Holocaust Survivor's Emotional Account: "A Chain of Miracles, There's No Explaining My Survival"

A frightened little boy, barely ten years old, lives with his grandmother and tries desperately to find something to eat for both of them; a young boy sent to a labor camp and subjected to hard labor; a young man fighting for a piece of bread to help him survive another day in unbearable conditions.  

When Isaac Wolster looks back almost eighty years and describes his childhood during World War II, difficult and unimaginable images arise. He sees himself fleeing, jumping onto trains, trying to fight for his life, all as a very young child, alone in the world without anyone to support him.

Nevertheless, despite the chilling memories and the fact that his entire family perished in the Holocaust, he never agreed to remain silent. "Since the war ended, I have committed myself to telling my life story so that people know everything we went through," he explains what drives him, even at age 91, to visit schools, clubs, and community centers, give lectures, and share his harrowing and miraculous story. "I'm not willing to rest," he clarifies as he looks back and shares his chilling and miraculous story.

A Chain of Miracles

Isaac was born at the end of 1931 in the city of Szeged, Hungary's second-largest city, and at a very young age moved with his parents to the town of Pápa, which had a large religious community. They spent several peaceful years there until his mother died of a serious illness. Young Isaac went to live with his uncle, whose daughter and Isaac were cared for by a German nanny for about two years. Thanks to the nanny, Isaac acquired vibrant German which later saved his life during the war.

"After about two years, I returned to my father who had remarried," Isaac continues, "and during those years my father's wife gave birth to my younger brother, nine years my junior. We lived as a small happy family for a few years until 1942 when the Hungarians conscripted my father into labor battalions that operated as part of the Hungarian army and took him to the Russian front. Only later did we hear how he and the other Jews in the battalions were abused. For years, I hoped my father would return, but unfortunately, he did not survive the war. He was among the 42,000 Jews who perished in these battalions during the war."

Then came the first time Isaac's life was saved: "Since my father's wife was left with me and my brother, without a dime or a source of income, she turned to my grandmother, who lived in Szeged, and asked her to take me into her home, as she couldn't support me. So, I went to live with my grandmother, and only after the war ended, did I realize that this saved my life. Because very shortly after all of Pápa's Jewish residents were put on trains to Auschwitz, including my brother and my father's wife, who were murdered there by the Germans."

(Photo: shutterstock)

And what happened to you in the meantime?

"I lived with my grandmother and we experienced a very tense period together. Although in the early years of the war Hungarian Jews fared better than those in other occupied territories, our rights were already taken away, and we had to deal with significant economic difficulty, and later with hunger and a great fear of leaving the house. In 1944, the German army invaded Hungary, and the fear became a tangible threat, as all our property was confiscated, we had to wear yellow stars, and were moved to a ghetto established in Hungary. One day it was our turn to be taken by train to Auschwitz, and then another miracle without any natural explanation occurred - after traveling a short distance, our train stopped next to another train bound for Vienna, and since the person responsible for the trains saw that ours was overcrowded and had too many cars, he transferred our car to the other train, so at the last moment, we were saved from the trip to Auschwitz and arrived in Vienna."

The Szeged Ghetto, Hungary (Courtesy: Yad Vashem)

"Jumped Onto the Moving Train"

When they got off the train near Vienna, Isaac and his grandmother found that they had arrived at the Strasshof labor camp, a transit camp for deported Jews before being sent to forced labor. Isaac joined a group of Jews working in a quarry there. "Our work was done under deafening noise," he describes. "They would blast rocks in the quarry, and the stones scattered throughout the area. Our job was to collect the stones and bring them to a crusher to produce gravel. So every day, for 12 hours, we carried stones in the blazing sun as well as in bone-chilling conditions. Later, we were moved to work elsewhere – a factory near Austria for potato products. We worked as part of a special camp set up near the factory. There were also French prisoners of war with us, and we befriended and assisted each other.

"The factory work also continued throughout the day, with a small meal in the morning and evening, and sometimes not even that. Not everyone survived these conditions, but as believing Jews, we constantly encouraged ourselves; faith had a very strong power that helped us stay alive, and yes, we all hoped to reach the end of the war and meet our family members."

