A Message of Hope: Raye David

The frigid November wind whipped the door of the split-level house in Shorewood, WI. At 87-years-old, Raye David hobbled down the cascading stairs with a hand fashioned cane. As she sauntered back up, her teal pajamas accented the crimson walls.

Paintings caressed every inch of her living room. Sculptures that spanned from crystal to porcelain were scattered on vacant table space. Since she moved into the house in 1951, every piece of art was paid for with her “blood money.”

David is one of few in a diminishing population that survived the Holocaust. The money she receives monthly from Germany will never retract the suffering she endured.

Today, as she sat down to talk to two student journalists, was two days after the terrorist attacks in Paris. Cable news stations had politicians claiming different viewpoints on the issue. Some mentioned the idea of closing Mosques. Others recommended that Muslims obtain special identification cards.

For David, this sounded like a reoccurring nightmare that has constantly stuck with her since 1941.

She sat comfortably in an armchair ready to relive the horror. Like many times before, she walked back through the abyss and recounted the extermination of an entire race.

“I was in hell.”

Her rise from the depths of hell was attributed to one word and one word only. Hope.

“Without hope you were dead.”

“I was a pampered child”  

Raye David was born and raised in the Jerusalem of Lithuania.  The city of Vilna was an epicenter for Jewish culture.

Her father was a recognized tailor at an exclusive shop in the community.

She enjoyed the many perks of being the first grandchild in her family.

“I had a great childhood. I was pampered, not a brat. There is a difference.”

She had a closet full of handmade clothes sewn by a seamstress. Oftentimes these weren’t needed, as she would run around “half-naked.”

In the morning, there was always fresh milk on the table. She would go into the woods and scavenge for ruby-colored wild strawberries.

She attended a Yiddish private school. During her summer breaks, her family rented a farmhouse from a family of mutes in the nearby town of Paneriai.

Her world collapsed when World War II started in 1939. At the age of 13, she witnessed the Germans march into her town to round up the “Christ Killers.”

“If you couldn’t survive you were dead”

Jews were branded with the Star of David. Curfew was from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. and not one Jewish foot was allowed to touch the sidewalk.

They were dragged out of their homes and forced into one of two fenced off streets known as ghettos. Her mother and she packed as much as they could into pillowcases because the Germans took everything.

Along with personal belongings, the men were stripped from their families. On July 22, 1941, her father was taken.

“They arrested my father. He was a young 36-year-old man. They kept him in the prison. After 24 hours they took him to the killing fields.”

She had a document of the arrest record. Her daughter had acquired it when she lived in Boston. Incidentally this was also where a former Nazi was living out the rest of his life until he was discovered and the documents went into public records.

She then stopped to catch her breath. The room was dead silent. Only the faint murmur from the T.V. playing in the other room was all that could be heard. She then continued with her story.

“You lived with hope on a daily basis. You had to survive, take care of today. Then you could worry about tomorrow. I had to adapt. My father was dead and my mother did whatever she could.”

David and her family lived in the ghetto from 1941 to 1943. Round-ups of the Jews were routine. The best option to avoid the grips of the Germans was to hide.

The first hideout was in her aunt-in-law’s apartment. She slept on a hardwood table in a windowless bedroom. There were underground schools that she could attend, but her mother would not let her go in fear that once found she would be murdered.

David remembered a time when the realization of horror came to a head. She ran into a girl she had befriended when they were first forced into the ghetto. She had survived the killing field.

“I said Julia how are you? Where are the parents? She said everybody was dead. Mr. so-and-so fell in front of me.”

David thought she was crazy. At the time Germany was such a progressive culture. The murder of innocent people was unfathomable to comprehend.

They then moved to another hiding place. It was a basement of an apartment that could only be entered through the outside. The entrance was camouflaged with debris. The apartment was hollowed out and a ladder was the only way in or out.

After three days of hiding, the candles that illuminated the basement had faded. Somebody had deceived them, and they were found.

David and her family had found a new hiding place, a storefront turned apartment. Her mother had separated the small room with a bed sheet.

