Page 102 - Witness

Your Baby Survived, Mama
Robbie Waisman, 81-year-old Holocaust survivor, returned to his hometown of Skarzysko-Kamienna, Poland, with a group of high school students on the 2012 March of the Living.
“It took over 60 years before I found the courage to go back, to relive and to face these dark memories. I entered [my former home in the ghetto], my heart pounding, overcome with all the memories of long ago. I stopped, closed my eyes [and] I heard my Mom’s beautiful voice saying to me, as she always did every night before I went to bed, ‘Shluff Gesinter
Hite’ (Sleep well), with a kiss and a hug. After a while I walked down the stairs to find all the teenagers who, I had thought, were waiting for me in the buses. There they were, all of them, keeping vigil, arm in arm, awaiting me in the courtyard – a wall of support to help me deal with all those thoughts, emotions, and memories.
“Next, together, we proceeded to find the site of the synagogue, in Skarzysko. It was demolished...only two crum- bling brick walls left. I said Kaddish again for my beloved Mom [murdered] in Treblinka where I found the Skarzysko monument.”
Supported by a fellow survivor, Robbie looked upward and proclaimed, “I survived. I survived. Your baby survived, Mama.” Then he burst into tears, embraced by the other survivors and surrounded by all of the children.
“I needed to go back after all these years to acknowledge to all my loved ones that I, the baby of the family, survived. I have no words to describe my love and respect for all of our young people, who joined from all over the world for the amazing March from Auschwitz to Birkenau.”
Top: Reuniting on the March of the Living with fellow survivor and Buchenwald inmate, Israel Meir Lau, later to become Chief Rabbi of Israel. Above and right: Robbie Waisman with students.
94