In 1942, Ilse Eichner Reiner was sent to a Jewish orphanage 170 miles from home. Reiner took only what few items she could carry on the train. But she could still feel her mother’s presence, and remembered her words: “Be strong.” “Hold onto hope.” “Keep your cheerful disposition.” They were words that would give her strength when she needed it most.
Just two months shy of her 12th birthday, Reiner and the remaining children in the orphanage were soon deported to the Terezin concentration camp near Prague before being transferred to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp in Poland.
Of the 15,000 children sent to Terezin, Reiner is one of only 132 known to have survived. Today, Reiner lives in Sandy Springs near her daughter.
Credit: file
Credit: file
Reiner, an artist who is now 93, will be the featured speaker for the 58th Annual Community-wide Yom HaShoah (Day of Holocaust Remembrance) commemoration 11 a.m. Sunday, April 16 at the Greenwood Cemetery in Atlanta. The event will be held at the “Memorial to the Six Million” monument to honor 6 million Jews killed.
It is never easy for Reiner to talk about the Holocaust. It can stir intense emotions and can take a toll on her body. She was only about 10 when her parents were taken away. Her father was killed at a death camp, and her mother was sent to a concentration camp where she contracted tuberculosis and died.
But Reiner believes it’s her responsibility to deliver a message of tolerance and respect, to not let history be forgotten.
Reiner also has maintained her cheerful disposition.
At an event at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta, during a question-and-answer session with the audience back in 2012, a woman asked Reiner to describe her worst — and best — day in Terezin.
Reiner didn’t hesitate. The worst, she said, was the day she awoke in the hospital after a life-threatening bout of typhus. That was when she learned all her friends from the orphanage who had accompanied her to Terezin were dead.
Her best day? She paused for a moment, and then her face lit up.
“I had my first kiss there,” she said. “And I liked it.
“You see,” she said. “It wasn’t all bad. I was always looking for moments of daylight.”
Reiner’s ability to find daylight in darkness would help her survive and ultimately define her life.
At Terezin, Reiner lived in Building L410, where she shared a room with 32 girls between the ages of 11 and 15. They slept in three-tiered bunks with straw mattresses. Reiner worked in the gardens, cultivating carrots, cucumbers and tomatoes — none of which she ate because it was all turned over to the SS officers who guarded the camp.
Still, Reiner and the other girls tried to maintain a sense of normalcy. They did what they could to make life more bearable. They kept their rooms orderly. They attended a secret school in the basement, hiding their books behind their beds. Reiner sang songs and prayed. And she often reminisced about food as a way to feel connected to her family.
Another bright spot were the drawing lessons Reiner took from Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, a respected Austrian artist. Among Reiner’s creations was a collage featuring a scrap of yellow paper, a navy blue box, a green apple and pear.
Before Dicker-Brandeis was transported to Auschwitz, where she died in 1944, she hid two suitcases containing about 5,000 pieces of children’s artwork, including Reiner’s collage. It is now part of a collection of children’s artwork from Terezin at the Jewish Museum in Prague.
As the war came to a close, Reiner and other prisoners were rounded up and forced into a death march designed to kill as many Jews as possible before Allies could find and liberate them. During a break in the march, Reiner and a couple of older women ran off to a nearby farm and hid in a root cellar beneath heaps of potatoes covered with burlap bags. At nightfall, Reiner and her friends crawled out of their hiding places.
Reiner staggered to the Czech border and collapsed. When she awoke, she was in a Red Cross van on her way to a hospital in Prague.
Credit: file
Credit: file
Reiner eventually found a new home in the United States, where she fell in love, got married, and raised two children. A curious and brilliant woman, she inspires people of all ages with insight and words of advice.
She especially likes to talk to children and often asks them what is their most precious gift. They might say family or education or a special trip.
“I say that’s fine but that is not the most important gift you have. The most important gift you have is your life,” she said. “Cherish it and cherish that of others as well.”
Credit: file
Credit: file
Reiner’s message of faith, hope, and luck also continues to resonate. She briefly stopped believing in God during some of her most difficult days, and she credits her renewed faith in helping her survive.
Her restored faith, she said, and feeling heard, was a source of strength. But other factors were also at play, she said.
“Luck played a great part. There are no ifs or buts about it. If you didn’t have luck, that was it. But besides luck, you had to have hope. And hope is something that nobody must ever, ever forget.”
Editor’s note: In 2012, AJC reporter Helena Oliviero attended an event at the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum in Atlanta to watch her daughter, Abby, perform songs from a children’s opera. The piece, “Brundibar,” had special relevance for Reiner, the guest speaker who had heard this opera for children performed at Terezin, the concentration camp. Many imprisoned at Terezin were gifted musicians, composers, visual artists, and writers. The arts helped maintain a sense of hope and humanity at the camp.
Oliviero reached out to Reiner after the event. She spent hours interviewing Reiner and traveled to the Czech Republic to interview other Holocaust survivors, see the concentration camp where Reiner was held, and visit the town from which she was taken. They kept in touch and became close friends.
Go to ajc.com to read the two-part series, The Survivor.
EVENT PREVIEW
58th Annual Community-wide Yom HaShoah (Day of Holocaust Remembrance) commemoration. 11 a.m. April 16. Free. Memorial to the Six Million at Greenwood Cemetery. 1173 Cascade Circle SW, Atlanta.
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