It's a Miracle 2 More Inspiring True Stories Based on the Pax TV Series, It's a Miracle

The Rosenblatt Love Story The cruel, inhumane, and unimaginable images of World War II concentration camps remain embedded in our hearts and minds. That anyone could have survived these atrocities is a miracle. But Herman Rosenblatt's personal story is especially poignant . . . and truly miraculous. Herman was the youngest son in the Rosenblatt family, a loving and happy group of people living in a small village in Poland. But in 1939, the Rosenblatts were forced into a cramped Polish ghetto. Their lives would never be the same. Three years later, Herman's father contracted typhus. It would be the first of many losses for him. And he will never forget what his father said to him on his deathbed. " 'One thing you've got to remember,' he said. 'Don't hold a grudge against nobody and tolerate everybody.' And the next day, he died." Germany had taken control of Poland. And four months after his father's death, Herman and his family became victims of Hitler's Final Solution. The ghetto Jews were herded through the streets like cattle, to be transported to their deaths. They were divided into two groups: Herman was to be shipped with the men to a work camp, and his mother was placed with the sick and disabled, to be loaded on a train and sent to the notorious death camp Treblinka. "I ran over to my mother, and I said, 'I want to be with you. I don't want to go with my brothers,' " recalls Herman. "She went ahead and pushed me away. She said to me, 'Go with your brothers. I don't want you.' Remember, I was at that time twelve years old. I couldn't get over why my mother told me she doesn't want me. She doesn't love me. She went to Treblinka, where she was gassed and died. "After the war," Herman continues, "I understood why. I still do today. I know why, in my mind, but in my heart, I don't know." By 1944, Herman was a prisoner in a concentration camp outside Berlin called Schlieben. Life there was a daily struggle under the most horrendous conditions. "It was hunger, hunger, and hunger," explains Herman. "We didn't get anything to eat. Just one slice of bread and water." The only escape from constant hunger was in sleep and dreams. "Once, I was sleeping in the box, and I had a dream that my mother came to me," Herman says, "and she said to me, 'Don't worry, you'll be all right. I'm looking after you.' And she disappeared. And then came an angel who touched me, and she disappeared. And then I woke up in a sweat." The next day, while Herman was walking near the camp's barbed-wire fence, something caught his eye. "There was a little girl standing there, looking into the camp," explains Herman. "So I asked her if she had something to eat. And she looked at me. I had the paper suit on and some rags under my feet, and she had a nice, warm jacket, and she took out an apple and threw it. When I caught the apple, I ran away, but I heard her say, 'See you tomorrow.' I believe that the girl who came was the angel my mother was sending to me." Herman and the young girl continued to meet daily. "She came every day," Herman says. "Not almost--she came every day. I had it timed when the guards were gonna be in this area and how long it would take another guard to come up, so that when I ran up to the fence to grab the bread or the apple--whatever she threw to me--I wouldn't be seen by the guards. If the SS saw me, I would get shot. But at that point, I didn't care if I got killed or not. As long as I could have some more to eat." The day came when Herman was to be shipped to another camp, and he said good-bye to the young girl. "I looked back," Herman remembers, "and she was there. I saw a tear come down her eye, and a tear came down my eye. And I ran away. . . ." The little girl kThomas, Richard is the author of 'It's a Miracle 2 More Inspiring True Stories Based on the Pax TV Series, It's a Miracle' with ISBN 9780385336512 and ISBN 0385336519.