An unusual story of a family’s self-preservation during the Holocaust

By Randy Fadem

POWAY– Holocaust Survivor and Jewish Educator Rita Ross recently told an audience at Temple Adat Shalom that her entire nuclear family was able to survive the Nazi invasion and occupation of Poland, which was a highly unusual outcome for those caught up in the Shoah.

Ross was concluding a speaking tour to promote her recently published memoir, Running From Home (Hamilton Books) dealing with the experiences of her mother, father, herself, and her younger  brother.
                          
In January 1939, her family was living in Vienna.  With the experience of the Anschluss and Kristalnacht , her father decided the family had to get out of Europe.   Still possessing a valid American visa from his pre-marital days, he returned to America.  

Upon his arrival, he caused a great miracle to happen: he obtained a birth certificate for his wife’s father,  Ross’ grandfather. The latter lived his entire life in Poland, never having set a foot upon the shores of America. This document effectively conferred American citizenship upon her  mother and protection for her children. He mailed these documents back across the Atlantic Ocean to Poland before WWII blocked all communications.
                         
By this time Ross’s mother had returned to her native Poland with her children. She found a safe haven on her  father’s  estate (he who had suddenly and unbeknownst to himself become an American citizen) outside of Krakow. With the German invasion in September 1939, she was forced to flee into Krakow and its suburbs seeking shelter and food for her children.

Finally, the only safe place for them was the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow.   During these years (1939-1945) Ross’ mother had impressed upon her children that they were not Jewish: they had only been pretending. The then five year old Ross felt a great relief as she had resented the persecutions from the other Polish children.
      
When the Germans sought to deport them from the ghetto, her Mother produced the American papers and they were transferred to a prison inside Poland. On the eve of her mother’s fateful interview with the Gestapo, the latter had a dream in which her own mother appeared to her: “stand tall, look them in the eye, and never let them see your fear”.  

At the conclusion of that interview, the three of them were transferred to a POW camp filled with captured American, British, and Canadian fliers as well as other Polish mothers and their children  who claimed American and British citizenship.   

In early 1945, her family was exchanged for German POW’s being held in the United States. Upon arriving at Ellis Island, they were quarantined for two weeks; then she and her brother were deported to Canada by the American authorities: they didn’t have proper documents.
Ross’ parting thoughts to the Adat Shalom audience were in verse:
 
          Do not dwell on unhappiness
          But if we forget
          It will happen again
          Not in our lifetime,
          But it will

Further information on Ross, her book, and her schedule of speaking engagements can be found on her  website: www.ritabross.com

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Fadem is a semi-retired educator living in La Mesa. He is currently compiling  a biographical dictionary of Jewish Youth and their social organizations in the Warsaw Ghetto who rose against the Nazis on 19 April  1943.