Leslie: Hello, Rosa.

Rosa: Hello, how are you?

Leslie: Hello, how are you? I’m Leslie, it’s a pleasure to meet you.

Rosa: Well, in Argentina we give a kiss. One, two—one, one. Okay. In France, it’s two. In Brazil as well. This is a cake that I made for Passover. Okay. Only if the children want it, yes. Well, delicious.

Leslie: We are going to do that now. I hope you like it.

Rosa: Yes, yes. Now, let’s go over here. I’ll leave it in the kitchen if you want to accompany me to the right, please.

Leslie: Wow, it’s so beautiful here. What is it like to live in Argentina as a Jewish person?

Rosa: Well, we have never had overt antisemitism, but underneath there were actions depending on the era and the government. Everything depends; this world is based on “it depends.”

Smuggling a Baby From the Ghetto

Rosa: I was born in the worst place and at the worst time a Jewish child could have been born. I had the opportunity to rescue parts of my history throughout my life. From the beginning, my parents realized that I had to leave the ghetto because no baby could survive under those conditions.

All the entry gates, which weren’t many, were heavily guarded. Only personnel with documentation proving they worked for a German service could pass through those gates. So they had to find someone willing to take the risk, because if they were discovered, neither the person carrying me nor I would be alive.

Finally, since I was born in June, they decided that December—the end of the year—was the ideal time. The guards at the gates were a bit drunk, joyful, and happy for the New Year. The guard was less firm. When I was born, bombs were falling on Warsaw. In fact, the hospital where I was born was destroyed.

My parents, crying tears of blood, took only one precaution. They hung a little bag around my neck, and inside was a piece of paper with my false name, Vanda Darlevska. That young man who went out every day to work at a German facility with a special permit carried a tool bag, and I was placed inside that bag. Everyone prayed that I wouldn’t make a sound, talk, or cry when passing through the checkpoint.

It was very dangerous for him and for me because neither of us would have survived. He would have been shot by a firing squad, and I would have been pierced with a bayonet. It was very simple. The goal of the Nazis was for as few babies to survive as possible, because babies were the seed of the Jewish people. It was evident that they didn’t know if they were ever going to see me again. I think that was their great dilemma: leaving me inside knowing I had no chance of surviving, but they didn’t know if they would survive inside either. They clung to the crib, to the diapers, kissing my clothes. Up to age five, 90 percent did not survive.

The Abandoned Child

Rosa: Someone suggested going to the nearby police station to report that a girl had been abandoned. I had been left there with a small bag carrying my name. The police registered the abandonment and explained that there were several places they could take me: a school, an orphanage, a church, or a convent. My aunt made the report at the police station, and after that, what happened to me? I don’t know.

I assume I passed from hand to hand. Who held me in their arms and where? I will never know. Years later, my father wrote a testimonial book in which he tells everything he lived through before, during, and after the war.

Life Inside the Ghetto Walls

Rosa: My father was the eldest son of a quite religious couple. He was the only one who survived. My father’s parents had already passed away; his father died very young, and his mother passed away just before the war. That’s why, when his mother found out that her son liked a girl, she pushed for them to marry. She said, “Children, very bad times are coming. We don’t know what destiny may hold.”

The situation inside the ghetto was extremely harsh. Every day people died of hunger, cold, diseases, and due to the overcrowded conditions. Almost half a million people were confined to a very small space. The ghetto was closed off with brick walls—walls that the Jews themselves were forced to build. And why did they do that? Because the Nazis wanted to keep the Jewish population controlled.

Separation in the Train Cars

Leslie: Your father was hidden in a bunker with your mother until ’43. Do you know if your mother was also already in…

Rosa: Yes, because they were deported together. They left together in 1943 in the train cars. At one point, the car door opened and a German yelled, “Which of you is a carpenter?” And my mother made my father raise his arm. He said, “But I’m not a carpenter.” She said, “It’s going to be better than what we have here. We are all crammed together, without food, without air, without water, with a bucket for biological needs. Anything will be better than this. So go down if you’re a carpenter.”

And that was the last time they ever saw each other. My father was a prisoner in three forced labor camps—small camps but extremely harsh, where prisoners were used as slave labor. My father was very sharp; it’s not for nothing that he saved himself. Only those who were strong, resilient, and had a good head on their shoulders were the ones who could survive. The others all died.

A Birthmark in the Orphanage

Rosa: My father had one fixed idea: to find his wife and his daughter. And so he said, “If I took her out of the Warsaw Ghetto as a baby, I don’t think anyone could have taken her far. She must be in Warsaw.” And in Warsaw, my father traveled through hospitals, convents, monasteries, clinics, and sanatoriums looking for me. He was expecting to find me and thought simply, “I will find her, I will say she is my daughter, and I will take her with me.”

