If you were to ask me why I think history is so important, my response would by that I think it is one of the most important subjects to learn and teach. However, if we cannot repeat the past, why bother teaching it or share stories about it? History is always repeating itself. History is how we got to where we are today. Someday, the present will be history, so we have to set ourselves up for the future. We learn from past mistakes, triumphs and work in progress. That is why history is so important to me.
As much as I enjoy learning about the bigger picture, it's the smaller stories I enjoy learning about the most. One of the stories that has stuck with me since I learned about it a year and a half ago is about two Italian sisters, Tatiana and AndraBucci. You may have read that and thought, Who are they? Write about people we all know. If you thought that, I will tell you who they are. The Bucci sisters are two years apart and on the 4th of April, 1944, they arrived at Auschwitz II, Birkenau with their mother, aunt, grandparents and cousin.
Upon their arrival they became numbers; Andra being #76483 and Tatiana being #76484. Being that their father was not Jewish and was in the army, he was not home at the time the family was taken to the camp.
While in the camp, their mother would try to visit them in the children's barracks as often as possible. She would remind Tatiana and Andra -- who were just 4 and 6 years of age, at the time -- to repeat their names, first and last, each other's names and ages. The sisters were thought to have been twins, which is why they were spared. Twins were often used for experiments by Dr. Josef Mengele. By the time the camp was liberated, the girls hadn't had the chance to be used tests, fortunately.
One of the memories they spoke out about was the last time they saw their cousin. The night before one of the inspectors came, a few of the children were warned that if they were asked if they wanted to see their parents -- and at this point Tatiana and Andra's older relatives were moved to another camp and had not been seen for a while -- not to raise their hands. When the inspector came, the girls did what they were told, and did not raise their hands. Their cousin, however, did. The children who had raised their hands were taken somewhere out of the camp and never seen again.
Backtracking to when the camp was liberated, the two girls were sent to a Red Cross center in Prague. When asked who was Jewish, they raised their hands. This had sent them to Lingfield. It was a center for the surviving children of death camps who could not find their families afterwards. Some of the children could not remember dates, such as their birthdays, while others could not remember names, whether it be their own or their parents. Luckily for Tatiana and Andra, although they did lose their Italian since they were forced to learn English, they did what they were told and repeated their names.
At the center, one of the caretakers, Martha Weindling Friedmann, known to the kids as Manna, remembered the girls well. She had applied for a job at the center out of a newspaper ad. She said that when she got there, she had cried. All of the children were still in fear. One of the boys placed toy soldiers outside of his door at night because it made him feel safer. That same boy would often walk around saying, "I am a lucky boy for not having been shot as a baby."
The staff did everything they could to help the children get over their fear. They sang songs, they played instruments, they celebrated birthdays. For the children who couldn't remember the date they were born on, the staff gave them a new one. Slowly, the kids would break out of their shells of fear. Tatiana and Andra remember it as the center giving them their childhood back. The girls remember having to take care of the younger ones and the older ones having to help take care of them.
Tatiana and Andra did not think that they would see their parents ever again and thought that they would spend the rest of their childhood at the center.immediately recognized the couple as their parents. This picture was all too familiar to them, as it was the one they had said good night to for the years their father was imprisoned. It most likely came with a letter written to Alice Goldberg, the director of the center. In one of the letters from their parents to Alice, she says that their first duty when the kids get home will be to write to her and Manna. Their mother wrote that while she did not know English, she cried from joy when a friend of hers translated the letters. Just before Tatiana and Andra left to return home, Manna gave them a doll, a purse and a hat as a going away gift.
Upon their arrival home, Tatiana and Andra did not talk much about their time at the camps. In fact, it wasn’t until their mother had passed away that they learned about how much she had suffered. On the rare occasions when the family did talk about their times there, they spoke in Czech. One night, while watching television, a program about the Holocaust came on. They immediately turned it off in frustration.
The sisters did not really tell anyone about their experience until Marcello Pezzetti accidentally discovered them. Since 1995, Tatiana and Andra have gone back to Birkenau over 23 times, mostly to accompany groups of students. It wasn't until 67 years later that the sisters would see Manna again. The first day they were reunited with Manna, they talked for almost seven hours. They brought the going away gifts with them and, of course, she remembered them. The next day, they spent nearly five hours together.
About two weeks after Tatiana and Andra's visit, at the age of 98, Manna passed away. Manna's niece wrote that when people pass away after an event they consider important, it was as that person was waiting until that event happened. She believes that seeing Tatiana and Andra one last time was the important event Manna was waiting for.
