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Nov. 8, 2013
Sharing survival story
Tibi Ram is a former Habonim Miriam shaliach.
CAROL NAROD
Several Camp Miriam alumni, now baby boomers, reunited in a Vancouver home recently. They came to hear their former shaliach, Tibi Ram, share his memories of the Holocaust.
Back in 1972, Tibi was a major in the Israeli army. At camp, he was affectionately known as “Strong like Bull.” At the age of 82, after a career as military man and farmer, he is lean and brown and, dare I say, inordinately sexy. Above all, he is an inspiration into the positive.
In the 1970s, Tibi didn’t talk about the Holocaust. He had moved on, a happy and devoted serviceman, kibbutznik, husband and father. In his senior years, he began to open up.
Tibor Herman came from a secular and patriotic Hungarian family. He enjoyed a privileged and proud childhood. In his 13th year, he and his brother and parents were herded onto the infamous and ignominious cattle cars. Ignoring the heat and the crowding, Tibi found a small hole in the car wall. There, he could look out at the landscape and read the names of the villages along the rail line, the villages of his three-day “trip.”
His family was dislodged from the rail car into a compound. Asking a man in striped pyjamas, “Where are we? Where are we going?” Tibor didn’t understand what it meant when the man pointed to the chimneys. He was distracted by a boy in the striped uniform, shepherding a small flock of sheep. Tibor was excited. Perhaps he too could be a shepherd with his own uniform.
Tibor was directed to a column on the left, a line of women and children. But he looked to the right, the line of men, and decided that was where he belonged. When a Nazi officer asked his age, he fibbed, “14,” he said, and pushed forward in the men’s line as the officer dallied, pondering in which direction to send him.
His mother’s destination was unknown to him. He was dispatched to a labor camp. Joining a group of men who had been too long away from women, Tibor stayed under the radar. After long shifts of digging trenches, he was given something small to eat. Perhaps a crust of bread. Tibor was happy when he found a small piece of potato.
His brother and father toiled beside him. Tibor was pleased when his father was promoted to kapo. His father wasn’t one of those “criminals” who amused themselves as kapos by further beating and humiliating the interned. His father tried to keep his 15 charges strong for their labor; when he saw a weakened doctor succumbing, he traded places with him. His father returned to the trenches, digging alongside Tibor. While Tibor was grateful to have his father by his side again, he was also disappointed at the voluntary demotion.
One of Tibor’s adventures in modern-day slavery included refurbishing a castle to be Hitler’s headquarters on the eastern front. Because Tibor spoke German, he was selected to be a servant to a Wermacht staff sergeant. The work was less strenuous, polishing shoes or washing dishes. The sergeant treated him with kindness, stayed the punches and kicks meted out by other Nazis. His next taskmaster, a nobleman and painter, also treated him well. His Nazi belt buckle read, “Gott mit unz,” “God is with us.” But, he surprised Tibor, “If there is a God, you wouldn’t be here serving, and I wouldn’t be here painting.”
As the Allies neared, so began the camp evacuations. It was winter, Sudetenland cold, and the valley was beautiful, and Tibor was excited by its beauty. Tibor looked to the future: “Back at home, I will tell my Hungarian friends about this beautiful valley.” Joy on a Death March. The villages, too, were pretty with their white-washed walls, red roofs and lace curtains. A young boy peered out at him behind one of those curtains. When Tibor thought about boys his age, comfortable in those houses, warm in their beds, with bellies full and without perpetual fear, for the first time since his transport to Auschwitz, he wept at the injustice.
Bergen Belsen. Designed for 2,000. Now, it enclosed 40,000 condemned. The dead, their dying and the near dead. Dysentery was plague. Tibor’s pillow was a corpse. His task was to haul the bodies to a pile. Tibor struggled, yanking on the tether, severing an arm from a torso. He learned the timing of death, when to remove trousers before a body’s final loosening of the bowels, before the pants were soiled with excrement and blood.
He watched his brother and father die. The day after his father passed, the British liberated Bergen Belsen. Tibor was reunited with his mother, after a year apart. But, before long, she died in a British infirmary.
Tibor was sent to Sweden to regain his strength. His plan was to return to Hungary, but a young man told him about a place called Palestine. There, he could be what he wanted to be, a soldier and a farmer.
Tibor Herman sailed to Palestine and became Tibi Ram. He joined kibbutz life and the army, married and fathered three children. He fought in every Israeli war.
Sixty-three years after his liberation, Tibi returned, in a commemoration ceremony, to Auschwitz. It was cold out, but he removed his overcoat, to stand on the platform in his Israel Defence Forces uniform, ranks of lieutenant-colonel on his shoulders, and seven medals over his heart.
These days, Tibi gives educational lectures to groups of soldiers at Yad Vashem. On his breaks, he enjoys the view of the Jerusalem hills, or shmoozing with the soldiers around the coffee machine.
On a recent evening, the Camp Miriam alumni learned about their shaliach’s experience in the Holocaust. We came away with something more: powerful inspiration from a man who knew how to find the positive. When something not so great comes our way, we ask ourselves, “What would Tibi do?” And, for a moment, we cease the grumbling.
Carol Narod is a Vancouver freelance writer and teaches writing at Langara College.
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