Lechaim(owitz)

Every life is unique, and virtually every person has a moving and often fascinating story to tell about his or her life and family, if you are just willing to listen and to ask the right questions. This is especially true for elderly people who survived the Holocaust. Today we were once again able to see and hear this with our own eyes and ears. Amy Vargas-Tonsi and I had the honor and pleasure to meet Julius Chaimowitz He told us the story of his family before, during, and after World War II. We were coupled to him because the only language that his fact sheet said he speaks besides German is French (it turned out he also speaks Hebrew very well). For almost an hour we hung on his lips while he told about his great-grandparents, his grandparents and parents, and a little bit about himself and his twin brother. It turned out that he and several family members survived the war in central France, in Clermont Ferrand, very close to where my mother-in-law hid with her mother in those days. One interesting thing he told us was that French policemen said to each other, in the presence of his mother, that she should tell her story in Poland, which might indicate that already in 1942 quite a few people in Europe, or at least in France, had a general idea of where the trains with the Jews were headed. After lunch we said goodbye. Then Julius and I discovered that his cousin lived in the same small town, near Haifa, where I live. Once again it was proven that you can always easily play an Israeli version of the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. You only have to replace the number six with three or four, and the name of the actor with that of any friend or relative of yours in Israel.