matchmaker from Miskolc, Hungary, met with Miriam and her mother, Laura. Flipping through the woman’s book of eligible bachelors, Miriam spotted her “Clark Gable,” a movie-star-handsome cattle broker’s son named Bela Rosenthal. They were married in Budapest on April 5, 1944. Miriam pinned a red rose on her lapel to cover the yellow Star of David.
The honeymoon was brief. Within a few short months, Bela was sent to a slave labour camp, Miriam to Auschwitz. She was later transferred to Augsberg Germany, to work in a Messerschmitt factory. All the while, her belly grew.
Two men from the SS appeared at the factory one day, with snarling German shepherds, demanding to know who the pregnant women were. They asked a second time.
“I had to raise my hand,” Miriam says. “I was showing, and if I didn’t put up my hand all those other women would be killed. How could I not put up my hand? The girls wept for me. The SS took me and put me on a passenger train, which was very unusual. There was a woman, a civilian, and she said: “Frau, what is with you? You don’t have hair. The clothes you are wearing. What are you, from a mental hospital?
“She didn’t have a dream, this German woman, of all the horrible things the Germans were doing. I told her I am not from a mental hospital, I am going to Auschwitz — I am going to the gas. She looked at me like I was crazy, opened her purse and gave me some bread. I ate it so fast. I was so hungry.”

The SS guards had been out smoking and returned, telling Miriam she was one “lucky Jew,” that the crematoriums at Auschwitz were “kaput.” Instead, she was taken to Kaufering I, a satellite camp near Dachau, hand delivered to the gates and identified by a number tattooed on her left forearm, still visible today.
“They said, ‘Adieu Frau, good luck to you.’ Can you imagine?” Miriam says. “I went into this camp and I was led to a basement and guess who was there?”
Six other pregnant women: crying, laughing, holding one another, chattering in Hungarian, bundling themselves in the hope that they might actually survive. One by one the babies came, delivered by another inmate, a Hungarian gynecologist whose only instrument was a pail of hot water.
A “Capo,” a Jewish woman charged with overseeing the women, smuggled a stove into the room, keeping the expecting mothers warm during the freezing winter months of 1945. The Germans discovered the stove and beat the Capo bloody, ripping into her flesh with their truncheons.
“I have looked for this woman since,” Miriam says. “After the beating she told us, ‘Don’t you worry girls, the stove will be back tomorrow.’ ”
It was.
Leslie Rosenthal was the last of the Kaufering babies, born Feb. 28, 1945.
“He was beautiful, blond hair, blue eyes,” Miriam says. “An SS came in and was surprised and said he looks Aryan and he asked me if the father was an SS man.
“I told him no, the father was my husband.”

I can’t describe that feeling of when he saw our baby, when he saw Leslie for the first time. We cried and cried and cried.”

American troops wept when they liberated Dachau in late April and discovered the babies — new life in a graveyard of bones. Miriam said goodbye to her “camp sisters” and headed home to Czechoslovakia. Bela had also survived and returned to Komarno, broken sandals on his feet, held there by a string.

“I could see him coming, running from afar, and I shouted, ‘Bela, Bela.’ I wasn’t sure it was him, and he was running and calling my name,” Miriam says.
“I can’t describe that feeling of when he saw our baby, when he saw Leslie for the first time. We cried and cried and cried.”
Bela said he is “so beautiful.” Miriam said he has “your ears.”
The young family moved to Canada in 1947. Bela found work in a mattress factory, but his real gift was talking. He was a man of words, and faith. The Rosenthals left the big city for Timmins and Sudbury, where Bela served as rabbi before their return to Toronto in 1956. They ran Miriam’s Fine Judaica, a gift shop, on Bathurst Street, for over four decades and raised three children, had grandchildren — and great children. Bela died a few years back. He was 97.
Life in Canada wasn’t always easy, Miriam says. There were up and downs and there was always the past, painful memories haunting the periphery, dark shadows amid the light.
Miriam has a recurring nightmare where the SS come and take Leslie away. But when she looks over at him now, sitting beside her on a warm August afternoon, her face brightens, because she knows how her war story ends.
“He is such a good boy,” Miriam says. “He visits me every single day. He knows what his mother went through.”
National Post

