Gabriel crossing Auschwitz.

Memories of family
One of the most tremendous legacies of the Holocausto was given by the destruction of the identity of hundreds of thousands of families.
Along with million lives, in the gas chambers also erased signs of origins, kinships, ancestries and descendants.
Desperdigados everywhere, are Jews to those who it is forbidden to know to them exactly from where they come.
They know clearly that those answers that look for incinerated in the furnaces of Auschwitz, were buried in the common graves of Treblinka or they flew in paredones of execution of Dachau.
Still more, like Samuel Anmuth, the grandfathers of Gabriel, many old ones preferred to die at least without speaking sometimes of that avalanche of death that it swept with his brothers.
" My grandfathers passed away in 1975 and my grandmother in 1984. When they were not more, in its house we found a series of letters and photos kept in a box of shoes. Thanks to those papers, we reconstructed great part of this history ", explains Gabriel.

Those papers revealed the contact between Samuel Anmuth (who arrived at Argentina in 1929) and their aunt, Ita Rubinfeld, that emigrated to Canada after the war.
" There, this woman told my grandfathers how they had been saved by catholic neighbors who acceded to hide them. Three brothers of Samuel did not have the same luck and, after his deportation, never he knew themselves of them ", he counts more.

Knowledgeable of the value that stops a Jewish family could represent these documents, by means of the archives of the Museum of the Holocausto de Washington, obtained certain data that allowed to determine that a son of Ita, call Joe Riesenbach, lived in Winnipeg, Canada.
Joe was one of the three children who were hidden two years and five days in the house of that pious Polish family.

After being stated the kinships and interchanging information in both directions, the Anmuth and Joe Riesenbach were the last summer in Miami.
" Among other things, my grandfathers had a photo of a family that we did not know who were. He turned out to be from Joe, next to his parents and brothers, in an English field of moved, where some months lived after the war. He could not think that from Argentina we took to resemblance memory to him ", says.
There they solved together to return to Poland, so that Joe could present/display his family to those who had been their rescuers.
" it requested to Us that we accompanied it, because was not animated to return single to eet again itself with similar memories ", comments Gabriel.The operative " return " took shape between the 17 and the 28 of September of this year.

The same God
After being in the airport of Amsterdam, the integrated familiar retinue from Argentina by Gabriel, his parents, their woman Marisa and, from Canada, by Joe Riesenbach, its woman Ruth and Ron, son of both, arrived at Warsaw.

" One has the sensation of which Poland took the worse part of the war. After the Germans, the Russians came. The country was reconstructed according to the Soviet model. Warsaw is a square city and gray ", it comments.
After days in the Polish capital, 170 kilometers of Markowa traveled to Cracovia, distant, the rural town where everything had happened.
" Cracovia, whose archbishop during many years was Karol Wojtyla (today Juan Pablo II), yes maintains something of the edilicio splendor previous to the war ", indicates.
Until they approached there to gather them two of the grandsons of Janina Bar, to transport them to Markowa.
Janina is the daughter of Josef and Julia Bar, the Polish catholics who decided to risk their life to save the one of their Jewish neighbors.
When the war, Janina had 19 years and Joe, 15.
That is to say, a sufficient age like understanding very well what it happened.

Those tears alluded to in the beginning appeared at the moment at which Gabriel told to the precise moment of the encounter between the rescuer and the bran.
" first that remembered it was that every day, when Janina approached the boiled Pope to them with which they were fed while they were hidden, said to them that there was nothing no to fear, because God was with them. Watching its faces, more than ever I could include/understand that, in spite of being a Jewish family and a catholic, really, they believed in the same God ", reveals moved.
If one considers that, to less than three hours of distance of where the Riesenbach they remained hidden, was the center of I exterminate of Auschwitz, where it calculates that it executed 3,200,000 Jews, will conclude that, indeed, beyond the religions, there was a divine hand taking care of this people.

The attic of the miracles
The war and the systematic project of extermination of Jews known as the Final Solution had stayed quite distant of the remote village of Markowa until the summer of 1942.
A day, somebody warned to him the father of Joe who had gotten the order of which the local police (Poland was occupied by the Nazis from 1939) deported all the Jewish families.

