CNN
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When Alice Grusová was a baby, her mother and father left her on a prepare station bench, with no concept of what would develop into of her.
It was June 1942 and this was the final determined act by Marta and Alexandr Knapp to avoid wasting their daughter as their try to flee what was then Czechoslovakia led to catastrophe.
The couple had fled Prague, however when their prepare drew in to Pardubice, japanese Bohemia, Nazi troopers boarded in the hunt for fleeing Jews.
Grusová – her married identify – by no means noticed her mother and father once more. They had been arrested and despatched to Theresienstadt focus camp, from the place they had been later deported to Auschwitz and murdered. Her brother from her father’s earlier marriage was additionally killed there.
It may need been their toddler daughter’s destiny too, had it not been for his or her high-stakes gamble. This yr, Grusová celebrated her 81st birthday – as properly as her sixtieth wedding ceremony anniversary with husband Miroslav. Living in Prague, they’ve three sons, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.
This, she had at all times felt, was the sum whole of her family, however earlier this yr the retired pediatric nurse traveled to Israel the place she reconnected along with her Jewish heritage and met her solely surviving first cousin – as properly as a wider family she didn’t know existed.
“I was most shocked when I found out, when I was 80, that I have such a large family,” she mentioned in an emotional video name with CNN.
“I am just sad this didn’t come earlier,” added Grusová, who has battled most cancers, hepatitis and a spinal surgical procedure.
The reunion occurred because of the efforts of a curious lady 5,000 miles away in South Africa, through the preliminary phases of the pandemic. The unimaginable story has now been shared by on-line family tree website MyHeritage.
With a lot of life on maintain, Michalya Schonwald Moss delved into her family historical past on MyHeritage. She had at all times recognized her family had been decimated within the Holocaust, however nothing ready her for the invention that 120 of her family had been murdered at Auschwitz.
Yet out of the unimaginable darkness, a tiny and most sudden ray of hope emerged. With the assistance {of professional} genealogists in each Slovakia and Israel, she unearthed the unimaginable story of 1 survivor: Grusová.
Having been discovered on the station bench, the one-year-old lady was initially positioned in an orphanage. Grusová, who has no reminiscence of her mother and father, was later moved to Theresienstadt. She recalled: “There was a good lady who was caring for us. I solely bear in mind glimpses from that point.
“And then I bear in mind after I bought sick with typhoid and the employees there needed to defend me from the Germans.
“I remember they were telling me to be silent or the bad Germans would come and kill us.”
Incredibly, she survived and after the battle was reunited along with her mom’s youthful sister Edith – or Editka as she calls her – who survived Auschwitz by being transferred to a labor camp.
Her voice cracking with emotion, Grusová recalled her aunt, who like many Nazi camp survivors had her identification quantity tattooed on her arm. She mentioned: “She was so beautiful, she was slim, she had the tattoo. But I didn’t understand that at the time.”
At first, the pair lived collectively in Czechoslovakia, however in 1947 her aunt emigrated to what was then Palestine. For causes that stay unclear, Grusová was left behind and put up for adoption.
“I was six when my aunt left Czechoslovakia and I came to my new parents,” she mentioned. “As a baby, I used to be very unhappy that my aunt left. I didn’t perceive why she didn’t take me along with her.
“I was in contact with her for a while. She got married and had a son, whom I last saw in a picture when he was two years old.” But the correspondence with Edith petered out, and in 1966 “we lost each other,” she mentioned.
Grusová by no means knew what occurred to her aunt – till her son Jan, who speaks English, translated a stunning e mail his mother and father acquired from Schonwald Moss in 2021. He and his spouse had spent years making an attempt to hint his mom’s cousin, with out success.
But with the assistance {of professional} researchers, Schonwald Moss had not solely uncovered Grusová’s unimaginable story however had additionally discovered that cousin – Edith’s son, Yossi Weiss, now 67 and dwelling within the Israeli metropolis of Haifa.