Her aunt heard rumors of a round-up happening and found a new hiding place across the street. David did not want to go. Her aunt didn’t have time to answer because the rumble of an explosion rang across the street.

“When I talk to you now after 70 years, in my mind’s eye, when I see them carrying out the bodies, they were suffocated. I knew this was going to stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“This was Hell on earth”

The ghetto was liquidated, and the Jews congregated at a field outside of a convent. The next morning, they were forced into cattle cars. On this day, her aunt’s young daughter was taken away from her on a day David never forgets.

“In addition to her being beautiful, she was taught to be quiet. So when they took her she didn’t make a peep, nothing. To this day, when I think about her I cry.”

Her voice crackled. Her eyes grew red and tears trickled down her cheeks. She paused and then continued.

They were lined up five in a row. They were instilled with fear. SS men wielded whips and were constantly counting them. She witnessed two sisters separated because they were related.

“At that moment I didn’t stand with my mother or my aunt. If they ask you if you are related, you will not lie because you were so filled with fear.”

They were starved on the train ride. There was no food or water.

David, her mother and aunt were first sent to Kaiserwald labor camp in Latvia. All their belongings were taken. They were given a striped jumpsuit, one pair of underwear, and if you were a lucky a pair of shoes in the same size. David wasn’t so lucky.

“You were afraid to look at them. They may not like how you look, and they will kill you or start to beat you. You were not considered a human being and treated us worse then a dog.”

They were moved around from camp-to-camp. Some camps were more livable then others. Some actually had heat and running water.

On Dec. 17, 1944, they entered the seventh circle of hell. They were sent to the Bergen-Belson death camp in Germany.

David described starving as being so painful it felt like your eyes were popping out of your skull. Her and some girls devised a plan.

They told the SS they were going to pick up the debris in the camp to get close to where the table scraps were thrown out. The SS would spread ash on any leftover food in the garbage. David managed to find three potatoes and hid them in her scarf.

After her find, an SS woman counted them.

“She was counting us, and she grabbed me by the neck. Then she beat the living daylight out of me. She must have been tired because otherwise I’d be dead. The girls I was with had to carry me to the barrack.”

David diverged from her story to show us a picture from a TIME magazine clipping of the woman who almost beat her to death. A red arrow pointed to her. She then went back to her story.

“She was the only one I could remember because she was so vicious.”

She was in so much pain she went to the infirmary. The person next to her was dead in the morning. She couldn’t remember how long she was there. After she was discharged, she was still so weak that she had to use the walls of the barracks for support.

The Germans always said that if they lost the war, every person in the camp would be killed five minutes before midnight. On April 15, 1945, David’s 17^th birthday, British forces liberated the camp.

“I always said I would jump for joy when it happened, but I didn’t know what hit me.”

“Life is an attitude”

It would have been very easy to bottle the hatred towards the Nazis. David recalls a situation she experienced with her aunt that changed her entire outlook on life.

They were going to the federal building for her aunt to apply for citizenship. An elderly couple holding hands walked across the street.

Her aunt started to curse them. David asked why she was cursing an elderly couple. Her aunt had no explanation.

“At that moment, I told myself, ‘Don’t you ever hate.’”

“Life is an attitude. You cannot live in the past. If I were like my aunt, my three children would leave home and never return. Then Hitler would have his victory.”

She has lived with this idea for the rest of her life. She doesn’t forgive the Nazis for murdering her father and stealing her cousin, but she will never hate.

David and her mother had never heard of Wisconsin before.  They were suppose to move to Lafayette, Indiana with her aunt, but it was hard to find work. They decided to move to Milwaukee.

Once David and her family moved to Milwaukee, her aunt would question any young man on the street to find out if he was married. If not, she made sure to mention that she had a niece who was single.

“At 17, the last thing on my mind was to get married.”

Her aunt met an elderly woman at the grocery store. She asked the woman her typical question. This time the woman did know a young man. It was David David.

They met, fell in love, and he asked her mother’s permission to marry her in 1949. The rest was history.

After 70 years, one husband, and three children, Raye David still lives with the same hope she carried throughout her tragic experience in the Holocaust.

“I never gave up hope.”