Celebrating Life

Henia Laitner stepped off the plane and without a moment’s pause screamed out, “Ufta!” the Polish nickname of Rena Drexler, a fellow concentration camp survivor she had not seen for more than five decades.

That was Friday morning. On Saturday it was Alina Kerson, another Holocaust survivor, who arrived in town to see Drexler. They had not seen each other for nearly 40 years.

“She didn’t recognize me, I didn’t recognize her,” said Kerson. “She cried, then I cried.”

As children growing up in pre-World War II Poland, Drexler, Laitner and Kerson “played in the sand together,” said Kerson. As teenagers, they survived the Holocaust.

As adults, the trio came together for the first time this weekend to remember their past and celebrate their future.

“Our childhood is coming back because we lost our childhood, our teenage years,” said Drexler, 70, a North Hollywood resident who invited her childhood friends to town to help her celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary.

Drexler and Laitner were at Auschwitz together. Kerson survived the Holocaust with the help of an aunt, hiding in homes and relying on falsified papers that identified her as a Catholic.

Drexler and Laitner were separated in 1944. “I knew she survived but I didn’t know anything about her, where she was, what happened to her,” Drexler said. “We just never got the chance to get a life back together. We grew apart.”

Drexler, who spent nearly four years in the camps, and Kerson were reunited in Germany after the war. But once each married and moved to the United States, they kept in touch via telephone but never found the time to get together.

Kerson, who lives in San Francisco, had kept in touch with Laitner, who lives in Boca Raton, Fla.

Drexler wanted them all to reunite.

“As you get older you search for your roots,” Drexler said, noting that she and Laitner have talked daily since reestablishing contact via telephone earlier this year. “From now on we are going to remain very close.”

“There’s so few of us left,” Kerson said. “We have to stick together.”

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On Sunday, the three women said they had spent a lot of time the past couple of days talking, laughing and crying.

“It’s strong emotion,” Kerson said. “It’s a miracle we are here alive and we can talk [together]. It’s a miracle.”

“It’s hard to go to your past,” Drexler said. “It’s very emotional.”

Drexler was one of 14 children. Her parents as well as 11 of her siblings were killed in Auschwitz. She and her husband, Harry, met in Germany and later married there, in December 1946.

There were just 10 people at the ceremony. “My dress was made from an American parachute.”

The couple came to the United States in 1951 to escape the painful memories in Germany and started building their future. They had two children and opened a kosher deli, Drexler’s in North Hollywood.

The 50th anniversary celebration Sunday at Temple Adat Ari El in North Hollywood was as much about the success of a marriage as the survival of a people.

“I want the world to see that [Holocaust] survivors are human beings,” Drexler said. “Whatever you go through in your life, you have a chance to build your future. You never forget your past . . . but we are strong people. We still have something to offer.”

She added: “When there is life, there is hope.”