For survivor, quilt tells story of a horrific time (Holocaust Quilt)

Sierra Vista Herald, Sierra Vista Arizona ^ | Bill Hess

[SandRat]

FORT HUACHUCA — Quilts are pieces of cloth sewn together that in many cases tell history.

But not all are designed to remember happy times. For Rosa Freund, the quilt she recently completed looks back on when she and others lived through the tyranny of Nazism.

A Holocaust survivor who started her life in concentration camps when she was 17 years old, Freund gathered patches from friends and then created a quilt to be a silent witness of those terrible days more than six decades ago when she was taken from her home on the outskirts of Budapest, Hungary.

One of the patches is of blue and white stripes, the colors of the uniform she wore in one camp.

On the patch she created is a pocket that bears a gold number 672.

“That was my work number,” the small-framed woman said.

Above the pocket is a candle of remembrance, which Freund said is important for her. It remembers the horrors she saw at places such as Birkenau, Auschwitz and other camps of death.

While 672 is a number she remembers, Freund almost had another number.

She was one of about 800 people standing in line and was near the part where her arm would have been tattooed with a number.

“They ran out of ink before they got to me,” she said.

So, unlike untold hundreds of thousands who were “inked” crudely with a number, Freund was not.

She also used an old photo of her brother, Moshe, her sister, Klara, and her taken before they were sent to concentration camps and had it transposed on to a white piece of cloth and sewn on to the quilt.

The photo was discovered after World War II and was in her brother’s possession. He was living in Israel.

Perhaps the most telling of her personally-designed patches is one of three smoke stacks and the buildings in which those who were to be killed entered.

“I lived three blocks from the crematoria,” Freund said.

Years later, those days of being near the crematoria came back in a haunting way.

Freund said she was once at a doctor’s office in the United States because of a skin problem.

The doctor decided the burn off some of her dry skin.

The smell of her own burning flesh rose to her nostrils, bringing back the stench of the bodies being burned more than 60 years ago.

On Wednesday, she recoiled and her body shook with uncontrollable horror while reliving that moment of her medical treatment.

Freund was one of five Holocaust survivors who made a trip to Fort Huachuca and Sierra Vista to speak about the time of death and destruction unleashed against Jews and others in Europe by Germany’s Nazi regime.

The program is part of an educational process of the Holocaust survivors of Southern Arizona, which meets weekly at the Jewish Family and Children Service of Southern Arizona.

Gail Wallen, who works with the survivors, said the number of those involved in the Holocaust are dwindling as age takes its toll. From April through October, eight survivors in the Tucson area have died.

For the past five years, the group has come to the post to speak to military members, civilians and schoolchildren, Wallen said. This year’s event is called “Children in Crisis, Voices of the Holocaust.”

Exhibits about the Holocaust from the Afikim Foundation, a not-for-profit organization dedicated to furthering Jewish life, also are “on display.” Afikim means wellsprings in Hebrew.

The idea of a quilt was broached two years ago. But it did not begin to take form until a few months ago.

Freund completed the quilt slightly before the April 15 Holocaust Day, and it was displayed during a service in Tucson.

The quilt’s appearance on the fort was the first of many planned outside of Tucson.

The sewing skills that helped her make the quilt also were helpful when Freund was in the camps.

While in one camp, inmates would bring pieces of cloth for her to make into trousers, earning her extra pieces of bread or some additional soup that helped keep her alive.

Remaining alive is part of her mission today so she can tell the story of being a Holocaust survivor.

“I know reality and I must share it,” Freund said.

Herald/Review senior reporter Bill Hess can be reached at 515-4615 or by e-mail at bill.hess@svherald.com.

[SandRat]

Holocaust survivor Rose Freund, right, shows a Fort Huachuca soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Angela Wright, the qulit made by the Holocaust Survivors of Southern Arizona during Wednesday’s event held at the Thunder Mountain Activity Centre. (Mark Levy-Herald/Review)

[SandRat]

Quilt of Memories good and bad.