Yet even before the war ended, Isaac was forced to face another ordeal. "In 1945, the Allies arrived and bombed the entire city as well as the factory. During that time, an alarm sounded, and all the Germans in the factory fled to the nearby forest, but not before locking us, the Jews, in the barrack, intending for us to get hurt. Indeed, in one of the bombings, our barrack was hit, but then something unexpected happened: a Frenchman who was outside the barrack came and opened the door for us so that we could escape, and as the Germans were not there, we all fled and thus were saved from the shelling and also from the Germans."

One of the few documents Isaac had after the war

Truly a miracle!

"Indeed, as I mentioned, I experienced a chain of miracles during the war. I kept feeling time and again how Hashem was simply with me, and in my most difficult moments, when I truly called out to Him from the heart, He always sent me a miracle of salvation at the last moment."

Isaac notes that although they had escaped the factory, and nobody thought to return them there since it was destroyed entirely, the danger was constant. "One of the Germans' known phrases was that 'work sets you free.' Since we had nowhere to work, we were at risk," he explains. "I understood that I shouldn't be seen on the streets without a work framework, and thankfully, my French friends risked themselves for me and got me a 'Hitler Youth' uniform. Since my German was also good, I could move around freely, even going to hospitals, passing messages, and helping Jews.

"After about two weeks of wandering with the uniform, the manager of our camp caught me one day, identified me, and announced he would hand me over to the police. The policemen greeted me and took me to the train station, where they seated me between two German soldiers. I already understood that this was my end, and I knew they wouldn't let me live, but I feared they would question me about those who helped me and might even torture me until I provided answers. I decided I had nothing to lose, and when a train arrived at the station, I jumped towards it, even though it was in the middle of its journey. This is how I slipped into one of the cars and found several Jews in striped clothing on their way to the Theresienstadt camp. They were very frightened when they saw me because they thought, due to my clothing, that I was a young Nazi. But once I proved to them that I was Jewish, I joined them, and together we reached the camp, where we stayed until the war ended, and we were liberated along with 19,000 other Jews who remained in the camp at the end of the war."

The synagogue used as a warehouse during the ghetto period (Courtesy: Yad Vashem)

And one cannot help but ask – what happened to your grandmother during all those years?

"My grandmother went through a different path than mine, being moved from place to place, and as she later testified to me, the only thing that helped her survive was the thought that she wanted to be buried in a Jewish grave next to her husband. After I returned from Theresienstadt, we met in Szeged, and it was a tearful and emotional reunion. Shortly after, she passed away and indeed was buried in the Jewish cemetery next to my grandfather."

Am Yisrael Chai

Isaac was left alone in the world and very quickly decided he had no more to seek in blood-soaked Hungary, and that he wanted to emigrate to the Land of Israel. Thus, he joined a group of children from the Zionist youth and ascended to Israel via Germany. On the way, he and his friends were moved to Cyprus, where they stayed for ten months. "I arrived in Israel only in 1947," he explains, "Initially, I lived in Kibbutz Aloni Yitzhak, and when the War of Independence broke out, I moved with the Palmach to the besieged Negev until the war ended."

For the next two and a half years, Isaac served in the Israel Defense Forces, and after his release from the army, he decided to join a group of friends who wanted to settle in the village of Dishon, near the Lebanese border.  "Since then and to this day, I reside in Dishon," Isaac notes, "it's here that I also met my wife, who came to Israel from Morocco, and from the first moment we understood that our home would be a sort of melting pot. With Hashem's help, we established a home combining Hungarian customs with Moroccan cuisine, raising our five children, and today we have, thank God, 15 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren. Each time we gather together, I can't stop tearing up, feeling that in our very existence and the existence of our family, we prove to the world that we defeated Hitler, and the Jewish people live forever. This is why I continue to give lectures in schools and various other places; even on the upcoming Holocaust Remembrance Day, I plan to tell my story in several places in the country. This also led me to recently release my book 'My Childhood,' which is set to arrive at Steimatzky and Tzomet Sfarim bookstores soon, as well as in a digital Hebrew version. I want to demonstrate to everyone that despite all the troubles that arise in every generation, we are here, alive and thriving, and no one will ever break us. Because the people of Israel live forever."