Holocaust Survivor Recounts Her Childhood, with Rosian Zerner

*This transcript was generated by AI, and may contain transcription errors. Please refer to the video, or contact us with any questions or discrepancies.*

I am of the generation that is the last witness of the Holocaust. I was there. I was old enough to be remember. And so with whoever approaches with distortion, denial, deception, I’m here to prove that no miracles to happen. And I’m here to tell my story as proof of that.
Welcome back to another episode of the Covenant and Conflict where we take ancient truths, modern issues, and we wrestle through them. And today we have maybe the most special guest we’ve ever had. Right? That’s what I think. And I think I’m accurate. We have Roseanne with us and she is a great friend of Gateway in the Center for Israel. She has done many things for us, for Yum HaShoa, for the Holocaust Remembrance. She’s been a guest speaker for us as we as a church remember the Holocaust because Roseanne is a survivor of the Holocaust. And so she’s not just speaking about historical issues, she’s speaking about something she has lived through and we are so honored to have you on with us today.
Well, I thank you for inviting me. I thank the people at Gateway, thank the Center for Israel and thank you all the staff that is here that is making this happen. But most of all, I thank the people who are viewing this because I am of the generation that is the last witness of the Holocaust. I was there, I was old enough to remember. And so with whoever approaches with distortion, denial, deception, I’m here to prove that no miracles to happen. And I’m here to tell my story as proof of that the, and you all who are watching are becoming witnesses also because you’re here and listening to me.
Totally.
So now you have a responsibility and you need to use that for good. You can go to your families, to your friends, to your associates and let them know that there is a good way and a bad way and you’re fighting the evil. The people sometimes approach me and say, what can I do? I’m just one person. And no, each person has the capability to make a change and make a difference. They say that if one drop of water falls into the ocean, just one drop, the drop changes the ocean forever. So become that drop, go out and become an upstander and warrior for good.
Wow. That was enough right there. I mean, we could be done with the pie. That was amazing.
But you wanted to know my story,
But I want to know more. But that’s how good that was. I feel encouraged. I’m ready to be a drop in the ocean.
You are already.
Come on.
You know that. I receive it every time that you do this podcast, every time you share your prayers, you’re there.
Praise the Lord.
So thank you for doing it.
Well, thank you. Thank you for your encouragement. I’d love to hear your story. So can you tell us a little bit about
Yeah, so I was born in Inania, which is the largest of the Baltic states. The other two are Estonia and Latvia. And that largest Baltic state fits into Texas 10 times. It’s very small, but it has a wonderful history of accomplishment. It mons rule almost the entire Europe with Poland all the way to the Black Sea. And the czars made their seat and Lithuania because they thought that Lithuania were more intellectual than the Russians and more elegant or whatever. And Lithuania was the country that was the guiding force to topple the Soviet Union. The domino effect that happened after that,
It
Has like 6,000 lakes in the small landmass that they have. I mean some of them are puddles, but they call them lakes.
Yeah, we’ll count
It. They have an incredible history of Judaic studies in religious freedom. The city I was born in Ks at like 40 synagogues with venues just that after the war one, everything was in rebels. Geez. And so it was a very thriving Jewish community that had an alternative to the Hasidim, which were the main group of Jews at that time.
Hasidic meaning the Ultra Orthodox. There was another group.
Yeah. Well, Hasid is a certain way of looking at the world with joy. And if you can see the men always dancing, sometimes it’s an attitude, it’s a way of life, it’s a thing. But then they became very religious Catholics. They were the last country in Europe to give up paganism. And even now some of the women have names of flowers and so forth like the Pagans used to be.
There’s
A black Madonna on the premises in s, and in the center there’s a statue of Frank Zappa, if anybody remembers that, it was a band, rock band in America.
And
Frank was the guiding force on that. And then suddenly the war broke out. Everybody was living in comparative, peaceful times, but suddenly Hitler gave permission to Lithuanians to become violent against the Jews. And they did that with greatly. I was born to a privileged family and we had a house in the center of my city and my grandfather was what you call a capitalist. And he was the first that they ceased because they wanted his estate, whatever he had.
Yeah.
