Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Survivors: Even though they've been married almost 50 years, Holocaust survivors David and Yetta Kane, constantly hold hands and thank God for each day they've had together since meeting after fleeing Poland during World War II.
History lesson strikes home for Willow Glen High youth
Couple who survived the Holocaust shares moving experience
By Kate Carter
Students at Willow Glen High School last week capped their study of the Holocaust by meeting and hearing the horrific, yet inspiring, stories of two people who survived.
David and Yetta Kane visited Willow Glen High's Accelerated World History classes on May 29, and shared how they lived when so many died in the routine murder of Jews and others by Germany's Nazis during World War II. They brought a message of hope, the importance of family, determination and the belief in oneself and in God, encouraging their listeners to share the story so that genocide never happens again.
The Kanes are the grandparents of Alex Kane, 16, a student in the sophomore history class taught by Kathryn Philp. Philp asked Alex if he would invite his grandparents to visit from their Long Beach home to speak to the two classes, as they had done three years before when Alex's older sister, Emily, was in her class.
The Kanes agreed and in the morning spoke to about 80 students, several of whom had received permission to come, instead of attending their regular classes. The teens and some adult teachers listened as the Jewish couple described how they suffered through torturous treatment and unbearable living conditions, from the beginning of the war in 1939 until it ended in 1945. The two also spoke about their lives after the war, when they came to the United States, met each other, married and lived a successful life together, raising their three children and enjoying their six grandchildren.
David and Yetta had different experiences of the Nazi Holocaust, which experts say resulted in the death of more than 6 million European Jews and millions of other non-Jews.
The information in this story comes from the Kanes' presentation at Willow Glen High and also from interviews with The Resident and videos supplied by the Kanes.
Photograph courtesy of David Kane
Determined to Live: David Kane, born David Josef Koplowics, poses in Poland in May of 1946. He was 16 when the picture was taken. Kane was a practicing orthodox Jew. He was 11 years old when the Germans occupied his town in September of 1939.
David's Story
David, 73, was born David Josef Koplowicz. He changed his name to Kane when he came to the United States, he says.
"Kane means 'yes' in Hebrew," he says. "I like to say yes to life. It's a great name."
Kane grew up in Bedzein, Poland, in a practicing Orthodox Jewish family, which emphasized the importance of education. He says his hometown consisted of about 90,000 people, 60,000 of whom were Jewish.
His mother, Bryna, was a midwife; his father, Charles, was an administrator; and he had a sister, Pearl, who was 6 years younger than him, he says.
Kane was 11 years old when the Germans occupied his town, after the beginning of the war in September 1939. The Germans imposed a curfew on the Jewish residents, confiscated their businesses and forced them to wear armbands that said "Juda" on them, and later yellow Stars of David.
The Jews were eventually moved from their homes into a ghetto in the town, where Kane's immediate family and his grandfather lived in one room.
In early 1941, the Germans sent the Jews from the ghetto to concentration camps, Kane says. His family, though, hid in an attic in the ghetto and his grandfather hid in the basement. The family spent more than a month that way, Kane says, his father scrounging for food in the abandoned ghetto, while the family kept quiet during the day, and ate and relieved themselves during the night.
Finally, they were found by German soldiers who surprised them as they were preparing a meal. The family retreated to their hiding places, but the soldiers noticed the recently boiled potatoes and hunted until they discovered Kane's grandfather. Kane heard his grandfather yelling prayers in Hebrew, then a shot, and then nothing. Kane was 12 at the time.
The rest of the family was sent to a concentration camp in Poland. Kane's father was sent to a work detail and his mother and sister were sent to another concentration camp, where Kane believes they died or were killed. He never saw them again.
Kane and his father remained together during the next four years, trying and failing to escape, being sent from one camp to another, and enduring freezing cold, little food and inhumane conditions.
At one point, Kane says, he lost the will to live and ran straight for the electrified fences, but was stopped by his father. Kane told the group that, if it weren't for his father, he isn't sure if he would have survived.
Kane also used his skill at singing, which he had done in his synagogue's choir since he was 5, to entertain the Germans and gain extra food and special treatment, that helped save his life.
Kane and his father, along with other Jews, were marched for a month from the Kitlitz Treden concentration camp in Germany to the camp at Buchenwald in early 1945. It was a horrendous experience, Kane says, and many people died.
They made it to Buchenwald, though, and were there when American soldiers arrived on April 11, 1945, to liberate the camp. Kane says if the troops had arrived only six hours later, a bomb set by the Nazis would have destroyed the camp.
Kane weighed about 60 pounds when he was liberated. The Americans gave the survivors a beef stew, but many who were starving died after eating it, because their systems couldn't take the food.
A few weeks later, Kane and his father were transported to a displaced persons' camp in the United States sector when Germany was partitioned, where they spent about four years. Kane studied all the things he had missed when not going to school and learned a vocation.
In early 1949, Kane and his father immigrated to the United States and moved to Los Angeles, where Kane got a job as a clerk in a shoe company owned by the man who sponsored his immigration to the country. He met Yetta in May of the following year.
Yetta's Story
Yetta, 69, was born to Edla and Zelik Istrin in the small town of Mjadzol, in northeast Poland, an area that is now part of Lithuania.
The town consisted of about 300 Jewish families and an equal amount of non-Jewish families, who got along in a neighborly way, she says.
Yetta had two older brothers, Herman and Morris, and a younger sibling who died soon after the war began. Her parents also had another daughter, Sara, during the war. Her family had a small farm and her father ran a small store, and she had many extended family members in the town.
