all_of_us_are_already_gone cooper rasha I was born in 1929 in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, youngest of three girls. My parents, who originated in Poland, were very religious and held a kosher restaurant, famous for its high-quality food and service. The early years of my youth were spent in German concentration camps, in Theresienstadt, Auschwitz, Birkenau, Bergen-Belsen. Being with my mother was the thing that kept me alive, the possibility of holding her hand through those pathways of hell. Without her I wouldn’t have made it. My mother, my two sisters and I, miraculously survived, but my father, to whom I was very much attached, died in the horrendous concentration camp for men, Buchenwald, two weeks before the liberation. At 16, I registered with a transport organized by Youth Aliya bound for Palestine. When we arrived the British took us to a detention camp in Athlit, where we were held for three months. Being so young, I could not understand how British soldiers who had liberated us from the German camps and brought us back to life, could now once again detain us. I cried day and night unable to accept it. I married my husband at the age of 17. In 1951 we opened a photo shop in Tel Aviv and we worked together until a few years ago. No one in Israel, including my elder sister and my husband, wanted to hear what I had endured, and that was incredibly painful for me. As one of the last survivors still alive, I see it as my duty to tell my story. I have been lecturing for over 30 years in schools and institutions in Israel and abroad. I have also published a book, My Childhood In the Holocaust which I hand out freely. These days I feel awfully lonely. It was very lively when the children were around but now I am alone. Telling my story to young adults fills me with hope that they will be good ambassadors for our generation which is now coming. 130206 what's it to you? who go blather from