Bobe

BOBE

I looked at the blue numbers on the inside of my wrist. I ran my fingers over them remembering when I had been tattooed, remembering too how angry my father had been when he had seen them.

"Narish meydl!" He yelled at me in his frustration. "Those are not your numbers! They are your Bobe's numbers, and she hated them! Why would you desecrate your body like this? Your Bobe would be so angry at you. You stupid girl!" My father literally tore at his hair.

My grandmother had just died, and I had her numbers tattooed on me so I would never forget her and what she went through.

Anita Rosenblum was the daughter of Abner Rosenblum, a German Jew, and Maria von Kaenel, a German. She took after her mother's family, as do I: blonde hair, light blue eyes, and skin as pale as milk. Or as a Nazi would say, Aryan. My great-grandparents were not religious, and their marriage was one of the "privileged" mix marriages the Nazis were willing to ignore until 1941, when my great-grandfather was required to start wearing the mandatory yellow Star of David. Before that, he'd been exempt, and while being Jewish in Nazi Germany was never comfortable, he and his wife were relatively unmolested. With the Star of David, my family's troubles really began.

Maria von Kaenel Rosenblum became vocal in her resistance to the Nazi regulations. Her verbal assaults on the mayor of her town brought her to the attention of the SS. My father told me that he believed that is why in the dark of the night, she was "recruited" to work in a brothel servicing the German Army. My 16-year-old Bobe and her sister were hidden in the attic of their house when the SS dragged my great-grandparents out into the street and beat my great-grandfather while molesting my great-grandmother. They left with her, leaving her husband with a crippled left arm and a blind right eye. She was never seen again.

My great-grandfather, once he had sufficiently recovered, escaped from Germany to Poland, where he had relatives in Warsaw, who were able to hide him and his Germanic daughters for the next two years. I asked my father why anyone in WWII who was Jewish would volunteer to go to the Warsaw Ghetto. He gave me that patented Jewish rabbi shrug, and said, "Jews like family. It gives us comfort."

In April of 1943, my Bobe with her sister and her father, were discovered when the SS attempted to empty the ghetto. Her father, we think, as a crippled Jew, was sent straight to the gas chambers. "Zikhrono livrakha."

My grandmother, now 18 and an Aryan beauty, was sent to Ravensbruck, where she caught the eye of the SS commandant. When he addressed her and she responded in the educated high German her parents had taught her, he found her to be surprisingly cultured and educated. Nothing, he thought, like the damned Jews in the camps. He took the two girls out of the lines and brought them to his quarters.

My Bobe was resistant, my father says, but when her sister was threatened if she refused, but promised good treatment and extra food should my grandmother be accommodating, my practical Bobe gave way to the inevitable and became the SS commandant's woman, living in his quarters and sharing his bed. She was surprised that despite her hatred of the Nazis, and what they had done to our family, she found her life pleasant, to some degree. She would always feel guilty that she had enjoyed sex with the commandant.

For over a year, she was the sexual slave of the German, but when he shared her one night in service of his gambling debts, she lost her better judgement and resisted. She hit the commandant and his creditor, pummeling them while screaming that she wasn't a whore.

When they finally had her held down and under control, the commandant sneered at her, "You don't think you're a whore? You're here for love? All you Jewesses are whores! I will show you!" They ripped off her clothes and shared her. But the horror only got greater when her now 18-year-old sister was brought into the room.

The next morning, the commandant had the camp tattooist come to his quarters. He told my grandmother that he didn't want her to ever forget what she was. Between their hip bones, above their pelvis, the tattooist was instructed to emblazon them with "Judische Hure". He then turned them over to his subordinates to be sent to military brothels. Her sister was sent to the East, while my grandmother was sent to a whorehouse in the north of France. My Bobe never saw her sister again.

Why hadn't she just given in? She felt responsible for her sister's fate. The guilt would eat at her forevermore. She had to admit to herself that she had whored herself to the commandant already. Her pride hadn't been worth her sister's debauching. She would often weep for her sister. Zikhronah livrakha.

She was put into service in the military brothel in May 1944. Blonde, beautiful and fresh, she was kept busy for the next month. Again, she was able to find pleasure in sex, despite the circumstances. It was strange, she felt like the German men were just sex toys, dildos. They didn't talk or romance the girls. They just came in and with Germanic efficiency, got on, got off and then left. Then it would repeat with the next one and the next one, until finally the girls were allowed to eat and sleep.

The challenge for Bobe, and the fact that haunted her the rest of her life, was that she would try to make the soldiers last long enough for her to have an orgasm. It was the only pleasantness in her life.

A psychiatrist my father hired to treat my Bobe suggested that even then, she was damaged mentally. The loss of her mother, father, and sister combined with the almost endless sexual assault, overwhelmed her and her escape was into sexual fulfillment. The guilt of this would haunt her forever.

On June 6, less than a month after my grandmother's foray into forced prostitution, the Allied forces stormed the beaches of nearby Normandy. The German soldiers were routed, and my grandmother was rescued and sent to England, where her father's cousins had fled in 1939. She was now pregnant with my father.

My Bobe never married. She immersed herself in Judaism, embracing a Hasidic sect. My father was terrified of his mother as a child, as she would wake him in the middle of the night and accost him as a little Nazi. If he was bad, she'd beat him, trying to rid him of his Nazi heritage. He learned that if he studied the Torah and could recite it for her letter perfect, she was calm and a loving mother. For extra credit, she would have him read to her from the Talmud and explain the arguments to her. When she would finally understand the debate, she would hug my father and lavish her motherly love on him.

When he was bad, then she insisted that it was the Nazi in him coming out. At a young age he realized he was responsible for his mother's moods. He studied hard, striving to be perfect for his muter. He was a paragon of the yeshiva. By the time I was born, my father was a highly respected rabbi, and my Bobe was the most loving grandmother any Jewish princess could want.

I once asked my father when he had first wanted to be a rabbi. He looked surprised and told me that he'd never wanted to be a rabbi. He grinned sheepishly, and said he'd wanted to be a cowboy. I laughed, knowing how my father had always loved riding horses.

When I asked him why then, had he become a rebbe? He smiled, and again with that rabbi shrug, "I didn't become one. I realized that I was one." He patted my head and smiled at me. "What can one do?"

He had made his mother happy. She passed away in 2020, 95 years of age.

Zikhronah livrakha.