He finally arrived at the Father Baudouin Orphanage and asked to speak with the Mother Superior. He told her, “Look, I am looking for my daughter whom I handed over to save her, and the only thing I have of her is a name, her name is Vanda Darlevska.” She said, “Yes, I have a girl named Vanda.” He said, “She is my daughter, I want to see her.” She told him, “Well, wait, sir, you have to prove to me that you are a relative, that you are her father.”

“I have nothing, I come from three forced labor camps.” As he always said, “I only have lice on me.” He only had lice, no documents, no nothing. My father left crying and thought about what to do. Then he remembered that I have a birthmark, so he described it and said, “Look, if she is my daughter, on the upper part of her right ear she should have a small indentation.” And then the Mother Superior returned. I always get emotional when I tell this part. They said in Polish, “Yes, the hole the gentleman describes is there.” And well, that is how I returned to my father’s arms.

Leslie: Do you remember this moment?

Rosa: I remember nothing. Nothing. For me, it is a nonexistent story. It’s a black hole in my history. I don’t remember anything. When they took me out of the orphanage, I was very sick. My scalp was full of sores, and I suffered from severe malnutrition.

Rebuilding in Argentina

Rosa: When everyone started shouting, dancing, hugging, kissing—imagine, there was the possibility of the existence of a State of Israel. So, a year later, my father said, “Well, I’m going to see what’s happening in Israel. Maybe I can take my whole family there.” But the conditions in Israel were terrible for settling down. You had to work and give everything to the government because the country had to be built up. And my father said, “I have four mouths to feed, I cannot work only for the country.” And that was when he decided to come to South America. When I was nine years old, I moved to Argentina. I didn’t know my story; I learned it when I turned 18.

Leslie: Don’t tell me… for all this time you thought your mother was…?

Rosa: Yes, I never knew my biological mother. Her name was Flora Rosenstraug, but they didn’t tell me that my mother wasn’t alive, nor what had happened to her, because they didn’t know either. It was a very difficult time for me. So I shut it out, pulled down the curtain, and didn’t want to know anything about it for many, many years.

The Journey Back to Warsaw

Rosa: I say that in my life there was always unfinished business. What had happened to my mother? Why couldn’t I know anything? And so I told myself, “Someday I am going to return to Warsaw and I am going to find out what happened to my mother, or at least try to find out.” I wanted it to be a journey of discovery. I prepared for my trip for almost a year. Monica, my friend, said to me, “But who are you going with?” “No, alone.” “Alone? No, I won’t let you go alone, I’m going with you,” she told me.

She accompanied me to the orphanage. I thought I was going to look at a wall, a painting, a drawing, a hammock, a garden. Nothing, nothing. Later I learned that the orphanage had been bombed several times and that I escaped death there on more than one occasion. The director brought out a huge book, like those old ones from monasteries, written in old Gothic script. Well, my name was there: Vanda Darlevska. It was the first time I saw my name anywhere, because until that moment, everything could have been made up.

And they turned the pages—past January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August—and only in September or October did it show that I was left at the orphanage. Where was I all those months? And with whom? I will never know. Never. My mother had not died during the train transport. No. My mother had survived the war. She passed away two months after the British entered Bergen-Belsen. And I have the name and the number of the grave where she is. Yes. I didn’t go. I no longer had the strength, but in some way, the circle of my history had closed.

A Legacy of Humanity

Rosa: I wish that it is not minimized and not forgotten that despite the wickedness of many, there are people who still acted to help others, who also risked themselves to hide Jewish children out of a humanitarian concern. But there were also other humanitarian hands—the Righteous Among the Nations, those who helped without expecting anything in return, because it was about a human being. Yes, and one had to do what one could for that being. And just as I feel unique because of my history, I have to consider that you are unique, that he is unique, that my neighbor is unique, and give them the respect and the place they deserve as a unique person.

Leslie: Your story is an incredible story.

Rosa: All of this, it has been less than 10 years since I found out.

A Grandson’s Perspective

Leslie: Gabriel. Hi, Gabriel. Do you know your grandmother’s story well?

Gabriel: Yes, yes.

Leslie: How did you feel when you heard it?

Gabriel: I felt like, really like sad, happy, and like… I just like, I don’t know. I just have like mixed feelings.

Leslie: Oh, I understand what you’re saying. You know, I was saying I used to look at my grandma like a hero. Without the cape, without all of this. Is this more or less how you feel about your grandma?

Gabriel: I understand.

Leslie: It wasn’t so difficult today, Rosa. It’s okay. Is it difficult to speak about the past and everything?

Rosa: No, I am very used to it. Look, I told you that the first time I almost fainted and everything, but now I have practice, I always do it. Everyone wants witnesses to be present and to speak, and now there are fewer and fewer of us.

Leslie: It was a pleasure to meet you. Thank you very much.

Rosa: Okay. Bye-bye. Thank you. Bye.