Several years ago while I was still teaching at FHS, we invited a Holocaust Survivor to speak to students at Forney High School, and he did a remarkable job of imparting to listeners just what had happened and its impact then and continuing. His parting words were the following: “We must never let the world forget the true story of what happened leading up to, during, and following the Holocaust!” For this reason, I impart the following story and hope that this helps keep alive this “true story,” even though the survivor/teller has recently “passed on peacefully” at age 96 years at the Jewish Hospital in Hamburg, Germany.
Esther Bejarano was born in 1924 and was raised in a peaceful, musical, sheltered environment until the “coming to power” of the Nazis, and their eventual take-over of the city, Saarlouis, and later the deporting and then killing of her parents and sister. She, meanwhile, was spared and forced into hard labor before finally being sent to “Auschwitz-Birkenau” in 1943.
Fortunately for her, she volunteered (about age 18 years) to play the accordion (She knew how to play a piano but not an accordion and had to teach herself the new keyboard for one of her hands.) in an orchestra composed of girls, whose job it was to perform each time a train, filled with Jews, arrived from all across Europe. The girls played, often while crying, since the excited arrivals, who waved and applauded the orchestra, were going to the “gas chambers,” and camp prisoners were going out to “hard labor,” which killed many of them. They also had to often play for the entertainment of the camp’s staff.
Bejarano, whose Grandmother had been a Christian, some time later was transferred to another concentration camp, Ravensbrueck, and survived a “death march” by running away and escaping near the conclusion of the war.
This brave young lady re membered and spoke of being rescued by U. S. troops. She related that they gave her an accordion to play one day when the concentration camp survivors and the American rescuers danced around a burning portrait of Adolf Hitler in celebration of the defeat of the Nazis by the Allied Troops.
Following the war, Esther moved to Israel, married, had two children, and went back to Germany in 1960, only to once again meet open anti-semitism, which spurred her to take up political activism! She supported the “Association of the Pursecutees” of the Nazi regime in the 1970s and began telling her story to faculties and in “protest songs.” Among other im portant things she did was to help found the Auschwitz Committee (1986) to provide a platform upon which survivors could tell their individual stories!
Another thing she managed, along with caring for her children, was to form a band, named “Coincidence,” and another group, named “Microphone Mafia,” (around 2009) to spread anti-racism/fascism messages to German youths.
As she received numerous awards (including Germany’s Order of Merit) and sometimes criticized German officials for some of their edicts and decisions, this enduring and noble lady continued to spread the message that “it happened before; therefore, it can happen again!” Also, she emphasized to German youths that they were “not guilty of what happened back then, but you become guilty if you refuse to listen to (and learn from) what happened!”
Upon her death, ESTHER BEJARANO was lauded by many German leaders and citizens, who echoed the following words: “She will always have a place in our hearts.” Many, many people, not just in Germany but around the world, also took note of these words: “What would the world look like if the Nazis had won?”
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