My grandmother who didn’t wear the yellow star that we were all required to wear, forgot to wear it. And just because of that, she was denounced by neighbor and we never saw her again. My grandfather in Theand was tortured and humiliated before he was murdered. And this is also already the Lithuanians doing it to other Lithuanian citizens because this was before the Anulus, before the actual systemic murders of the Germans
When they came the Nazis. So just blocks away from where I lived, there’s garage and they’re showing there’s many photographs showing Lithuanian men pushing. I’m still having trouble describing this water hoses into the mouth of Jews until they exploded. And you see audiences standing around in the smiling, a rabbi who is decapitated and they put the head into the window. Well, he still had the Torah in his hands. He was studying Torah. They would hurt people into synagogues and burn them. These were neighbors, these were people that they knew, but greed and the bad side of humanity can come out at the turn of a dime. We were told to go into what’s called a ghetto. It’s a holding place, but my ghetto became a concentration camp called Coen.
Was this in Lithuania?
In Lithuania. We didn’t know why or what or what was supposed to be happening there. And I remember we could only take so much. And my mother, bless her, she took this huge plant with her. What are we going to do with a plant? We needed food and stuff. So we were herded into part of the K slum area. We were given a 10 by 10 room where my father, my mother and I and a friend who had nowhere to go. We were living in such proximity, we had to jump over each other to go anywhere. This was one of the coldest winters.
How old were you at this point?
Oh, I was born in 35 and this was the main thing was up to 45, but I was like five, six. So I remember there’re not so many alive who remember anymore on this planet now. Yeah,
Sorry, you were saying it was one of the
Cold coldest winters. This is a good question because your audience might think I was a baby or I was much older.
I mean I have a 6-year-old daughter and so I’m just picturing how she would
Yeah, her childhood was different.
So you’re in this 10 by 10 room,
Right? They gave us 700 calories a day. I think that was the maximum. And what that was, I mean if anybody ever had frozen potatoes as a meal to this day, I cringe when I think about it. And that was a luxury. We would get some soup that had practically nothing in it and people were begging Take it from the bottom, take it from the bottom. Maybe there was something more there.
It was one of the coldest winters in record. There was no sanitation, there was no heat. And everybody had work details. My father worked in one, my mother worked another. I was actually assigned to sweep floors and we had no idea what was happening on the outside because this was one of the first ghettos that they built. They also didn’t know what they were doing at that point because it was people beginning to die from frost and so forth. There were two ghettos. One is a smaller one and one a bigger one. The smaller one was liquidated First. Liquidated means they murdered everybody in a hospital, the doctors, the patients and visitors by putting on fire. And that’s how the smaller one went. The people there because the fires destroyed everything. The larger one, they had us, I don’t know if you had seen some of the movies where the living go to the one side and the ones to die go on the other side. The selections about 10,000 were taken away and put into this ninth fort, which was a torture place the Russians had built in. We could hear the bullets from where we were and we realized, my parents realized that the elderly and the children were the most vulnerable because they were of no use.
So they made a plan for me to be saved. What do you do with that? They actually dug a hole under the barbed wire that surrounded the ghetto timing the guards within minutes and seconds and the dogs and the search lights. And they started digging inch by inch practically. And each time they were risking their lives because they would be shot on the spot
They were digging over the course of days or slowly.
It took some time obviously, but I dunno how long or how
Much. And that was their plan to get you out.
And amazingly it happened. I didn’t know what was happening and they pushed me through that hole. They were my first rescuers really. I mean I owe them my life to this day and they’re in heaven by now. And on the other side, my father’s secretary was there to greet me and take me into her apartment. And
She wasn’t Jewish?
No, she wasn’t Jewish.
But they somehow coordinated for her to meet you.
There were no Jewish rescuers except my parents because they were all being surrounded and taken away from their lives into holding places, waiting to see what would be done with them. And
So when you went with your dad’s secretary, did you have to leave your parents behind? Did you leave your parents behind?
Yes.
And it was just you by yourself?
Yes.
Do you know what happened to your parents?
