All I Remembered Was My Name

Hitler’s armies had not yet reached Hungary.  But he had sworn to destroy every Jewish man, woman and child who lived on the face of the earth.  My mother was young, not much more than a girl, and I had just been born.  Forgetting all her troubles, she waited eagerly for the nurse to bring me to her.

A nurse delivered me to her.  “Oh, give her to me!” my mother cried. “Please, let me hold her!”

“Take her,” she said, dumping me roughly at the end of the bed. “I don’t know why we have to bother with these Jewish brats.  They are a waste of time and money.  Hitler will take care of all of you before the year is out.”

My mother couldn’t answer her. She just held me tight in her arms and cried
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The woman in the next bed said, “Honey, don’t let that old witch upset you.  Let me take her. Why should she die, the innocent babe?  I swear to you, I will care for her as if she was my own.  I never had children.  Give her to me.  That poor babe hasn’t got a chance.  There won’t be any Jewish kids left when Hitler gets here.”

“Don’t be so sure,” Mother answered uncertainly.  ”This is not the first time they have tried to destroy us.  In every generation they have risen up against us to destroy us, and God has always saved us from their hands. And He will again!”

When my father came to visit that afternoon her first words to him were,“Avrom, I know what our baby’s name will be.  She will be Esther, Esther Malka.  God will surely help.”

By the time Esther was two years old, her family was forced to leave their home, and live in the ghetto.  Young men like my father were marched out at gun point to work for the Nazis.  Otherwise no Jew was allowed to leave the ghetto walls.  Inside those walls we lived, crowded together – many families in one apartment.  We lived with cold, hunger and fear.  Many became sick and died.  Others were taken away by the Nazis and were never heard from again.

Then, every few days, German soldiers rounded up many of our neighbors and forced them into cattle cars.  They never returned.  My mother and father soon realized that they had to send me away to protect me.  They planned to smuggle me out of the ghetto and send me far away to the countryside to a little village so poor and small that it was important to the Germans. I was to live with a peasant family until the war was over.  My parents paid them with the last money they had, paid them to keep me.

After the war my parents my parents set out to find me.  They walked ten miles by foot.  As they walked, they prayed.  They knew that many villages had driven out the Jewish children that they had agreed to shelter.  Others had handed them over to the Nazis.  Some villagers had grown to love the children in their care and did not want to give them back to their parents.  The children themselves were often too small to remember that they had Jewish parents.

Suddenly, they caught sight of a child, a small, sunburned girl with matted brown hair and bare feet. She was playing in the dirt in front of a house. Their hearts leaped. “Little girl,” my father called in a trembling voice, “come here.”

“Ester’ke.  Esther Malka.  It’s Mommy and Daddy!  Don’t you remember us?”

I stared at them without moving.  Suddenly, it was as if I had awakened from a dream. Yes, I did remember!  With a little cry, I ran into my parent’s arms; the arms that longed to hold me tight.

I asked my mother, “How come I forgot everything – you, and father, and being a Jewish girl? I remembered only one little thing: my name!”

Later during Purim my mother was making preparations for our celebration. She rose to take out the spices, the Havdalah candle and the wine cup. “I guess,” she said, “I guess because a name, a Jewish name, is not a little thing after all.”

Just as Haman met his fate at the gallows which he planned for Mordecai (Esther 7:10) “So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then was the king’s wrath pacified”, so will those who seek to destroy Israel meet their destruction. The Jewish nation will never be destroyed or driven from her land again.  Let us pray for the peace and protection for Jerusalem (Psalm 122:6).

Excerpts for this article may be found in Chabad