Holocaust Survivor Hidden By Catholics Recounts Her Life During World War II

Tags: Currents Auschwitz, Brooklyn, NY, Faith, Family, France, Holocaust, Media, Queens, NY, World News, World War II

By Jessica Easthope

A picture is all Esther Maidenbaum has left of her mother. It shows a Jewish family who lived and worked in Paris, at the time not knowing the horror that lay ahead of them.

“The way I feel it’s regrettable, but I’m still glad I’m still here to tell about it,” she tells Currents News.

Today, at 89-years-old, Esther shares her story to honor her parents who were both taken to Auschwitz, the complex of concentration camps known as the most brutal during World War II.

“They knew he was a hairdresser. He used to cut the officers’ hair and that saved his life,” she says of her father. “They gave him that piece of bread once in a while. He survived, but it took a long time to be back like a human being.”

Her father survived, but her mother did not. She was one of the 1.1 million Jews who were killed in Auschwitz.

“She was an accountant. She worked for a big firm and somebody must have reported her,” Esther explains. “She was taken in the daytime from her work to go to camp. She didn’t have time to say anything. They just grabbed her and my grandmother. And just from what we heard, after they threw them in the gas chamber.”

In 1940 when the Nazis began to round up jews in France, Esther’s mom sent her and her younger sister into hiding. She handed them off to a priest, and from there the two girls were taken to a small village in Normandy to stay with a Catholic family.

“He had the whole organization in Paris to hide the children,” she recalls of her experience. “We went to church and went to Catholic school. We were like part of the family. As a matter of fact, the Germans came to the house. And when she saw the boots from far away, she took our papers and threw them into the stove to save our lives.”

Esther went on to live a successful life. She moved to the states with her husband Alber in 1963 and settled in Brooklyn. She worked in finance, raised a family, and shared her story whenever she could.

As the world marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, Esther prays history doesn’t repeat itself.

“It’s hard because now there’s so much anti-semitism for no reason. The people insult Jewish people.”

Esther’s story lives on through her memories and with her family. She never visited Auschwitz, and never will. For her, she already knows too much.