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/08/25/pregnant-in-auschwitz-toronto-holocaust-survivor-recalls-split-second-decision-that-saved-her-and-unborn-son/

Inspirational quotes and motivational quotes have the power to get us through a bad week, and can even  give us the courage to pursue our life’s dreams. In my book, 4 Keys to Happiness and Fulfillment at Work, I share surprising research into the true triggers of workplace motivation. So in the spirit of self motivation, here are 100 inspirational quotes.

1. Whatever the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve. –Napoleon Hill
2. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. –Steve Jobs
3. Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. –Albert Einstein
4. Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.  –Robert Frost
5. The common question that gets asked in business is, ‘why?’ That’s a good question, but an equally valid question is, ‘why not?’ -Jeffrey Bezos
6. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. –Wayne Gretzky
7. I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed. –Michael Jordan
8. Every strike brings me closer to the next home run. –Babe Ruth
9. Definiteness of purpose is the starting point of all achievement. –W. Clement Stone
10. Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans. –John Lennon
11. We become what we think about. –Earl Nightingale
12. Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do, so throw off the bowlines, sail away from safe harbor, catch the trade winds in your sails.  Explore, Dream, Discover. –Mark Twain
13. Life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. –John Maxwell
14. If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten. –Tony Robbins
15. The mind is everything. What you think you become.  –Buddha
16. The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now. –Chinese Proverb
17. An unexamined life is not worth living. –Socrates
18. Eighty percent of success is showing up. –Woody Allen
19. Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. –Napoleon Hill
20. Winning isn’t everything, but wanting to win is. –Vince Lombardi
21. I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions. –Stephen Covey
22. Every child is an artist.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. –Pablo Picasso
23. You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore. –Christopher Columbus
24. I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. –Maya Angelou
25. Either you run the day, or the day runs you. –Jim Rohn
26. Whether you think you can or you think you can’t, you’re right. –Henry Ford
27. The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. –Mark Twain
28. Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power and magic in it. –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
29. The best revenge is massive success. –Frank Sinatra
30. People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing.  That’s why we recommend it daily. –Zig Ziglar
31. Inspiration exists, but it must find you working. –Pablo Picasso
32. If you hear a voice within you say “you cannot paint,” then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced. –Vincent Van Gogh
33. There is only one way to avoid criticism: do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing. –Aristotle
34. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal. –Henry Ford
35. The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be. –Ralph Waldo Emerson
36. Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.  Live the life you have imagined. –Henry David Thoreau
37. When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left and could say, I used everything you gave me. –Erma Bombeck
38. Successful people are always looking for opportunities to help others.  Unsuccessful people are always asking, “What’s in it for me?” – Brian Tracy
39. Certain things catch your eye, but pursue only those that capture the heart. – Ancient Indian Proverb
40. Believe you can and you’re halfway there. –Theodore Roosevelt
41. Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. –George Addair
42. We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light. –Plato
43. Once you choose hope, anything’s possible. –Christopher Reeve
44. Start where you are. Use what you have.  Do what you can. –Arthur Ashe
45. When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life.  When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up.  I wrote down ‘happy’.  They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life. –John Lennon
46. Fall seven times and stand up eight. –Japanese Proverb
47. When one door of happiness closes, another opens, but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one that has been opened for us. –Helen Keller
48. Everything has beauty, but not everyone can see. –Confucious
49. How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. –Anne Frank
50. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be. –Lao Tzu
51. The difference between a successful person and others is not lack of strength not a lack of knowledge but rather a lack of will. –Vince Lombardi
52. Happiness is not something readymade.  It comes from your own actions. –Dalai Lama
53. The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible. –Arthur C. Clarke
54. First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end. –Aristotle
55. If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. –Latin Proverb
56. You can’t fall if you don’t climb.  But there’s no joy in living your whole life on the ground. –Unknown