Her family knew about the war, she says, but wasn't too concerned, because the Germans hadn't caused a large problem during the First World War. Yetta says the family received warnings from the first few of German soldiers to arrive in their village in 1939, who told them to leave. By the time the Istrin family tried to get out, it was too late.
Yetta's first experience with the Nazis was as a 6-year-old girl, playing outside with her friend. She says she saw a tall man standing in the road, when a child pointed to another man and yelled "Jew!" The tall man then shot the Jew dead in the street.
The Germans also confiscated Jewish businesses and property and put the Jews into a ghetto. They asked the town's men to attend meetings, where they then took them to a deserted place, made them dig a large hole, then shot and buried them, some while they were still alive.
Yetta's father, though, hid during the meetings and the family escaped from the town and joined the "partisans"--a rebel army fighting the Germans guerilla-style. Yetta's uncles were members of the partisans.
For a year and a half, the Istrins lived with the army, being chased through the forest and attacked by German soldiers, without sufficient clothes or food or shelter of any kind. The family was trying to cross the border into Russia.
Finally, they made the perilous crossing, over railroad tracks guarded by armed soldiers and across rivers filled with dead bodies and blood from recent battles. Safe in Russia, they took a train to get them away from the border, but it was bombed only an hour away.
The family survived the bombing, but had to walk until it reached a place where refugees were being helped. Yetta's father was given the choice to take his family to the southern, warmer region of Uzbekistan, or to Siberia, not far from the North Pole. He chose Siberia, because he thought lice and disease wouldn't survive in the cold.
The family spent several years in Siberia, living in a dirt-floor hut with a horse, in a collective farm. Her parents and oldest brother worked on the farm. while she and her brother walked to school for 45 minutes in temperatures as low as 70 degrees below zero.
In 1945, Stalin declared amnesty for all the foreign refugees. This allowed foreigners to leave, if they could prove someone wanted to take them in.
The Istrins found two cousins still living in their village who sent them tickets home. The family traveled by train for three months.
When they finally got to Poland, they had to escape pogroms--attacks on Jews by those still living there, who blamed the Jews for their problems. The family tried to escape to Allied-occupied Germany and finally ended up in the U.S. zone. There, they, too, were sent to a displaced persons' camp, where the children began their educations again and Yetta learned to design and sew clothing.
In late 1949, they immigrated to Los Angeles, where Yetta got a job at a clothing store. She was 16 years old.
Photograph by Jacqueline Ramseyer
Never Forget: While Holocaust survivors David and Yetta Kane address Kathryn Philp's accelerated world history class at Willow Glen High School, their grandson, Alex, left, listens to their stories of surviving the Holocaust during World War II.
Coming to America
She met David the following May, at a dance for Jews who had come to the United States from Europe after the war and the two started dating.
"We were reborn when we came to the United States," David says.
A few months later, David was drafted into the U.S. Army, during the Korean conflict and sent to be a chaplain's assistant at Ford Ord, near Monterey. He spent two years at Fort Ord, and when they were sure he wouldn't be sent oversees, David and Yetta married, and she moved with him to Seaside.
After he was discharged in late 1952, the couple moved back to the Los Angeles area. Using the G.I. Bill, David studied accounting and pursued degrees to become a cantor, the person who leads prayers and singing at Jewish services and a rabbi.
They raised a daughter, Bryna, who became a physician, like her namesake, David's mother. She has three children of her own in Long Beach: Michael, Elisa and David. David and Yetta also raised two boys: Berry, who lives in Willow Glen and whose children are Emily, Alex and Charlie; and Jerry, who lives in Long Beach.
The Kanes say their relationship and their family are what gives their lives meaning. They both agree that there was no special reason for their surviving the Holocaust. They say they think about the horrors they went through everyday and Yetta says she often has nightmares about being chased and being saved through water.
But both say the experience merely strengthened their faith in God and their love of life. Yetta says she is lucky to have survived with her entire immediate family intact. David says he is grateful to have had his father, until his death in the mid-1980s.
Talking about the experience, Yetta chokes up. It's difficult for her to share what she experienced. But David says it's important to them to tell the story, as soon there won't be many like them left.
"After my generation, there won't be anyone left to talk about it," David says. "People say it never happened, but I lived it, I saw it, I was there. I think that the world has to learn that lesson. This has to be continued through my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, so that it will never happen again."
That's why Willow Glen High fine arts teacher Eric Stachnick came to the presentation, he says. He did his student teaching in a community where some teachers only taught students the Nazi's side of the story, or refused to teach about the Holocaust at all, he says.
"There are people out there willing to forget," Stachnick says. "I don't think we should shelter our youth from what really happened."
Junior Julie Drake, 17, said she chose to come to the presentation after Philp told her about it.
"I like hearing about (the Holocaust) from the people who were actually there," she says. "I haven't experienced anything like that. I feel disgusted, how they had to live to survive. It was a different experience, living it through them."
Sophomore Sam Edwards, 15, says he had already heard the Kanes' stories when he was in seventh grade with Alex Kane, at Willow Glen Middle School, but he got more out of hearing them again.
"I realized more of what they actually went through," Edwards says. "I'm going to remember how they felt, the guts they had to actually do that for us. I was amazed by how people could treat other people. I just can't believe it; it's just incredibly wrong."
"There was a time I didn't think I would survive, I never thought I would be free," David says to the group. "I have to pinch myself everyday to believe. I'm looking at a miracle by looking at you. You can make a difference in the world to come. The future belongs to you."
Willow Glen, California Since 1992