Yes, my parents, my mother, she had studied piano with NAIA in Paris and she pretended to be a French woman after she walked out of the ghetto, just took off her yellow star when she fell behind with her work detail. And we had friends, she had friends that she could stay until the fog cleared with what life had ahead. And she pretended to be the widow of a French soldier who died in battle because she was fluent in French and she could get a job and she blew eyes and gorgeous. And so she survived, but people became suspicious there too. So she had to go from place to place to do that. My father, he was an attorney who couldn’t practice and he also went through military school. So he went by foot to the other city, Nu, where they had a much larger ghetto and he was saved by a German. What happened was his work detail had, couldn’t believe what was happening. He thought Jews were this below humanity and he came and Yiddish is such a similar language as German, and he met doctors and lawyers and intellectuals of all sides. And he realized, no, the Jews are human.
And so he was a little upset with war. So he barreled into the ghetto with his truck, took out my father whom he liked, and put him on the outside and said, go. This was a German. We tried to find him after the war and he was killed on the Russian front, so that was not the best. So he walked into the other bigger ghetto where people were going into the woods like the partisans. I dunno if you saw any of the movies of the horrible life that the partisans had. But he said either I fight and be killed or I just let them do it. And he had a revolver from military school, which was a real luxury in those days. So they took him in and he was fighting until the end of the war. My brother was born after the war, so in Italy. So we have a family of everybody’s born in a different country. It’s typical Jewish sometimes. So
After you escaped, did you reunite with your parents?
Not until the end of the war. The secretary couldn’t keep me. I was crying so loud and so much that people were going to be suspicious. And the Nazis were very loud about how they react to people who hide Jews.
They
Would be killed, their families would be killed sometimes even their pets and servants. So she took me to Natasha’s. They both had the same name and they were journalists, Christian scientists, very pious, and they wanted to do the right thing and they were also persecuted. So anything that wasn’t good for the Germans, that was it because they plundered Lithuania, but everything went back to Germany and they had no respect for any other country except their own.
Yeah. So did they pretend that you were their daughter when they took you in or
Did they? The secretary pretended I was her daughter illegitimate so that she had to hide me someplace else for shame.
So whenever she came to visit, I had to call her mother. And then one of the rescuers, my main rescue leader was hoping, I think so we discussed it later on when I went to visit her after the war, that she was hoping that I would stay with her if my parents would be killed because she didn’t have any children. But that was my best time during the war. She had a farm, I was apple picking, I had food and she was hiding others like a deaf mute because anybody who had any kind of challenges physically were also to be eliminated from the world.
And that is very good. I had a German rescuer, her Lena Holzman. She was married to a Jew who was killed immediately because he had the intellectual crowd in his bookstore. And then one of her daughters was like a flower child, I would say. She would go up to a German soldier and say, don’t, you’re doing the wrong thing. She was never seen again. He, Elena decided to save children. She saved me and others after the war, when the Russians came, she had to flee even though she was a rescuer because she was German and they didn’t know she was a spy. So it was a horrific time. Everybody was not only confused but taking sides. And the Lithuanians collaborated a lot. They sort of were given permission to have the worst part of humanity come out of them. Really brutal in some ways. But the war came to an end and I’m here to tell this story and it was a stranger union with my parents because I was baptized. I almost became a nun and Catholic and I was so religious and they didn’t know what to do with me. I mean, I would kneel in the street when the belt hold, but they were so understanding that I didn’t know who I was, where I was. Everything was a different world for me and they were very, very open-minded and I started reading books.
So then I had a choice and I put my own weight religiously as well after the war. Do you want me to
Yeah, please.
My father was given an important position by the Russians because he had this background. That was a good business then. And then they realized he was a Jew and they didn’t particularly like that either. They weren’t out to kill the Jews, but they were anti-Semites also. And so they had a meeting, a meeting about what to do with Riky. That was my maiden name. And we didn’t wait for the results and we escaped Lithuania. So we escaped the Russians rather than Lithuanians. The Germans. Germans,
Germans, yeah.
And we had a false passport. We got those and went to Poland and then Hungary, Czech, we ended up in prison in Hungary because we spoke Lithuanian, which is a very unusual language. It’s based on Sanskrit and it’s now most the oldest language spoken on earth continuously.
Wow.
