She was stopped by her mother’s voice saying, “Raizele, no. There will be better times”

Mrs. Rifka Katz

Kallah teacher and lecturer

Montreal, Canada

My mother, Mrs. Raizel Danzciger, didn’t have an easy life. Born in Hungary before the war, she lost her mother at the young age of 12. After her father remarried, my mother moved in with an older sister.

My aunt lived in a small town and couldn’t afford to send my mother to school. Instead, my mother, just 14 or 15 years old at the time, earned her keep by helping to take care of her seven nieces and nephews, cooking, cleaning, and feeding the animals. (My mother used to talk about “stuffing the goose.”)

Then the Nazis invaded. My mother was taken to Auschwitz, and she was there for a full year. There are endless stories of the horrors that took place in this Gehinnom…. Every night she lived was another day survived.

My mother would recall girls who ran to the open field when the Russians began bombing, or those who threw themselves at the electric fences, preferring to die instantly rather than go through interminable torture. She thought of doing this herself, she told us, but she was stopped by her mother’s voice saying, “Raizele, no. There will be better times.”