One of the last living witnesses to the Holocaust, 97-year-old Helga Melmed, visited campus last Wednesday, April 23. Melmed survived the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. The talk, sponsored by Swarthmore Kehilah, the Interfaith Center (IC), the Office of Inclusive Excellence, and the History department, took place in Singer Hall and drew a large crowd of students and community members. Some attendees sat on the floor after seats filled, and others stood along the back wall to listen to Melmed’s testimony.
The event began with introductions from Rabbi Michael Ramberg, the Jewish student advisor and co-director of the IC. Ramberg noted that Melmed’s visit came at a time of particular importance within the Jewish calendar, between Passover and Shavuot. He explained that both holidays are about liberation, though they represent different paths to achieving it: “Passover through miracles and Shavuot through concerted human effort.”
Rambert said that his hope for all listeners of the talk, despite their differing backgrounds, is that “whatever you learn here, you can take with you and contribute to somehow making the world a better place.”
Melmed began her story: “My name is Helga Melmed, I was born in Berlin, Germany, and I am Jewish.” Melmed learned early on in life about discrimination, her childhood cut short by the rise of Nazism. “I learned about it before I could spell discrimination,” she said.
Melmed recounted that when she was five years old, her teacher beat her hands and made the other children call her a “dirty Jew.” As a result, her parents transferred her to a private Jewish school. Although her experience at the new school improved, Melmed’s parents kept her unaware of the increasingly oppressive laws developing outside. She recalled coming home from school to find her belongings missing.“Everything that was taken from us by law was excused by my mom so I wouldn’t worry about it. And I didn’t.” Melmed said. At that time, she was only ten years old.
In 1938, Melmed witnessed Kristallnacht, known as the Night of Broken Glass, which was a violent pogrom against Jews orchestrated by the Nazis during which her school was set on fire. She described “a great big pit with fire,” into which her school books, paintings, and belongings were thrown. “Being a youngster, I took it very seriously,” she recalled.
After Kristallnacht, school went underground. In 1941, Melmed heard a loud banging on the door. On the other side were soldiers dressed in black with guns informing her family that they were being settled “in a better place.” Melmed thought, “What in the world could be better than home?”
The Nazis took Melmed’s family to what used to be a warehouse – it was a slaughterhouse. Melmed’s parents held her tight in between them so she wouldn’t see the horrors happening around her. “But I could see,” she said, “I could smell the blood. I could hear the screams. I could see the blood flowing on the ground.”
Melmed and her family were shoved into crowded cattle cars. She said they received a bucket of water every so often. Without any containers, they had to drink out of their hands. “When I was thirteen years old, my hands were tiny. The water ran right through them.”
At Lodz Ghetto, Melmed’s father was taken to do work in the city while she and her mother worked in a factory. One day, her father and many other men were made living target practice for the soldiers. Her father was shot dead. “He never came home from work that night,” she said.
Without her father, Melmed’s mother fell apart. She hardly ate; when there was food, she’d offer it to Melmed. “Being a child, I ate, so I had a little more food,” she continued, “She wanted me to live. She wanted to die.”
For Melmed’s birthday, her mother gifted her an onion. “It was the best birthday present I ever got.” When Melmed woke up the next morning, her mother had died. “She gave her life for me, and I still feel guilty about it.”
After her mother’s death, Melmed, along with other children from the ghetto, was adopted by one of the elder Jews in the community. Three other girls joined her and became her “camp sisters.” Together, Melmed and her sisters were transported to a concentration camp in a cattle car. “Auschwitz was not a pleasant place.”
She described the gas chambers and seeing the smoke rising from the chimneys, first white, then black. “The smell of the flesh was atrocious.” Melmed and her sisters were called, or maybe just her, she said, “But the four of us clung so close together they had to take all of us.” Their heads were shaved, and they had to strip naked in front of the guards. From there, they were supposed to go to the showers. Melmed and her sisters prayed and sang, clinging to each other. When they got in the showers, they were water, not gas.
Melmed and her camp sisters stuck together through it all: “We shared everything, and that way, we went through the camps. I think that our love and our sharing and our being together saved all our lives.”
Together, they walked for over 90 miles to Bergen-Belsen, another concentration camp. “If you tripped, you were shot,” Melmed said. When they arrived, the camp sisters were separated. “I cried, I cried my heart out because I didn’t know where my girls went.” Long after the war, Melmed said she was eventually reunited with her sisters.
When Liberation Day came, Melmed was not able to celebrate because she was too sick. She had typhus fever and tuberculosis. “I was seventeen years old. I weighed 46 pounds.” She was taken by British soldiers to a field hospital, then to Castle Hall, a Swedish hospital.
While at the hospital in Sweden, the war ended. At eighteen, Melmed moved to the U.S. to live with her aunt. She left with $29 in her pocket and a suitcase. As she approached Ellis Island, she recalled screaming, dancing, and singing at the sight of the Statue of Liberty.
In New York City, Melmed went to high school, where she had to translate her homework from English into German, then her answers from German to English. “Then I got maybe an hour of sleep, and I went to school in the morning and handed in my English schoolwork just the way any other student did.” Melmed graduated in a year and a half; she was proud.
After graduation, she worked as a nurse at Einstein Hospital in Philadelphia. When she graduated from nursing, she married and had four children. Now, Melmed has four grandchildren. “They’re my pride and joy,” she said. “After all these years, I found out peace is better than war. Love is better than hate,” Melmed continued, “Please remember not to hate.”
During the Q&A, many commended Melmed for resilience. One attendee asked her where she got the energy to continue sharing her story. Melmed responded, “I speak because I hope that this will never repeat itself.”