Weiss and Grusová “met” on-line final yr, alongside different members of the newly found family tree. Weiss had recognized nothing of his cousin and his personal life had been blighted by tragedy – having misplaced each his mom and his son to suicide.
Over the summer season, Grusová flew to Israel along with her husband, their son Jan and his spouse Petra to fulfill Weiss and members of his wider family, together with Schonwald Moss, who had traveled from South Africa for the event.
Grusová advised CNN: “They needed to fulfill me and are available to go to me, however my cousin has most cancers and he can’t journey.
“I was scared of the long journey at my age,” she mentioned. “Now I’m so happy I went. I’m simply unhappy this didn’t come earlier.
“If it wasn’t for Covid, I would have never found out I have such a big family.”
Grusová – who speaks neither Hebrew nor English – communicated along with her new-found family through an interpreter. Together they visited her late aunt’s grave, the Theresienstadt museum and the World Holocaust Remembrance Center at Yad Vashem, the place she recorded her private testimony and was additionally filmed for an Israeli information channel.
Simmy Allen, head of worldwide media at Yad Vashem, was there at the time. He advised CNN that it was a “very emotional gathering,” including: “The idea that the family was uniting and different sides of the family were really discovering their roots and coming to Yad Vashem to solidify that, so that their ancestors have a place that will remember them in perpetuity.”
Grusová mentioned: “My family increased in size a lot. And Michalya keeps finding more and more relatives.”
Weiss advised CNN he had recognized little about his mom’s earlier life and was unable to elucidate why she left his cousin behind when she moved to what was then Palestine.
“From the little bit she told me I knew she worked in a factory and she came back to the city after the war and she was lucky to survive,” he mentioned. “I knew she was married before and her husband was killed on the Russian front but I didn’t know the chapter of finding Alice.”
Of their reunion, he mentioned: “I made positive I had non-public time with Alice.
“We opened up the issue of my mother coming to Israel and Alice staying behind and agreed that things were complicated.”
The query will without end stay unanswered, although Weiss has tried to make sense of it. “My mother was a Holocaust survivor coming back from the camps at the age of 25 and had just lost her husband. Alice was five. My mother couldn’t provide her home, school, food and everything,” he mentioned.
Perhaps she thought her niece would have been higher off with adoptive mother and father, he added.
“It hurts me on a personal level because sometimes I fantasize about ‘what if,’” he mentioned.
Grusová felt equally: “Of course I thought about what my life would have been. As a child, I was very sad that my aunt left. I didn’t understand why she didn’t take me with her.”
“My cousin tried to explain,” she added. “She was young, her life was saved by a miracle. I am not blaming her for anything.”
Of the reunion with Grusová, Weiss mentioned: “She wanted very much to see my mother’s grave. It was very important to her and part of the closure.”
Being at Yad Vashem with Grusová when she recorded her testimony was significantly poignant, he mentioned. “It was very emotional and not easy for anyone.”
Schonwald Moss agreed. “It was one of the most extraordinary, intimate, emotionally healing experiences of my life,” she advised CNN.
The family is now in talks with Steven Spielberg’s USC Shoah Foundation, which plans to file Alice’s video testimony within the new yr.
“To discover that one family member had survived that we never knew about, and that she was still alive and living in Prague, was as if we had found a living ghost. And then to discover her story was especially heartbreaking,” mentioned Schonwald Moss.
“By having her anew in our lives, she’s taught us what living looks like. Everyday is a repair for our family. And thanks to Alice and the sparkle in her eyes and the love she emanates, we have become a family again.”
Roi Mandel, MyHeritage’s director of analysis, welcomed the end result for Grusová and her family. “Alice’s story is the story of many who survived the war and assumed they were left alone in the world, not knowing that there was another branch that survived,” he mentioned.
“Decades of disconnection as a result of the Iron Curtain that was raised over Eastern Europe, have come to an end thanks to the technology that makes it possible to connect pieces of a puzzle that it seemed would never come together.”
Clarification: An earlier model of this text incorrectly acknowledged that Schonwald Moss labored with a Czech genealogist. The genealogist relies in Slovakia.