Desperate, the Riesenbach fled from their house and they were hidden during several days in near maizales.
Knowledgeable of which they could not survive in those conditions, one night the mother of Joe (proprietor of a small commerce) returned to the town and asked refuge the one family clienta.
She, their husband and his three children (in addition to Joe, Jenny and Marion, of 10 and 8 years respectively) were hidden in an attic.
A Sunday, after a mass, the priest of Markowa informed to the parroquianos that lacked to deport a Jewish family and it urged them to confiscate house by house to determine if still they could be hidden.
Before similar new development, the Bar remained immutable by and consternados outside on the inside.
When they arrived at his house, they removed to the Riesenbach from the attic and they hid them in caj� n, where the five hardly cab � an of squatting. They covered the hiding place with a sum 6n to with Popes and, when the inspectors, Josef Bar them ofreci or drinks of homemade vodka arrived. The sicarios drank, watched everything after above and they went away. In case it is necessary to clarify it, if they had found them, to everything habr � to finished all �, as much for the Riesenbach as for the Bar, to those who his had not been pardoned them " traici or n ". From that d � to, until termin either the war, the Riesenbach remained prisoners in one habitaci or n in which not hab � to another thing to do that to remove to the fleas an a others. When the Russians arrived, all ten � an goiter and had to consume industrial amounts of iodine to recover. They emigrated to Canad � in 1947 and, once established, they offered to those who hab � an saved its lives the possibility of going away to live with them to avoid the communist yoke.

"The Bar family accepted no compensates or prize on the part of the Riesenbach. Time and time again, they repeated that what hab � an done was, � nicamente, to fulfill his to have Christian. However, to Janina him otorg or the medal that distinguishes to those Right ones between the Nations, that collaborated to avoid the extermination of our town ", reveal Gabriel. The same recognition was conferred him to Oskar Schindler and diplom � tico Swedish Raoul Wallenberg, among others. That s �, when between both families estableci or the postal contact despu � s of the war and Joe was wanted to send gifts to them, the Bar requested that they did not send packages to them to the mail of Markowa, but to the one of a neighboring village, not to wake up suspicions between its neighbors.

It is that, although almost they are not left jud � you in Poland, the prevailing anti-semitism in that pa very pure � s to � n est �, specially in the countryside, many of which remain literally lengthy in the time, far from Internet, telefon � to and of other communicational advances, or, m � s to � n, changes of mentality. Before the war, on 800 thousand inhabitants who ten � to Cracovia, hab � to 65 thousands jud � you. Today, as soon as they are left 150, mainly dedicated to coordinate the arrival of those brothers of race worldwide who arrive to know the site where their predecessors were exterminated.

You are � sticas so frightening repeat in each Polish poblaci or n. That s �, like result of the encounter of which p occurs to account in these � ginas, the Riesenbach and the Anmuth has website where they tell to all the details of its history (www.riesenbach.com) and already eval � an the possibility of another return. Est � n invited to the marriage of one of the grandsons of Janina Bar. " s � if we will be able to go, although I do not have many desire, but the m important � s is that Joe already said to us that, this time, not tendr � to problems in animating itself to return single to the place where naci or ", concludes Gabriel.

Legend
1 One frightening sensaci or n. Gabriel crossing Auschwitz. Probably, all � died assassinated three brothers of their grandfathers.
2 a Vista of the cabins of the extermination center.
3 Gabriel and Marisa in a site whose image was gathered by the cinema in many occasions. Aqu � arrived the trains filled with people who arrived at Auschwitz.
4 Janina Bars and Joe Riesenbach, fifty and five to 6n you despu � s, celebrating the life, in spite of everything...
5 Contact in Cracovia. Both small high ms � s are the grandsons of Janine. Adem � s, from the left appears Ruth (woman of Joe), Marisa Kahan, Gabriel Anmuth, Rum (son of Joe) Natalio and Anita (parents of Gabriel) and Joe Riesenbach.
6 Gabriel with its parents, next to a wall built with the rest of the ls � you request of a cemetery jud � or destroyed.