On 24 April, the Israelites celebrated the day of remembrance of the Holocaust. One of the memorials this memorial Yad Vashem in Israel. About 200 thousand survivors still live in Israel, and one of them showed us how sharing his experience, having survived one of the darkest periods in modern history.
“This picture is the last one. I called it “the Wounded are saved,” — shows Rita.
Rita was 7 years old when the Nazis invaded her hometown in Poland. In 1941, the Nazis removed all the Jews and placed in ghettos. Now Rita is known as an artist of the Holocaust and the art therapist. Lived experience – the theme of many of her drawings.
“I wounded survivors. I always paint themselves in white. I think this is not such a white night shirt that I spent all that time,” she says.
Rita agile and full of enthusiasm. If not for her work and not her story, you would never know about her painful past. She carried their memories through life.
“I’m not sure the wounds can be completely healed. Something continues to surface and affect every living day,” says the woman.
Rita’s story is told in the book “portrait of a Holocaust child: memories and reflections”. Rita told CBN news how she and her family escaped from the ghetto and survived in what I like to call the word “crypt”.
“My dad left for a few days to look for food and found another family of Christians in a small town called Malarkey. There, under the barn he dug a big hole, which had access to the cellar with potatoes, and part of the wall opened into the house. My father, mother and two small children were there, and only my little brother could stand, she remembers. — I was lying in the aisle between the Foundation and cellar of potatoes. So we lived for 20 months. We were hungry, constantly afraid and that was hell in reality, it was a tomb for the living”.
Rita says, waking up from nightmares, hour after hour, suffering day and night, most of the 12 brothers and sisters her father was dead, while her little family of 5 persons continued to live.
“Creativity has helped me survive and not only survive, but to keep sane,” says the woman.
In 2006, Rita visited Poland and took part in the March “For life.” When they were in Auschwitz, the bites of spiders have made a special impression.
“It’s a bloody spider that bit me. It was similar to the swastika and filled with blood,” she shows.
Becoming a mother of two children and grandmother of three grandchildren, Rita saw many miracles in my life.
“We had the so-called instinct of self-preservation, which proved to be very strong. He is now weak because you get older, the protection is weakened. The only thing that is left for our children and grandchildren. They – our victory,” she says.