By: KEITH GRANT
Long Beach man recounts flight from Holocaust
With April comes the Passover season, when Jews celebrate being spared of the plague of death and their freedom from Egypt thousands of years ago.
The month also brings the Holocaust remembrance, a time when those who last century were not passed over are memorialized. The occasion also brings a spotlight to those who escaped the terror. Each has a similar story to tell of survival, and an entirely unique one, as well.
Abraham Getman has carried his story within him for 60 years. With the help of friends and his children, he recently realized a two-decade dream of putting his story into print to share with the generations who have come since the Holocaust, and, he hopes, the generations yet to come. A primary otivation, he said, was to make sure the story of the Holocaust is never forgotten and can never be disputed.
"People are denying it," Getman said. "They're saying it didn't happen."
For Getman, it certainly did. "Borders of Hope: A Teenager's Flight for Life," published by Vantage Press, recounts his time growing up in Luboml, Poland, to his eventual arrival in the U.S. in 1959. The trip to America was Getman's first plane ride after a lifetime of travel by foot and train.
Luboml was one of many Eastern European towns whose identity had changed numerous times over the centuries as wars were fought and won, then lost again. The Getman family was not rich but was comfortable and took care of those who could not fully care for themselves. Jews, Christian Poles and Ukranians shared the town. They lived apart, but mostly treated each other well and often came together in a crisis, such as fighting fires.
As Getman recounts of his teenage years, things started to change even before the war came. Some Gentiles acquired more spiteful attitudes toward Jews and were known to throw rocks at Getman and his friends.
After the German invasion, small changes were adapted to, looked upon as merely the deprivations of war. But gradually the local attacks became more severe. The Getmans soon realized this was not just a war against Poland or Russia, it was a war against Jews. Getman witnessed German soldiers shooting children in front of their parents' eyes. Beaten, dying bodies replaced the flowers that once grew in the center square, and half the city had burned to the ground.
On July 21, 1941, his 15th birthday, Abraham watched his father and brother taken away in a truckload of Jewish men. He followed the truck into the woods, where he saw the men lined up alongside newly dug graves and executed by machine-gun fire.
In the fall of 1942, Abraham, armed only with some small family valuables, took to the woods to escape the Nazis, hoping to get to the Russian front. Shortly after his escape, 10,000 Jews from Luboml were murdered as the ghetto was liquidated. Getman was the only member of his family to survive the war, other than a brother who emigrated to Palestine a few years before.
Though Getman knew where he wanted to get to, it was anything but easy to get there.
"I was in the woods most of the time," he said. "I didn't know where I was. Instead of Russia, I wound up in Romania."
As he recounts in his book, laying in fields to dodge bullets became a habit. He traveled for a time with a few others but eventually took to the railroad alone to try to get to Russia. Broke and usually starving, he survived only with wits, a Ukranian-sounding accent and much luck.
Once, a policeman confronted him and told him to drop his pants, to see if he was circumsized and know whether he was a Jew. As he prepared to, the policeman noticed Abraham's watch and yanked it from his wrist. As the policeman reached for a piece that had fallen to the floor, Getman turned and leapt out the window, running once again for his life.
Another time, he was pulled from a train he was stowing away on, to have his documents checked. But first, Abraham pretended to have to relieve himself near the train. With soldiers standing right behind him, he bent to tie his shoes and then dashed under the railroad car and fled into the fields on the other side.
Even after reaching Russia, Getman's flight hadn't ended, as he found no freedom there and had to escape out of the communist country. He returned to Poland and eventually made his way to Austria, where he stayed for two years before finally getting to Israel. There, just 20 but with lifetimes of experience, he joined the Israeli army and helped the fight for independence.
It took years for Getman to speak openly about his experiences, even with his family.
"When I was younger, I didn't talk to my family about it," he said. "I didn't have time to talk. I didn't have time to write."
Now, he and other Holocaust survivors, he says, "are getting older. We should tell our stories."
He cautions, though, that these are not merely stories.
"There's no fiction in this," he says of his book. "It's as it happened. It's a story to others, but it was real to me."
A local resident for almost 40 years, Getman says it took nearly half of that time to finish his book once he decided to write it. For one, English was not his first language. So he began making tapes that his children could transcribe. Once, a woman came into his restaurant supply store looking for a job. Getman asked if she could type, and suddenly she was enlisted in the project.
Remembering the details of his flight was not difficult, he said. "I have a good memory. I didn't look up anything in a library, believe me!"
For several years, Getman has taken his story into schools, talking to children about his escape from the Holocaust. Recently he was speaking to students at an Oceanside school and was nearly overcome with emotion.
"All of a sudden, I couldn't look at them," he said. "I saw that they were the same age I was when I went through this."
Getman's book is available at the family's store in Lynbrook, Lion's Restaurant Equipment and Supplies, and also at Amazon.com and some Barnes & Noble locations.
But for Getman, the story is still firmly entrenched in his memory.
"I always was on the run," he said. "In my dreams, I'm still running. In my dreams, they're still hunting me."
