{"id":4744,"date":"2012-06-16T08:49:32","date_gmt":"2012-06-16T16:49:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/?p=4744"},"modified":"2012-06-16T08:49:32","modified_gmt":"2012-06-16T16:49:32","slug":"story-by-way-of-gaby-rinzler","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/?p=4744","title":{"rendered":"Story by way of Gaby Rinzler"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Gaby Rinzler<\/strong><\/p>\n

This incident took place in Bergen-Belsen immediately after the war
\nunder the jurisdiction of the Allies. The surviving inmates were now
\nfree to create new lives for themselves but many had no place to go.
\nThese remained in the camps awaiting a solution to their problem.<\/p>\n

An amazing story.<\/p>\n

The Wedding Gown That Made History<\/p>\n

Lilly Friedman doesn’t
\nremember the last name of
\nthe woman who designed and
\nsewed the wedding gown she
\nwore when she walked down
\nthe aisle over 60 years
\nago . But the grandmother
\nof seven does recall that
\nwhen she first told her
\nfianc\u00e9 Ludwig that she had
\nalways dreamed of being
\nmarried in a white
\ngown he realized he had
\nhis work cut out for
\nhim …..<\/p>\n

For the tall, lanky
\n21-year-old who had
\nsurvived hunger, disease
\nand torture this was a
\ndifferent kind of
\nchallenge . How was he
\never going to find such a
\ndress in the Bergen-Belsen
\nDisplaced Person’s camp
\nwhere they felt grateful
\nfor the clothes on their
\nbacks?<\/p>\n

Fate would intervene in
\nthe guise of a former
\nGerman pilot who walked
\ninto the food distribution
\ncenter where Ludwig
\nworked, eager to make a
\ntrade for his worthless
\nparachute . In exchange
\nfor two pounds of coffee
\nbeans and a couple of
\npacks of cigarettes Lilly
\nwould have her wedding
\ngown .<\/p>\n

For two weeks Miriam the
\nseamstress worked under
\nthe curious eyes of her
\nfellow DPs, carefully
\nfashioning the six
\nparachute panels into a
\nsimple, long sleeved gown
\nwith a rolled collar and a
\nfitted waist that tied in
\nthe back with a bow . When
\nthe dress was completed
\nshe sewed the leftover
\nmaterial into a matching
\nshirt for the groom .<\/p>\n

A white wedding gown may
\nhave seemed like a
\nfrivolous request in the
\nsurreal environment of the
\ncamps, but for Lilly the
\ndress symbolized the
\ninnocent, normal life she
\nand her family had once
\nled before the world
\ndescended into madness .<\/p>\n

Lilly and her siblings
\nwere raised in a Torah
\nobservant home in the
\nsmall town of Zarica ,
\nCzechoslovakia where her
\nfather was a teacher,
\nrespected and well liked
\nby the young yeshiva
\nstudents he taught in
\nnearby Irsheva . He and
\nhis two sons were marked
\nfor extermination
\nimmediately upon arriving
\nat Auschwitz . For Lilly
\nand her sisters it was
\nonly their first stop on
\ntheir long journey of
\npersecution, which
\nincluded Plashof,
\nNeustadt, Gross Rosen and
\nfinally Bergen-Belsen ..<\/p>\n

Lilly Friedman and her
\nparachute dress on display
\nin the Bergen-Belsen
\nMuseum<\/p>\n

Four hundred people
\nmarched 15 miles in the
\nsnow to the town of Celle
\non January 27, 1946 to
\nattend Lilly and Ludwig’s
\nwedding. The town
\nsynagogue, damaged and
\ndesecrated, had been
\nlovingly renovated by the
\nDPs with the
\nmeager materials available
\nto them. When a Sefer
\nTorah arrived from England
\nthey converted an old
\nkitchen cabinet into a
\nmakeshift Aron Kodesh.<\/p>\n

“My sisters and I lost
\neverything – our parents,
\nour two brothers, our
\nhomes. The most important
\nthing was to build a new
\nhome.” Six months later,
\nLilly’s sister Ilona wore
\nthe dress when she married
\nMax Traeger .. After that
\ncame Cousin Rosie. How
\nmany brides wore Lilly’s
\ndress? “I stopped counting
\nafter 17.” With the camps
\nexperiencing the highest
\nmarriage rate in the
\nworld, Lilly’s gown was in
\ngreat demand.<\/p>\n

