“Upstander Stories — Brave People Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust: The Story of Golda, Stachek & The Helpers” written by Joyce Kamen and illustrated by Lilly Wise
Time blinks, and it’s another 20 years. “You must have grown three inches over the summer,” I told one of my students who looked like a different person. But time can freeze. It feels like COVID just happened, and it was over 5 years ago already. I can only imagine how time froze for Holocaust survivors and how it could seem like it happened yesterday. The math tells us that it’s been over 80 years since the Holocaust, and the reality is that there are very few survivors who are left to tell their stories. You would have had to have been very young, or even a baby like Zahava Rendler, who was only 9 months old when the Nazis came.
“The Story of Golda, Stachek & The Helpers” is a children’s book that recounts Zahava Rendler’s survival story. It was written by Joyce Kamen and illustrated by her granddaughter Lilly Wise, who said, “My generation must now become the keepers of these remarkable stories.”
The book teaches about “The Helpers,” who were non-Jews often referred to as Righteous Among the Nations. They risked their lives to help hide Jews from the Nazis. The book called them Upstanders. The author explained that Upstanders are the opposite of bystanders. She wrote, “Bystanders see bad things happening to other people and do nothing to help. Upstanders see these same things and step forward to help.” This is the second in a three-book series called “Upstander Stories: Brave People Who Saved Jews During the Holocaust.” The book begins with a definition of Upstander, followed by two pages about Hitler and his “wicked plan.” I thought it was just enough information to give children some context.
Many of us in the Cincinnati Jewish community know Zahava Rendler. She taught for over 50 years at Yavneh and Rockwern Academy. I taught with her at Adath Israel’s religious school and at the Mercaz Hebrew High School. I remember hearing her tell her story to the teens at Mercaz and to the young children at religious school. Zahava was born Golda Feuerberg. Her name was changed to Olga Pachulchak, so a Catholic family could take her into hiding. Her parents gave her the name Zahava, meaning “gold” in Hebrew, when they began their new life in Israel. Zahava’s name changes reminded me of characters in the Torah like Abraham, Sarah and Jacob, who were given new names to mark the start of new chapters in their lives.
Zahava was born in a small town in Poland called Stryi. An Upstander named Stachek worked for her father in his leather goods factory. When the Nazis were getting closer, Stachek offered to help by hiding Zahava’s family in his food cellar bunker. It was common for people to keep a cellar underground to store food before refrigerators were invented. Zahava’s parents had to give her sleeping pills so the Nazis wouldn’t hear her crying. When Zahava tells her story, she adds that her parents also gave her shots to keep her asleep — a fact that I’m not surprised wasn’t included in a children’s book.
She lived in the bunker for almost a year before Stachek found a Catholic family from the town of Lvov who stepped up and agreed to care for her. There were 30 people in the bunker, and her parents had to let her go for the sake of everyone’s survival. When the Nazis took over Lvov, the book said, “They proclaimed that anyone caught hiding Jews would be punished.” I’m guessing that the children’s book toned that down, and it was more likely that anyone caught helping Jews would be shot. When it became too dangerous, the Catholic family hid her in a nearby convent, where at the age of 3, she was put in the care of nuns. Living at the convent was not easy. The author wrote, “She was constantly hungry as were most people, with very little to eat. And then there was nonstop fear. There were air-raid sirens, falling bombs and crying children — Golda among them.”
After the war ended, Zahava’s dad tracked her to the convent. The nuns turned him away several times, but he kept coming back. There is more to the story of how her father reunited with Zahava that you can read about in the book.
The struggles didn’t end there. Zahava’s family made contact with the Haganah organization that helped Holocaust survivors find homes in Israel. Holocaust survivors were sent on ships like the Atzmaut (“Independence”) and the Exodus that were stopped by the British army. The author wrote, “Because the family did not have entry permits, they were forced to spend months in Atlit, a camp with barbed wire and watchtowers.” Atlit was located south of Haifa. I felt particularly heartbroken that after surviving the Nazis and the sea journey to Israel, Zahava’s family and other survivors were taken into custody and locked in a camp behind barbed wire. I remembered the story of the Exodus ship that was turned away by the British and sent back to Europe. Some Holocaust survivors were actually forced to return to Germany, where they were sent to detention camps. The huge public outcry was one of the factors that helped build support for the establishment of the State of Israel. When Zahava was six, she was finally able to settle in Haifa with her family. The book included information about when Zahava’s family came to Cincinnati, along with a page of photos that spanned from 1936 to the present day.
Illustrator Lilly Wise’s use of scale helped communicate how overwhelming the surroundings must have felt. People in most of the pictures were drawn very small in comparison to what was happening around them. One of the drawings showed ten small people crowded together in the dark at the bottom of a long stairwell. A mother was holding an even smaller baby Golda. They waited for Stachek, who stood at the top of the stairs with a food delivery. Lilly Wise drew an occasional smile, but most of the time, the expressions looked stressed or crooked. One illustration showed a tiny family sleeping on the green forest floor under humongous trees. Little Golda was smiling on one of the rare nights when she felt safe in her mother’s arms.
Lilly Wise’s choice of colors conveyed a sense of hope. Along with grays and browns, she almost always included a touch of color. At the bottom of the dark stairwell, the people were wearing colorful shirts. When Olga arrived at the tall gray convent, she was wearing a bright orange jacket. I appreciated how Lilly Wise added other details, like Olga holding on to her tiny teddy bear.
On the back cover, it explained that the origin of the Upstander book series was Lilly Wise’s high school art project. She drew illustrations for a different Holocaust survivor story titled “Manek and Hanna.” This inspired her to ask her Bubbie, Joyce Kamen, to work on a book together. The survival story of her Papa Fred’s mother became the first book in the series, “The Story of Anna and Dr. Helmy.”
The book is recommended for ages 8 to 12. I think this is a great book for parents to read to their children and grandparents to read to their grandchildren. The illustrations will help children build a connection with Golda. It’s an excellent way to introduce the topic of the Holocaust to young readers who may eventually travel to Jerusalem to experience Yad Vashem, Israel’s World Holocaust Remembrance Center, where they honor the Righteous Among the Nations. We say in Hebrew, L’dor V’dor, from generation to generation. This is the way to keep the stories going — to teach them to our children, who teach them to their children.