People come and study it and everything. So we thought nobody would understand it. There was one Lithuanian on one of the transports in death. They got us into prison. My father so resourceful, he got us out and we continued on and ended up in Austria, which was a DP camp. The DP camp was in a time in Austria where it was divided. The English were the section that we went to. And then came the Jewish brigade. If you ever went to see a movie that’s more adventurous than any of the ones that are called adventurers, check out the Jewish brigade. I mean, what they did is unbelievable. I mean they stole 25 trucks from the government of Austria and whisked us out. And we ended up in Italy and that was my first stable place for, it was 51. So it’s a long time that I didn’t have my boots on the ground, whatever. And we lived there for six years, although we tried to go to Israel because we had family there. My mother’s side waited for me to be born and then the next day they left for Israel. So that’s why I have a lot of photographs. I have a lot of memorabilia because everything was sent to Israel.
So Italy, I don’t know the language, but I had my first formal education. I started first grade when I was 10, and I did schooling without knowing the language three in one year. I was so confused with everything
And we had nothing. We slept on the cement floors of the Jewish community building. They had no real food. I mean nobody was really supporting us except the Israelis. The Jewish brigade again, came and put me into something was like it was in Sino and it was in a home that used to be a Nazi retreat, marble floor swimming pool when we were, there was no swimming pool and no heat. And the winters can be brutal in the mountains. So I got frostbite there, but 700 of us were there, mostly orphans. And then me, because my parents couldn’t keep me for a while. And then within a couple of years, a couple of months more, my father established his business and acquaintances and we had a chauffeur and a car and everything. Within a year he’s resourceful. I can’t believe how he made money all the time. And so they took me out of there and I started my education and I was admitted to the Scala School of Ballet, which is probably the first for foreigner ever admitted to that. And life began to be normal until the Korean War broke out. My father was very nervous about that. And he decided that we should go to a country that where if there was a war on that soil, it’s the last war on earth America.
He was a wise man. And so that’s how we ended up in Boston where we had relatives that had come here in the mid 19th century and we’re like bra and Jews. I had no family before. Practically everybody had been killed except a brother of my dad’s. So that was a great experience for me just to start school, have friends. I never had friends, never was there enough. I had the freedom of choice to be who I am. I’m so grateful to United States for the life that I got here. So now I’m going to be 90 this year.
Wow.
My parents lived my father to 90 also and my mother to almost 101. And I have two sons and I have four grandchildren and Hitler lost.
Amen.
Yeah. It shows the continuity of Jewish life forever and Israel is there to prove it. It’s reclaiming its land the way it was originally given, and it’s still the apple of God’s eye.
Well, thank you so much for sharing your story, and I’m sure we could talk details about all the answers.
Thank you for asking me to be here. I’m very grateful that people can hear the truth and not to focus on the evil, but the goodness that the rescuers chose to go with a path that is righteous.
Yeah. Well, what would you say now you are in your eighties turning 90, how did October 7th and what’s happening in Israel now in the rise of antisemitism, how does that affect you as someone who’s lived through the Holocaust?
It’s 476 now, the days since the origin of it was trauma then. And it came back because it was so inconceivable that there was so much hatred and so much cruelty that was not being suppressed by the world actually. And I have nightmares and I’m very, very concerned that the bloodshed is there, has been there, and it needs to be stopped because the ripple effect can go into the different direction than it’s supposed to because there are no upstanders. The world has turned against Israel
When
Israel has contributed too much so much to the world. And for me, I started speaking out, I have my Facebook, I made a vow that only things that are connected to the hostages will be posted. I never expected we so many, so long.
Yeah, 400 some
Days. Yeah. And I speak out whenever I’m asked about the hostages and they have become the symbol of freedom for humanity almost. Because you can see what can happen when evil shows its face for sport of violence. We need to pray. And for me, I need to get back to balance and knowing that there’s goodness in human beings and that the suffering for Jews needs to end. And not only in Israel because you have 340% antisemitism increase in the world just within last couple of years. And hatred needs to leave the human heart so you can see the other. You see yourself.
Yeah.
And I’m struggling.
