I Have a Message For You

Tel Aviv, 1962: A woman walks down Dizengoff street with her husband. She is unaware of the presence of someone who has been searching for her for over 20 years.

Germany, 1920s: Klara Prowiser, born in Germany and later moving to Poland, was the breadwinner of her Jewish family. Her father had some problems with the law and had been deported to Germany several times before being given a work permit, given to him by the Queen mother who Klara had written a letter to. Later, in 1942, Klara married the love of her life, Philippe Szyper. They had met at a political meeting and were married a year before things began to change.

Tel Aviv, 2018: Klara, now 92, sits in her flat. In front of her sits a cameraman and Matan Rochlitz (a New York Times documenter). They listen to her recount the story of her illness with diptheria, when she was a child. “A man lay dying next to me and in his dying moments, he offered me the years he was to miss.” She believes that she has indeed taken them.

Not long after Klara and Philippe were married, the Nazis invaded Poland and life as they knew it began to change. Klara recalls the Nazis vividly, saying “the Germans had their hands in velvet gloves, but when they came off, they were criminals.”

“The goal was to annihilate us”

Klara tears up at the memory of her sister, who was taken and killed just before she was arrested herself. Her sister had received a notice to report immediately to her job, “I begged her not to go.” She went and Klara never saw her

again. Not long after this, her father was also arrested and taken away.

Klara and Philippe were the last of her family to be arrested, after eventually being caught by the Gestapo. They were taken to Mechelen holding camp, where she was reunited with her father. Conditions at Mechelen were horrific, with hundreds living in a small space but Klara, Philippe and Klara’s father were eventually told they were to be moved. After hearing this, Klara’s father fell gravely ill.

Klara, her father and Philippe were loaded into cattle cars, to be taken from Belgium to Germany, on to Poland and then, to Auschwitz. Klara recounts this memory, declaring, “we understood we were headed to our deaths, so Philippe wanted to jump.” Klara had a choice to make: leave her sick father behind or survive.

“I was by my father in the train car, he was unresponsive and Philippe said to me ‘we can’t stay in Poland, we will all go separate ways.’” Sometime after that, Klara fell asleep and woke with a start saying “I am jumping, if I keep thinking about it, I will never do it.”

Klara’s eyes become saddened as she thinks about the moment she jumped.

“There’s a little window, I put my legs through and turned around. I slid between the two wagons. The train was going and SS officers were shooting at us. “I put my hands over my head, to protect it and I jumped from the train. I left my father.” Klara pauses, swallowing. “I abandoned him in such terrible conditions.” Broken sobs and sniffles can be heard behind the camera.

After a moment’s pause, Klara continues. “Philippe told me he would jump with me but I saw the train leaving. I was

crying, ‘Philippe where are you?’”

The camera pans to the side and there sitting right next to her, smiling even in his old age, is Philippe. More sniffles follow.

“It was a joy to be alive and here we are now, in our own home.”

Klara and Philippe smile at each other and there is a pause and the cameraman inquires about the story he originally came for. The hope that Klara and Philippe needed all those years ago.

Tel Aviv, 1962: Klara and Philippe walked down Dizengoff Street, hand-in-hand. A lady taps Klara on the shoulder and inquires her name. She then says, “Klara, I’ve been looking for you for 20 years. I was there when your father opened his eyes. I have a message for you.”

“Your father started calling for you but I told him you had jumped. So he said, ‘Listen, if you ever meet my daughter, tell her I am the happiest father ever. I am glad she jumped.’” The unnamed lady also informed her that her father passed away before reaching Auschwitz. At this, Klara thanks God that her father never knew Auschwitz.

A moment of silence falls over the room as Klara tries to describe the weight that had been lifted. All those years of guilt, knowing she had left her father, had just been relieved.

Klara, now 92, says “It was so important for me to hear this woman pass on my father’s message to me. It’s a gift, this woman… a gift. I had done the right thing. I live with that.”

By E Farley, Upper Sixth