57. Whoever loves much, performs much, and can accomplish much, and what is done in love is done well. –Vincent Van Gogh
58. Too many of us are not living our dreams because we are living our fears. –Les Brown
59. Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. –Joshua J. Marine
60. The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing. –Walt Disney
61. I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do. –Leonardo da Vinci
62. Limitations live only in our minds.  But if we use our imaginations, our possibilities become limitless. –Jamie Paolinetti
63. Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes.  You are free. –Jim Morrison
64. What’s money? A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night and in between does what he wants to do. –Bob Dylan
65. I didn’t fail the test. I just found 100 ways to do it wrong. –Benjamin Franklin
66. In order to succeed, your desire for success should be greater than your fear of failure. –Bill Cosby
67. A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new. – Albert Einstein
68. The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person who is doing it. –Chinese Proverb
69. There are no traffic jams along the extra mile. –Roger Staubach
70. It is never too late to be what you might have been. –George Eliot
71. You become what you believe. –Oprah Winfrey
72. I would rather die of passion than of boredom. –Vincent van Gogh
73. A truly rich man is one whose children run into his arms when his hands are empty. –Unknown
74. It is not what you do for your children, but what you have taught them to do for themselves, that will make them successful human beings.  –Ann Landers
75. If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money. –Abigail Van Buren
76. Build your own dreams, or someone else will hire you to build theirs. –Farrah Gray
77. Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible. –Frank Zappa
78. Education costs money.  But then so does ignorance. –Sir Claus Moser
79. Remember that the happiest people are not those getting more, but those giving more. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
80. It does not matter how slowly you go as long as you do not stop. –Confucius
81. Let the refining and improving of your own life keep you so busy that you have little time to criticize others. –H. Jackson Brown, Jr.
82. Remember that not getting what you want is sometimes a wonderful stroke of luck. –Dalai Lama
83. You can’t use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have. –Maya Angelou
84. Dream big and dare to fail. –Norman Vaughan
85. Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter. –Martin Luther King Jr.
86. Do what you can, where you are, with what you have. –Teddy Roosevelt
87. The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any. –Alice Walker
88. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning. –Gloria Steinem
89. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live. –Mae Jemison
90. You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try. –Beverly Sills
91. Remember no one can make you feel inferior without your consent. –Eleanor Roosevelt
92. Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be. –Grandma Moses
93. The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me. –Ayn Rand
94. When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it. –Henry Ford
95. It’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years. –Abraham Lincoln
96. Change your thoughts and you change your world. –Norman Vincent Peale
97. Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing. –Benjamin Franklin
98. Nothing is impossible, the word itself says, “I’m possible!” –Audrey Hepburn
99. The only way to do great work is to love what you do. –Steve Jobs
100. If you can dream it, you can achieve it. –Zig Ziglar

http://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2013/05/28/inspirational-quotes/

#1 I am fighting hard for the things I want most.
-The longer you have to wait for something, the more you will appreciate it when it finally arrives.
-Most great things don’t come easy, but they are worth waiting for and fighting for.

#2 I am taking action now
-Many great things can be done in a day if you don’t always make that day tomorrow.

#3 I am focusing on the next positive step
-The future holds nothing but endless potential.
-There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.

#4 I am proud to wear my truth
-How you see yourself means everything.
-To be beautiful means to live confidently in your own skin

#5 I have a lot to smile about
-Happiness is not a result of getting something you don’t have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what you do have.

#6 I am making the best of it
-Everything you go through grows you.
-Amazing things can and do happen when you least expect them

#7 I am letting go of yesterday’s stress
-Leave behind the stress, the dream and the worries. lay this day to rest.

#8 There is enough time today to do something I love
-You will find happiness in doing the thing you love to do.

#9 I am priceless in someone’s eyes
-Focus on those who love and accept you for who you are, and shower them with the love and kindness they deserve. Cherish the people who saw you when you were invisible to everyone else.

#10. It’s not too late
-No matter who you are, no matter what you did, no matter where you’ve come from, you can always change and become a better version of yourself.

http://www.marcandangel.com