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| The Wedding Gown That Made History | |
|
Helen Zegerman Schwimmer
Posted Dec 31 2008 |
More Articles By Helen Zegerman Schwimmer |
| http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/37658 | |
Lilly
Friedman doesn't remember the last name of the woman who
designed and sewed the wedding gown she wore when she walked
down the aisle over 60 years ago. But the grandmother of
seven does recall that when she first told her fiancé Ludwig
that she had always dreamed of being married in a white gown
he realized he had his work cut out for him.
For the tall, lanky 21-year-old who had survived hunger, disease and torture this was a different kind of challenge. How was he ever going to find such a dress in the Bergen Belsen Displaced Person's camp where they felt grateful for the clothes on their backs?
Fate would intervene in the guise of a former German pilot who walked into the food distribution center where Ludwig worked, eager to make a trade for his worthless parachute. In exchange for two pounds of coffee beans and a couple of packs of cigarettes Lilly would have her wedding gown.
For two weeks Miriam the seamstress worked under the curious eyes of her fellow DPs, carefully fashioning the six parachute panels into a simple, long sleeved gown with a rolled collar and a fitted waist that tied in the back with a bow. When the dress was completed she sewed the leftover material into a matching shirt for the groom.
A white wedding gown may have seemed like a frivolous request in the surreal environment of the camps, but for Lilly the dress symbolized the innocent, normal life she and her family had once led before the world descended into madness. Lilly and her siblings were raised in a Torah observant home in the small town of Zarica, Czechoslovakia where her father was a melamed (Torah teacher), respected and well liked by the young yeshiva students he taught in nearby Irsheva.
He and his two sons were marked for extermination immediately upon arriving at Auschwitz. For Lilly and her sisters it was only their first stop on their long journey of persecution, which included Plashof, Neustadt, Gross Rosen, and finally Bergen Belsen.
 Lilly Friedman and her parachute dress on display in the Bergen Belsen Museum |
Four hundred people marched 15 miles in the snow to the town of Celle on January 27, 1946 to attend Lilly and Ludwig's wedding. The town synagogue, damaged and desecrated, had been lovingly renovated by the DPs with the meager materials available to them. When a Sefer Torah (Torah Scroll) arrived from England they converted an old kitchen cabinet into a makeshift Aron Kodesh (the cabinet in a synagogue in which the Sefer Torah is housed).
"My sisters and I lost everything — our parents, our two brothers, our homes. The most important thing was to build a new home." Six months later, Lilly's sister Ilona wore the dress when she married Max Traeger. After that came Cousin Rosie. How many brides wore Lilly's dress? "I stopped counting after 17." With the camps experiencing the highest marriage rate in the world, Lilly's gown was in great demand.
In 1948 when President Harry Truman finally permitted the 100,000 Jews who had been languishing in DP camps since the end of the war to emigrate, the gown accompanied Lilly across the ocean to America. Unable to part with her dress, it lay at the bottom of her bedroom closet for the next 50 years, "not even good enough for a garage sale. I was happy when it found such a good home."
Home was the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. When Lily's niece, a volunteer, told museum officials about her aunt's dress, they immediately recognized its historical significance and displayed the gown in a specially designed showcase, guaranteed to preserve it for 500 years.
But Lilly Friedman’s dress had one more journey to make. Bergen Belsen, the museum, opened its doors on October 28, 2007. The German government invited Lilly and her sisters to be their guests for the grand opening. They initially declined, but finally traveled to Hanover the following year with their children, their grandchildren, and extended families to view the extraordinary exhibit created for the wedding dress made from a parachute.
Lilly's family, who were all familiar with the stories about the wedding in Celle, were eager to visit the synagogue. They found the building had been completely renovated and modernized. But when they pulled aside the handsome curtain they were astounded to find that the Aron Kodesh, made from a kitchen cabinet, had remained untouched as a testament to the profound faith of the survivors. As Lilly stood on the bimah once again she beckoned to her granddaughter, Jackie, to stand beside her where she was once a kallah. "It was an emotional trip. We cried a lot."
Two weeks later, the woman who had once stood trembling before the selective eyes of the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele returned home and witnessed the marriage of her granddaughter.
The three Lax sisters — Lilly, Ilona, and Eva, who together survived Auschwitz, a forced labor camp, a death march and Bergen Belsen — have remained close and today live within walking distance of each other in Brooklyn. As mere teenagers, they managed to outwit and outlive a monstrous killing machine, then went on to marry, have children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and were ultimately honored by the country that had earmarked them for extinction. As young brides, they had stood underneath the chuppah and recited the blessings that their ancestors had been saying for thousands of years. In doing so, they chose to honor the legacy of those who had perished by choosing life.
Helen
Zegerman Schwimmer is the author of Like The Stars of
The Heavens.
To contact her please visit:
helenschwimmer.com.
IN MEMORIAM -- 63 YEARS LATER
It
is now more than 60 years after the Second World War in
Europe ended. This e-mail is being sent as a memorial chain,
in memory of the six million Jews, 20 million Russians, 10
million Christians and 1,900 Catholic priests who were
murdered, massacred, raped, burned, starved and humiliated
with the German and Russian peoples looking the other way!
Now, more than ever, with Iraq, Iran, and others, claiming the Holocaust to be "a myth," it is imperative to make sure the world never forgets, because there are others who would like to do it again.
[My sincere thanks to Myrna Blackwood for sending me this wonderful article!]
--- On Sun, 6/21/09, Sara Marcus wrote:
| From: | Sara Marcus |
| Subject: | The Wedding Gown That Made History |
| To: | Ari Levitt |
| Date: | Sunday, June 21, 2009, 5:20 PM |
Hi Ari,
I saw that you published the article "The Wedding Gown that
Made History" and your website. The article was actually
written by my mother a few months ago for the Jewish Press
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/37658
Thank you for helping to spread Lily Friedman's amazing
story. If you could credit my mother as the author of the
article, we would truly appreciate it.
Regards,
Sara
| From: | Ari Levitt |
| Date: | Sun, 21 Jun 2009 17:49:09 |
| To: | Sara Marcus |
| Subject: | Re: The Wedding Gown That Made History |
Shalom, Sara!
I certainly will be very pleased and honored to credit your
mother as the author and Jewish Press as the source!! I will
have the page updated within 24 hours.
The story came to me as a "chain" email, so I had no way of
knowing whom to credit. Please thank your mother for the
wonderful article.
I believe with all my heart — especially at this time as it
seems that the entire world,
including our so-called
“President” [Baraq Hussein] is determined to
wipe Eretz Israel off the map — that it is of utmost
importance that we do whatever we can to keep the tragedy of
the Shoah alive in
the world's collective memory as part of the process of
ensuring that such a thing happens Never Again! Not to our
People, nor to any others in any place or at any time.
Ari
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