Yeah, yeah. I understand. Definitely. I’m so sorry. I’m sure that’s just torture, having that come back up after you hope that, as we’ve been saying for almost 70 years, never again, never again on a
Cover center may really happen not only for the Jews but everyone who suffers because we were given paradise and we need to be faithful to that image so that we can restore ourselves and the world or else there will be no more.
Yeah. I think it’s important for our listeners, we talk a lot about Holocaust remembrance and antisemitism. And I think there’s this perception that we have as Americans and people who have a brief overview of history that the Nazis and Hitler and the Holocaust kind of just happened overnight. It was just pure evil, just kind of spun out of control where when you study it, you see even seeds of antisemitism in Martin Luther that was the 16 hundreds. And this belief of replacement theology that the church had just accepted that we are the new Israel, we’re the spiritual Israel, all this anti-Jewish theology, the Jews killed Jesus. And all things began really sitting in the hearts of so many Christians. And this was 300 years and many historians have now put it together that Hitler just kind of completed what Martin Luther was sowing seeds for. And it’s such a slippery slope. It’s such a small incremental growth towards this evil that you’re talking about where all of a sudden it seems like it happened overnight, but it was actually the slow growth over time. And we’re seeing that we’re happen in the church, in the world, the church in America, this kind of slight antisemitism in the theology that the Jews killed Jesus. That the church is the spiritual Israel and we have to rid ourselves of that. We have to truly think about as Christians, we follow Jesus. He’s Jewish.
Exactly.
And he
Was born, practiced and died a Jew.
And we’re reading about Paul and John and James and they’re all Jewish. Our faith is grounded in Jewish understanding and Jewish foundation. And we claim to follow and serve the God of Israel, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. And I was talking to my wife yesterday. She’s excited to meet you soon.
I’m excited too.
She had so much anger and passion come over her. She was explaining to myself and my daughter who was asking about Holocaust remembrance and there’s someone that we know who’s a Christian and they’re a holocaust. And she
How do that when you believe in Jesus?
Well, and that’s the anger that was coming over my wife. I think righteous anger of just like, how can you follow Jesus and hate his people? Those are his people.
You’re denying him.
And so just the crazy way that people can make this connection or really disconnect Jesus from his people and how we can ever say that we follow the God of Israel and hate his people. How we can ever say that we follow Jesus, this Jewish man and turn our backs on his people. His family is crazy to me. But it’s something that we’re doing our best to change. And taking your encouragement to be that drop in the ocean.
Well, the whole idea is it’s really agendas, the replacement theology, the nationalism against the
Jews,
The different fragmentation of the church itself. And if they deny Jesus’s Jewishness, which is impossible, but the attempt is there.
Yeah, they attempt all the time. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean I have a friend who is teaching Bible studies and when he mentioned Jesus was Jewish, some people walked out on his class. It’s crazy. Some of the things like that. And it’s another avenue for Jew hatred with different theologies that are now in conflict with what happened and they’re supported, the protests, everything else as an agenda. And Jews are like, what? Less than percent of a half in the world. I think they’re like 16 or 17 million. That’s all. And look at what’s going on when the whole world is turning against you against them and allowing for violence. So that’s not Christian. That’s not what Jesus thought.
No.
So agreed with you 100% on the outlook and what needs to be done. Yeah. It’s a hard job going against the tide, but you gain strength doing it morally, emotionally, and for history also. I know. And when you stand up sometimes and try to set things right, it lasts for a while. And then peer pressure.
Yeah.
We are such a minority. We can’t stand up to everyone everywhere.
Yeah. And I think another, as we were remembering Holocaust, we have movies like Schindler’s List and we hear about the Corey Tim Boons, and it’s easy for Christians to say, oh, Christians helped. But the number of righteous gentiles in Yad Vashem, the Holocaust ACOs Museum in Israel was 300,000, which in Europe I believe was 300 million.
I
Think at the time
27,000 rescuers were among the righteous, which is wonderful. But think of how many were killed over about 290,000, which is 10% of their own population within less than one year. And so it’s goodness,
It’s easy for us to look back at that and say, well, the church, there was righteous gentiles, righteous Christians that helped. But the percentage is so small because of peer pressure, because they were afraid to speak out. There was so much pressure from the Germans,
Much pressure. And the ideology was so, they didn’t realize that the Nazis used them. I mean, after the war, they realized most of their goods were gone. Wells realized anyway. But Lithuania is one of the countries that killed most of their Jews, greater proportion than any other country in Europe. And so every time I say that, I keep saying thanks for the miracles. And there were 6 million Jews and 1,500,000 children that were killed. For what? Yeah. It’s so surreal.
