IThere is no worse place, nor worse, to fall in love. David Wisnia and Helen Spitzer met for the first time near one of the cremation furnaces of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp where more than 1.1 million Jews, Jehovah's Witnesses, prisoners of war, political opponents , Poles, Soviets, Gypsies and Resistance fighters were murdered by the Nazis. It was in 1943. The Second World War was at its tipping point and Nazi Germany had just experienced its first defeats.
Immediately, David Wisnia, a Polish Jew from Warsaw, realized that Helen Spitzer, a Jewess from Bratislava, Slovakia, was not an ordinary deportee. "Zippi," it was her nickname, was the only woman in a part of the men's camp. One of their fellow prisoners presented them at the request of Zippi. Especially she was clean, well dressed, wearing a jacket and smelling good. He was 17 years old, she was 25 years old. "I did not know anything about life … She taught me everything. She chose me », told David Wisnia at New York Times.
Around them, death was everywhere. Still, the lovers planned a life together, a future outside of Auschwitz. It too … https://t.co/bCxGOI93vT
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Clandestine encounters
After this first meeting, they met secretly at regular intervals, in the tiny space of a barracks where deportees' clothes were stored, between crematoria IV and V. Both enjoyed "privileged" status. After being used to picking up the bodies of the suicide deportees by touching the electrified barbed wire, the Nazis realized David's singing talents and spared him to sing for them.
For her part, Zippi was one of the first women to arrive in Auschwitz in 1942. A graphic designer, speaking German, she spent a few difficult months before being transferred to an office where she drew up plans before becoming keep track of available manpower for the Nazis. A job that gave her a certain freedom of movement and action in the camp, as she told in a testimony, in 1946. Thus, she could transfer deportees from one hut to another or assign them to another task. She also sent reports to various resistance groups.
In the rare moments when they had the opportunity, they spoke little to each other. They talked about their life before. He, his love for music, lyrical art, inspired by his father. She, too, loved music, played piano and mandolin. She taught him a Hungarian song. Despite the omnipresent death, they began to dream of a future. Together and far from Auschwitz.
Separated during the evacuation of Auschwitz
After two years in the extermination camp, the end of the war approaching and imagining that they could be separated, they made a promise to meet in Warsaw. In December 1944, during the evacuation of Auschwitz, David Wisnia was transferred to Dachau, a concentration camp in the Munich area.
At the end of April, he managed to escape, after hitting an SS with a shovel. He hides in a barn and only comes out when he hears armored vehicles. He thinks it's the Red Army. Its liberators are in fact members of the 506e parachute infantry regiment of the 101e American airborne division. They take him with them, and he becomes their interpreter, one of theirs, accompanies them to Berchtesgaden, Hitler's hideout, in the Bavarian Alps. But joining the American troops, the idea of finding Zippi in Warsaw moves away.
After the German capitulation, he learns from a former deportee that Zippi survived. He is with the US Army, near Versailles, where he expects to emigrate to the United States. What he does, in January 1946. From New York, he then settles in the Philadelphia area with the one who became his wife, Hope, but never forget Zippi, whom he refers to as Rose in his autobiography.
For her part, Helen Spitzer is one of the last to leave Auschwitz. She is transferred to Ravensbrück camp, 80 kilometers north of Berlin, then to one of its annexes, the Malchow camp. During her evacuation, she escapes with a friend and returns to Bratislava, where she finds only her brother, who has just married. She leaves for Feldafing, a camp for displaced people in Bavaria, in the US occupation zone.
Ultimate meeting, after 72 years of separation
This is where she remakes her life. In 1945, she married Erwin Tichauer, a UN official in charge of the camp, and later accompanied her on her missions to Peru, Bolivia and Indonesia before settling with him in the United States. Years later, a mutual acquaintance tells David Wisnia that Zippi lives in New York. This friend organizes a meeting at a hotel in New York. She does not come. "I learned after she thought it was not a good idea. She was married »says David at New York Times. Yet he continues to hear from him through this common friend.
In 2016, he tries his luck again. His son, rabbi in Princeton, New Jersey, makes contact. She agrees to see him again, seventy-two years after their last meeting. She has been a widow for ten years, without children. When they see each other, Zippi's health is declining. She is bedridden, gradually losing sight and hearing, surrounded by books on the Holocaust, assisted by home help.
But for two hours, they remake the story. He ends up asking her the question that has obsessed her all these years: how many times did she intervene to save her life at Auschwitz? She tells him that on five occasions she has tampered with the documents that should have sent her to death. She tells him that she has kept her part of their promise. That she went to Warsaw, that she waited for him, but that he never came. They finally admit that they had always loved each other. Before leaving, she asked him to sing for her. He took her hand and sang the Hungarian song she had taught him, to show him that he still remembered it. Then? They never saw each other again. She died on January 10, 2018, in New York.
