A Yom Hashoah Story

I had to check out the Robert Clary estate sale yesterday. I didn’t care that he was an actor, best known to me for his role in Hogan’s Heroes, nor was I interested in acquiring a treasured object from his life. He was a Holocaust survivor, and I knew his home would hold a lesson for me.

I arrived two hours before the sale closed so there was very little left except for books, artwork, and numerous framed documents honoring his achievements within the Jewish community.

I started my tour of the house in the master bedroom. It was furnished with a matched dark wood headboard, side tables, and a long dresser. There were numerous photo albums labelled from the ‘80s scattered on the floor in front of an almost empty built-in bookcase. I spied a locked Lucite display case displaying metal collar stays, several gold and blue buttons from Sporrong & Co. Sweden, and a tiny, tarnished, silver-plated, made in China picture frame that looked like a party favor from a wedding.

The frame held a quote printed on ecru paper with a dated black ink serif typeface that isn’t in my fonts.

“Our lives are filled with simple joys and blessings without end; And one of the greatest joys in life is to have and be a friend.”

I unexpectedly found myself asking the estate sale assistant to write me a ticket to buy the 4” x 3” frame.

I then wandered into Robert’s office. The walls were lined with shelves that held sheet music, folders of notes, more books, and meticulously labelled video cassettes ranging from Balanchine, to Mehta, from Hogan’s Heroes to Mein Kampf.

I noticed a plain white box from the printers that said 2 copies of my autobiography. I pulled it down and settled onto the carpet to see what was inside.

… “Ma mère préparait le diner, le gefilte fisch*, le bouillon de poule, et toutes les merveilleuses nourritures que les Juifs mangent durant le Chabat. Personne dans notre famille ne travaillait le Samedi ou touchait à l’électricité ou au gaz. C’était un jour de repos.”

Shoppers started to fill the small room, so I replaced the lid, stood up, and started to peruse the titles on northwest bookcase. Every book was about the Holocaust. One called out to me. The Transfer Agreement- The Untold Story of the Secret Pact Between the Third Reich & Jewish Palestine. I opened the cover and read an inscription by the person who had gifted the book. “Madness or genius?”

“The Transfer Agreement is the stunning, compassionate account of the “deal with the devil” that saved 60,000 Jews form the Holocaust. The deal was made in desperation in 1933 between the Jewish leadership in Palestine and the Third Reich. The terms: that the Jewish-led boycott of German goods would cease in return for the transfer of German Jews to the Holy Land. Eventually one-tenth of Germany’s Jews were saved, thus helping to form the seedbed of modern Israel.”

I had never heard of this story, so I added the book to my ticket.

Next, I went into the den and spied a paperback by Leo Rosten, Hooray for Yiddish! It’s one of those turn to a page, any page, and you’re going to laugh books. So, I grabbed it to gift to my boyfriend, who learned a little Yiddish during his career in Hollywood and a bissel from my father.

My final stop was in the dining room where the career memorabilia was displayed. I scanned the dining table and saw Hogan’s Heroes TV Guide covers and signed photographs. Oddly enough, there was a program guide about Buchenwald upright in a plate stand.

I grabbed it and discovered it was filled with hand-written note cards and two typed legal pad pages. I started reading the cards.

One card said “Yom Hashoah, Day of the Burning.” I didn’t know that the word Holocaust comes from a Greek word meaning “sacrifice by fire.”

Another card said, “A million Jewish children perished. If I spent my entire life reciting their names, I would die before finishing the task.”

And another, “Power hungry people always change the world for the worse.”

Then I read Robert’s horror filled story that ends with the miracle of liberation.

[Yves and Claude] took pity on me, nurtured me back to life, gave me their food. It was the first I tasted sugar on a piece of bread. They became my parents. They saw to it that nothing will happen to me there.”

“We realized what just happened to us. We had won. We had survived…We were not a number on our arms anymore, but a name that belonged to us all over again.”

Robert Clary, née Robert Max Widerman, son of Moïsche and Baila, died of natural causes in his home in Los Angeles at the age of 96.

As I paid Amy, the owner of Handled Estates, for my souvenirs from Robert’s home, I told her that spending hours in the house inspired me to write.

I realized that the things that we treasure, like our awards, our notes, and our photo albums, are nothing more than captured moments that one day will not hold any value.

The true worth of our lives is how we connect with people and how we strive to make the world better for others.