“A Girl in the Storm” from the Yizkor book of Turka (Ukraine), “is one of the most poignant Holocaust testimonies I had ever seen,” according to its translator, Jerrold Landau who has worked on many books.

The girl was Ester Roter who witnessed and survived four German aktions — enduring the mass killings around her, the death of family members, the constant need to go into hiding, the pangs of hunger and thirst, and living in fear of never seeing her mother and father again.

After the fourth aktion, her parents found a Ukrainian family in the village of Komarnik who agreed to harbor her. Her father said: “You must remain alive. You have seen and understood everything that happened. Most of our family has already been murdered. Someone must remain alive to tell the story of what happened. You, as a child, have great chances for this.”

On the day of her departure, he carried her to a wagon. As the wagon moved quickly away, she saw through her tears “the precious image of my father getting smaller and smaller. He continued to walk straight, without turning his head toward me. His image disappeared in the distance. That was the last time that I saw him.”

This is a long chapter and I am posting excerpts from the last half which begins with her separation from her parents and recounts the rest of her journey which was a difficult one, but one with a happy ending.