Yeah, totally. Because their crime was being Jewish. That was their crime. And that was same in Israel on October 7th.
Yeah.
What was their crime? It was they were Jewish.
Yeah. October 7th was totally unimaginable. How could people want to torture, want to destroy
And celebrate it?
Babies into ovens cut out body
Parts,
Stab. I mean these people have families and children there. They go on a rampage against other human beings. Some of them were the people who gave them jobs.
I know.
It’s
Like it makes no sense.
No, nobody wants to hire them anymore. They want to go to another country import because they can’t trust anybody anymore.
Well, as we close out, that’s one of the things we often talk about, one of the greatest evidences for the God of the Bible being the one true God is that doesn’t make sense what you just said, that people would want to do that to another human. Celebrate it. And it happened in the Holocaust. And there’s no logical explanation other than what you started with, which was they’re the apple of God’s eye.
They go against each other when they don’t have the juice. It’s better for them to have the juice. And the Jews were kind to them. I mean, why should they give them electricity and water and food and everything when they turn around and get stabbed?
Terrible.
I don’t understand. I used to think I was smart. No more.
Well, as we close up, is there any last encouragement that you would have? Most of our listeners are Christians. They have this heart for Israel, the Jewish people. They want to make a difference. What would you say? Final words of encouragement
For the listeners as Christian, if you do support Israel, you are making a difference for yourself and the world. And you are doing what the teachings were at the beginning. Because even the apostles, they were Jewish of course, but they knew that Israel is the hub and the tous is full of proof.
And Jerusalem was the centerpiece. Exactly.
Exactly. So people have to choose between who they want to be. Do they want to be the righteous? Do they want to be the ones that follow the precepts and concepts that are given to them and follow the scripture or follow their heart and the scripture and so on? Because who knows how much time they have to become who they could become best.
We have to make a decision before it gets to that line where we have to decide. We have to already know what we’re stand
For. Well, that’s why speak out because I didn’t know I was a survivor theater, the human 2000. My parents were survivors. I was just a child. But the scars are there. I went back to Lithuania to retrace my steps because I had blocked out my childhood. And that is the Pandora’s box. And I came back and that’s why I’ve been speaking out, out of gratitude for the people who are the good ones, and try to change the minds and hearts of people who are floundering because they dunno who they are and what they can contribute. It’s a long way to reach the people who are convinced they are okay with hatred. I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing and the center is a blessing.
Thank you.
And so you who are supporting it, and I’m grateful you invited me.
We’re grateful that you accepted. Anytime we can spend time with you is a blessing for us.
It’s a very profound mission here. Not only religiously, but because that’s the way. And there’s only one way to be good. There’s no little bit pregnant. So I hope you continue and I was very successful.
Thank you.
And in your prayers and in your heart, continue this to make a difference with others as well.
Yeah, we’ll do our best. Thank you for coming and blessing us with your presence and your stories and in your voice. You are truly making an impact at the Center for Israel Gateway and in Dallas, I know you’re probably the most vibrant and active, almost 90-year-old that I’ve ever met. I don’t know how you make all these appointments.
I do have my eggs and dates.
Oh, well I get it. You’ve earned that by the amount of times that you’ve gone out and spoken and done podcasts, and so I really appreciate your time and
Presence. Well, that’s all I have left to do. Trying to talk about truth. And when I came back after my revival trip to Lithuania, I realized that is the one thing I can do that would make more impact. I’ve been spoken to thousands by now, and even if they don’t agree with me, they have experienced
Me
And I’m a survivor and I was there. And they have no right in their conscience to pursue lies that others are saying to them.
Yeah, because you lived it. Yeah. Thank
You so much.
Thank you for spending time with us today and blessing us with your presence and your story. We look forward to seeing you next time on the Covenant Conflict Podcast, and we will see you then.