Blog #12 Thanksgiving - a time to reflect and remember

This is daughter Alicia Magal writing:  My mother Nika awoke this Thanksgiving Day 2014 with many thoughts intertwined - gratitude for her life, family, and blessings, and, in stark contrast, flashbacks to times of hunger, loss, and deprivation.  

I find it nearly impossible to explain all of her memory-connections, but I'll put in a few thought-links so the readers who haven't known Nika for years won't be totally confused. I've also left most of her unique punctuation marks that show how rapidly she thinks and then moves on to the next thought. 

We would appreciate if you would go to her Blog site (http://www.lifebeginsat90.blogspot.com)

and post any comments there, as well as replying to Nika on her email.

Happy Day of Giving Thanks to all our family and friends reading this.

   - Alicia Fleissig Magal.

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Wow ----- it is  Thursday, Thanksgiving Day, and I am in bed  at 9 a.m. -  something  unheard of.

     

I feel this is the day to remember and be grateful for our good fortune-  not to run with big crowds and buy things in the last minute-  harassed and getting exhausted!!!  Why do people follow the advertising like sheep?

Slowly  got up -  had a delightful  shower (actually love to sit in a tub but at my age cannot get out of it without help), so like everything else it requires a  compromise. 

I feel lucky that the water is hot, and my apartment is warm and cozy, everything works,  and the sun is shining (Sedona, Arizona has mostly sunny days.  I am looking forward  to a delicious  breakfast, my favorite meal of the day. My mouth is watering. Today's spread: fruit, toasted Challah, black European bread, smoked salmon, a soft boiled egg in a Polish decorated ceramic egg cup, special Krakow (my home town) “kielbasa”sausage from the local Sedona Polish Deli, and strong coffee with whipped cream.  Then, to finish with something sweet - delicious Warsaw chocolate (better tasting in my memory from before the war, but still ok).

    

Today I remember my warm and loving family – killed senselessly in the prime of their lives--  and friends. I'm sitting at the computer wearing a white robe given to me by my friend and neighbor Joanie McManus in Palm Beach for many years where I lived in a small townhouse. She had gotten that luxurious robe from her brother who was the manager of an elegant NY hotel.  I am thinking of her with great love ---- it helps wearing the garment she gave me. A sad life this beautiful, talented woman suffered-- not being loved by her mother (or so Joan  remembers) affected her whole life and made it  unhappy.  I tried to pull  her out to enjoy life a little, but it was not easy to make her laugh!  Childhood memories can break us or make us?

Usually by 6 a.m.  I am ready for adventure  and going for a walk-  but not on this Thanksgiving Day 2014.  It is reflection time -  remembering!!! The past coming forward!!!

In 1945  in Oberlangen, Germany,  near Holland, in a prisoner of war camp in the woods all alone... We were the first women prisoners of war (fighting and losing in Warsaw Uprising in 1944).   We had to chop ice to wash ourselves and get ready for some terrible soup three times a day.  No one could, or wanted to, guess what was floating in that soup. Then our sadistic camp director was shooting over our heads so we had to lie down flat to avoid getting hurt.

Nika as nurse in Warsaw 1944

Nika as Maria Zielinska after liberation 1945

   

Strange that the feeling of revenge, and of seeing this terrible war end, gives one power to survive anything. It also helped  being young. 

This is the time under pressure when you get introduced to yourself - who you really are-  weak and complaining under tough circumstances, or strong and tough when necessary to survive and see justice done.  From a spoiled, pampered, protected, young Jewish woman I became a tough fighter, and saw myself trying to find a happy moment every day under even the worst conditions. 

We were hungry, forgotten by the world, or so we thought,  but we believed  that we would be rescued by the Allied forces making progress in Europe in the spring of 1945. We got this news from Russian prisoners who had a hidden radio. Every day they had to work on German farms, and they did not have the food packages from the Red Cross under the Geneva Convention rules that we got. But these packages contained  useless cacao, chocolate, and other stuff nobody likes to eat when so hungry. I was the exchange person in the camp office in charge of receiving the vegetables like onions and potatoes smuggled in every day from the fields by those Russian prisoners, and exchanging them for our sweets, cigarettes, and toiletry liquids which the Russian men drank in lieu of vodka! Now I am so grateful for those vegetables with vitamins.  My teeth had something to chew, and got saved until my old age. Not many were so lucky.

  

Today all this seems very far away, but never forgotten. I taught my darling children, Alicia and Willy, to be grateful for everything and try to help others less fortunate.

Last week Alicia was honored for her philanthropic work.  She is the beloved Rabbi of Sedona. Willy is at the moment speaking to 500 people in Hawaii about alternate retirement (an award which he and his wife Wendy Kohn received as young architects in Boston).  My children and grandchildren are talented, kind, giving people who care about others.  I am glad to see that.

My life is almost over -- I am 94 years old, but how grateful I am that I found so much love and appreciation wherever I speak or travel.

I give a great big Thank You today! We will celebrate together with friends, enjoying turkey with sweet potatoes, cranberries, pumpkin, which were unknown to me in Poland.   

It is time to walk and smile.
Embracing all of you with love!!!!!

     

- Nika Fleissig

Please Read My Blog Here:
http://www.lifebeginsat90.blogspot.com/

Order our book, From Miracle To Miracle: A Story of Survival (via PayPal):
http://www.FromMiracleToMiracle.com

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/nikafleissig/

Rabbi Alicia Magalwww.jcsvv.org
928 204-1286
"A Jewel of a Shul"

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http://www.lifebeginsat90.blogspot.com

Mission Statement:
The Jewish Community of Sedona and the Verde Valley is a welcoming, egalitarian, inclusive congregation dedicated to building a link from the past to the future by providing religious, educational, social and cultural experiences. We choose to remain unaffiliated in order to respect and serve the rich diversity of our members and visitors.


You may order my book," From Miracle To Miracle: A Story Of Survival"
(via PayPal): http://www.FromMiracleToMiracle.com