I have just finished reading Herman Rosenblat’s new book (it is not yet published) called “Angel at the Fence”.  There is a children’s book already published and plans are to have a movie based on this story.

Herman learned English in Ascot, England, part of a group of children who were brought there through the kindness and intervention of one of the Montifiores.  Herman was later taught to be an electrician, picked up leather working on the side and eventually came to the U.S. where he was drafted into the army.  He learned more about American electricity during that duty.

He came back to the U.S. and worked at various jobs and decided to open a Television Repair shop.  He met a Registered Nurse at a dance who he recognized as the little girl outside the barbed wire fence of the concentration camp where he and his brothers managed to keep together and stay alive. She tossed him food over the fence. The fruit and bread helped keep him going.

I am writing this because of the really important notion the Russian soldier expressed when he told Herman that he and the other inmates of the concentration camp were now free.  Herman commented on how meaningless freedom was to the newly liberated slaves of the Nazi war machine.  For five years he survived all kinds of brutal and filthy work in order to satisfy his masters and stay alive, helped by his older brothers.  They answered for him when he was asked his age, that he was 16 and that was enough to keep from immediately being sent to the left side which meant that he would be killed.  His mother insisted on him not being with her for she was meant for extermination just as he would be if the Nazis were told he was only 13.

I was struck by the dichotomy of the lives painted by the Russian soldier giving Herman a chocolate bar and telling him that he was free.  Herman, who had been waiting until the next step in the killing machine of the Nazis, was no longer fearful of being killed in one way or another simply because he was a Polish Jew rounded up years ago.  He had worked for them and feared them and now he was free. He was liberated but still in that camp and real help had not arrived.

Just what did being free mean?  He had no money, he was in rags, he was starved and no home to go back to.  He didn’t fully know where he was or what Theresienstadt was until later.  He was one of the lucky ones.  He survived and finally learned what it was to be free – to learn, to live and finally to love the little girl who threw him food over the fence. And, too, who is really free? What does freedom mean?