Holocaust survivor promotes love of God, neighbor

By Les East
Contributing writer

On Esther Basch’s 16th birthday, she was imprisoned in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

That day was also the last time she ever saw her mother or her father.

She survived the Holocaust, got married in a Displaced Persons Camp, raised a family, lived in Palestine and Canada before settling in the United States in 1958 and has survived the passing of two of her four children in the last three years.

From the outside, it seems a difficult life in many ways, but now at age 95, Basch belies that assumption with a persistent smile and a simple, uplifting message that she eagerly shares as she travels the United States.

“Love all people, love God, think positively and you’ll have a happy life,” Basch said.

Basch’s message clearly resonated with the mostly but not exclusively Jewish crowd within the sold-out Jefferson Performing Arts Center on Sept. 11.

She said she “was brought up very religious,” and though she’s “not very religious” anymore, “I believe in God very, very strongly.”

It would be difficult to find a sincere religion that doesn’t embrace her message as a central teaching, and the context of her visit demonstrates how her message transcends individual denominations.

Featured 9/11 speaker

Esther spoke in Metairie on the 22nd anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Basch’s daughter, Rachel, who accompanies her on her speaking tour, was in New York City when the attacks on the Twin Towers occurred.

She noted that New York, which is sometimes thought to have “a lack of warmth,” was the site of “impromptu gatherings in the street, clutching of hands and impromptu prayer.”

“It brought out the best in us,” Rachel added.

It also was an example of a crime against humanity that revealed a degree of hate that might not have been fully understood previously, requiring diligence to avoid complacency that can cause us “to forget the lessons that history teaches us.”

The visit also came just four days before Rosh Hashanah, the start of the Jewish New Year and holiday that features reflection and prayers for the forgiveness for sins of the past year.

The day before Basch’s visit, Catholics celebrating the 23rd Sunday in Ordinary Time heard in Mass another version of her message. The second reading (Romans 13:8-10) featured this excerpt from St. Paul: “Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law.”

Basch’s story began with a “wonderful, wonderful childhood with wonderful friends” in a village in the Carpathian Mountains.

Her village, which is now part of Ukraine, was part of Hungary when Basch’s mother was growing up there, and it was part of Czechoslovakia when she was growing up.

Then the Nazis came.

Basch showed the audience the “Jewish Badge,” featuring a Star of David, that the Nazis forced her to wear to identify her as a Jew.

Once she started wearing the badge her classmates started referring to her as “a dirty Jew.”

“I was clean yesterday, but today I’m dirty?” she said. “I couldn’t comprehend.”

After two years of occupation, the Nazis established a four-block-square ghetto in which to isolate the Jews. The Basch family was moved from their home to a house across the street flanked by “a good family on the left and a not-so-good family on the right.”

For six weeks, the good family routinely sneaked bread to Esther’s family, which was on the brink of starvation, even though they knew that if they were caught “they would be shot on the spot” by the Nazis.

Love your neighbor.

Rachel said each of the Holocaust survivors she has spoken with has told her that their survival featured a miracle, but 

Esther’s story features a half-dozen miracles, ones in which apparent divine intervention steered her away from the gas chambers.

Esther used the word “mercilessly” a handful of times to describe beatings she received at the hands of the Nazis, which was a notable term to be used by someone who chose to show mercy toward her tormentors.

“If I don’t forgive and I hold a grudge,” she said, “I only hurt myself.”

As the only child’s 16th birthday approached, she and her parents were among 500 prisoners crammed into a single cattle car on a train full of such cars headed to Auschwitz. It was so crowded that everyone had to stand up, and when someone died, the corpse had to be propped up.

Basch and her family arrived in Auschwitz on May 28, 1944, and were herded into the camp. Her father was directed to the left – to the gas chambers, unbeknownst to Esther and her mother, who were directed to the right.

Mother and daughter held hands tightly until a Nazi soldier forced their hands apart so Esther’s mom could go to the right, while Esther was directed forward to the barracks.

No photos of her parents

She never saw her parents again and doesn’t have any photographs to remember them by.

Basch was tortured “a lot of times in Auschwitz,” which was enclosed by an electrified, barbed-wire fence.

“I knew if I touched the fence I would not suffer anymore,” Basch said.

One day she was prepared to touch the fence as she had seen others do in order to end their suffering.

“In front of my face came my parents’ faces,” she said. “I couldn’t touch it. Who do you think put their faces in front of me?”

One day Basch came face to face with Dr. Josef Mengele, the “Angel of Death” who was the most notorious of the Nazi doctors that conducted inhumane and often deadly medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz.

Mengele would often select which prisoners would be subjected to the experiments. Basch vividly remembers him using a silver cane to point out his selections.

One day Basch mistakenly thought Mengele had pointed the cane at her and she got in the line for the experiment subjects.

But Mengele forcefully jabbed her in her belly button with the silver cane, directing her back to the barracks.

“God had other plans for me,” she said.

Eventually Basch was transferred to a forced labor camp, and on April 14, 1945, soldiers from the 84th Infantry Division arrived, shot the locks off of the gate to the camp and told the prisoners, “You are free. Take whatever you like.”

Basch, who described herself as “a skeleton” due to malnutrition, found a large jar of honey and began to eat from it with her fingers. She wound up eating far more than her emaciated body could process properly and became “deathly ill.”

The American soldiers brought her to the infirmary, where she stayed for four weeks while recovering.

Periodically the soldiers would stop by to check on “The Honey Girl of Auschwitz,” which stuck as a nickname.

That was the inspiration for “The Honey Girl Documentary, a Holocaust Survivor’s Story of Love, Resilience & Forgiveness,” which Rachel, who lives with her mother in Prescott, Arizona, is completing. Her mission was to create a film about the Holocaust that didn’t feature “skeletons and chimneys.”

This Holocaust story is about living a happy life.

“I just rely on God because I feel he is protecting me no matter where I am,” Basch said. “I didn’t even have a shot for COVID because I feel very strongly that if God protected me for 95 years, he’ll continue.”

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