In 1948 when President
\nHarry Truman finally
\npermitted the 100,000 Jews
\nwho had been languishing
\nin DP camps since the end
\nof the war to emigrate,
\nthe gown accompanied Lilly
\nacross the ocean to
\nAmerica . Unable to part
\nwith her dress, it lay at
\nthe bottom of her bedroom
\ncloset for the next 50
\nyears, “not even good
\nenough for a garage sale,
\nI was happy when it found
\nsuch a good
\nhome.”<\/p>\n

Home was the U . S .
\nHolocaust Memorial Museum
\nin Washington, D. C. When
\nLily’s niece, a volunteer,
\ntold museum officials
\nabout her aunt’s dress,
\nthey immediately
\nrecognized its historical
\nsignificance and displayed
\nthe gown in a specially
\ndesigned showcase,
\nguaranteed to preserve it
\nfor 500 years ..<\/p>\n

But Lilly Friedman’s dress
\nhad one more journey to
\nmake. The museum at
\nBergen-Belsen opened its
\ndoors on October 28, 2007.
\nThe German government
\ninvited Lilly and her
\nsisters to be their guests
\nfor the grand opening
\nThey initially declined,
\nbut finally traveled to
\nHanover the following year
\nwith their children, their
\ngrandchildren and extended
\nfamilies to view the
\nextraordinary
\nexhibit created for the
\nwedding dress made from a
\nparachute.<\/p>\n

Lilly’s family, who were
\nall familiar with the
\nstories about the wedding
\nin Celle , were eager to
\nvisit the synagogue . They
\nfound the building had
\nbeen completely renovated
\nand modernized . But when
\nthey pulled aside the
\nhandsome curtain they were
\nastounded to find that the
\nAron Kodesh, made from a
\nkitchen cabinet, had
\nremained untouched as a
\ntestament to the profound
\nfaith of the survivors.
\nAs Lilly stood on the
\nbimah once again she
\nbeckoned to her
\ngranddaughter, Jackie, to
\nstand beside her where she
\nwas once a kallah . “It
\nwas an emotional trip . We
\ncried a lot. ”<\/p>\n

Two weeks later, the woman
\nwho had once stood
\ntrembling before the
\nselective eyes of the
\ninfamous Dr. Josef Mengele
\nreturned home and attended
\nthe marriage of her
\ngranddaughter.<\/p>\n

The three Lax sisters –
\nLilly, Ilona and Eva – who
\ntogether survived
\nAuschwitz, a forced labor
\ncamp, a death march and
\nBergen-Belsen – have
\nremained close and today
\nlive within walking
\ndistance of each other in
\nBrooklyn. As mere
\nteenagers, they managed to
\noutwit and outlive a
\nmonstrous killing machine,
\nthen went on to marry,
\nhave children,
\ngrandchildren and
\ngreat-grandchildren and
\nwere ultimately honored by
\nthe country that had
\nearmarked them for
\nextinction.<\/p>\n

As young brides, they had
\nstood underneath the
\nchuppah and recited the
\nblessings that their
\nancestors had been saying
\nfor thousands of years. In
\ndoing so, they chose to
\nhonor the legacy of those
\nwho had perished by
\nchoosing life ..<\/p>\n

IN MEMORIAM – 63 YEARS
\nLATER<\/p>\n

It is now more than 60
\nyears after the Second
\nWorld War inEurope ended.
\nThis e-mail is being sent
\nas a memorial chain, in
\nmemory of the six million
\nJews, 20 million Russians,
\n10 million Christians and
\n1,900 Catholic priests who
\nwere humiliated, starved,
\nmurdered, massacred, raped
\nand burned, with the
\nGerman and other peoples
\nlooking the other way…<\/p>\n

Now, more than ever, with
\nIraq , Iran , and others,
\nclaiming the Holocaust to
\nbe ‘a myth,’ it is
\nimperative that the world
\nnever forgets, because
\nthere are others who would
\nlike to do it again …<\/p>\n

Please pass this on .. . . . lest we forget!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Gaby Rinzler This incident took place in Bergen-Belsen immediately after the war under the jurisdiction of the Allies. The surviving inmates were now free to create new lives for themselves but many had no place to go. These remained in the camps awaiting a solution to their problem. An amazing story. The Wedding Gown […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,19],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4744\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/ehpes.com\/blog1\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}