“I defeated Hitler is a reality”: Holocaust survivor talks about her difficult childhood after 80 years

Irene Shashar is 85 years old, full of energy and commitment to herself to tell the story of her life, cut short and marked by the Holocaust, which destroyed almost her entire family. But as the years go by she feels like she’s won Hitleras the title of your book suggests.

In an interview with EFE in Madrid, a survivor born in PolandRaised in Peru after the end of World War II (1939-1945) and settled in Israel, she talks about her past with the conviction to do what she must.

In the capital of Spain, he participates in various events organized by Centro Sefarad Israel on the occasion of Holocaust Remembrance Month.

“I feel in my order, in my being, in my soul, that in order to survive, I must say this, I must speak on behalf of those who cannot and will never be able to speak, I have taken it upon myself to speak from on behalf of one and a half million children like me,” he explains.

shashkhar He spent the first years of his life in the Warsaw Ghetto, a symbol of Polish resistance to the strategy of extermination of Jews by Jews. Naziswhere she saw her father and hundreds of children die while she hid so as not to suffer the same fate.

And she wonders why she survived, and not other children: “Have I really taken the place of another child? All kinds of thoughts that go through your head night and day for 80 years: why you, me, us, why does it depend on us?

Despite all the questions that accompany her, she assures that every time she tells her story, “the backpack becomes more and more bearable.”

“Because I talk and talk a lot, as a witness to what happened in Polandit’s like a backpack, which is somewhat tolerable, maybe lighter, it doesn’t disappear completely, but it gives me inner satisfaction if at least one young man listened to me, ”he reflects.

CHILDHOOD NOT A GIRL

shashkhar He naturally recalls his past and his early years in the Warsaw ghetto, where he saw his father die, several other relatives perished, and he himself suffered from hunger and extreme cold.

From there he managed to escape with his mother; Outside the ghetto, in the city, he would have to hide for hours, days and years in a small closet.

“I consider myself a hidden girl, in a closet, with everything that can cover and hide you so that the enemy does not see you,” she describes, before recalling that life at that time was based on “getting the most basic things.” .”

“Shelter you from the cold, because Poland In winter it is very cold, hungry, I can see the light, because my childhood memories are such that most of my days I lived in darkness”, hidden.

For this reason, she spent her childhood not being a girl, not being able to “go out, have fun freely, swing, walk, jump, play …”.

“All this was unknown and forbidden to me, because Hitler decided that since I was born a Jew, then I have no place in this world,” he sums up.

FINAL VICTORY OVER HITLER

Despite everything, to shashkhar no one wipes the smile off his face. Her story, which she naturally tells today, she didn’t tell her children until her eldest was 19 and her sister was 17 because she wanted to continue to “protect” them.

“I wanted to shield them from my mind and my idea that I was different from the parents of other children, because I came out of war”, He says.

And though he broke his silence with his relativesassures that those who have found a “common language” are those who have gone through the same hell as she.

Now, with a book in which he talks about his experiences, in his hands.I defeated hitler”, declares its right to account and the need for society to remember not to repeat these crimes.

“What I beat Hitler This is reality, my victory here, with two children and seven grandchildren who have a normal and happy life (…), I enjoy, and this joy is my victory over Hitler, who wanted to make me disappear from the face of the earth. Earth, ditch.

EFE