"My eyes were glued to the scene of devastation – did nothing remain? Did not one person survive from all the masses? Was I the only one left from all my family? How could it be that everyone was dead and I was alive? Me, the weakest one of all?"
(Dov Freiberg)
At war's end, many survivors discovered that their parents, siblings and more distant relatives had been murdered, and that they were the sole survivors of their entire families. This shattering realization led many to wonder why they, in particular, had survived, and not other relatives. The feelings of emptiness and yearning accompanied them their whole lives, even after they had established new families.
Dov (Barak) Pilz was born in 1910 in Stawiszyn, Poland. In May 1936 he crossed the border into Germany with a friend, and made his way to Paris, where he joined the tailoring industry. As an illegal immigrant, he kept under the radar of the local authorities, but was eventually forced to return home in the summer of 1938.
When the Germans entered Stawiszyn in September 1939, some 200 craftsmen, including Dov, were moved to Kalisz. In 1942, Dov married Betty Levin in the Kalisz ghetto. They were transferred to the Lodz ghetto, where their daughter Hadassah was born in early 1943. Three months later, Betty contracted tuberculosis and died. Dov moved in with his sister Leah, and they worked in shifts so that they could take care of baby Hadassah.
Before the liquidation of the Lodz ghetto in 1944, Hadassah, Dov, his brother Leibl and his sister Leah-Leika were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Upon arrival, they were separated: Leah and Hadassah were murdered in the gas chambers and Dov and Leibl were sent to forced labor in the coalmine in Jaworzno, and then transferred to other camps. Leibl was murdered shortly before liberation; Dov survived.
After liberation, Dov returned to Lodz and revisited the room where he had lived in the ghetto. To his amazement, he found Hadassah's bib there – a last memento of his baby daughter.
Out of a family of eleven, two survived: Dov and his brother Shlomo. In 1946, Dov married Esther, the widow of his murdered brother Aharon-Arak, and in November of the same year, their daughter Ida-Hadassah was born. The family immigrated to Israel in 1948 and settled in Ramat Yishai.
In 1992, Dov wrote the following entry in his diary:
"I have safeguarded this bib until today, and I request that this generation and the generation to come preserve it with love."