Holocaust survivor speaks to Jewish Federation

This story ran on the front of the Local & State section. It was written on deadline.

The tattoo on Erna Rosner’s arm reads A-26671.

The weathered numbers and letter are permanent reminders of what happened to her almost 70 years ago.

Rosner survived the Holocaust, her memories etched as deeply as the tattoo, haunting her still but helping her to open the eyes of many.

On Sunday, she relived those memories — again. The 83-year-old Fort Myers resident spoke to an audience at the Temple Beth El in south Fort Myers. The Jewish Federation of Lee and Charlotte Counties invited her to speak and pass on her story at a time when survivors are in their 80s and 90s.

Her message was simple: Remember the Holocaust or it will repeat itself.

“I’m a miracle child,” Rosner said.

On Sept. 1, 1939, Rosner and her family lived in Krakow, Poland.

Germany invaded that day.

Her life would never be the same again.

It would be the last home she’d live in with her mother, father and brother. It would be the last time she’d see them alive. The Nazis killed them.

She was 15.

Rosner was taken to the first of five concentration camps.

She was made to exhume the dead and remove their gold teeth.

Every day, she was told, or would hear from others, in the camp that she would die that day.

She didn’t care. She was alive at that moment. That’s all that mattered.

Twice her life was spared — once by a Nazi commandant who on a whim decided not to kill her; the second time, when an oven at a crematorium malfunctioned.

“Only once this happened ... only once,” she said about the experience that would take her 54 years to gain the courage to talk about with others.

In 1945, the Allies came. They freed her from her fifth camp — this one in Mauthausen, Austria. She weighed 66 pounds.

When the Holocaust was over, 6 millions Jews were dead; so were 5 million others.

“There were still people in the world who don’t know,” Rosner told the audience.
Luck is the reason she survived, she said.

She eventually came to America to start living again. She lived in Queens, N.Y. She married. She would become the mother of two sons.

Years later, they would be the reason for her move to Southwest Florida.

And her talks would begin.

“She speaks from the heart, and it’s easier to listen to someone talk about it than reading a book,” said Naomi Rubin, who organized Sunday’s program.

“She has gone through such horrors in her past life and has turned it around into something positive,” Rubin said.

Bethany Price, 23, was in the audience. Rosner’s words moved her.

“I found it encouraging to hear her words and see how she is still so full of life and joy,” the Cape Coral resident said.

She’s determined to tell people the truth. For those who deny what happened, she has little patience.

“It would be a waste of my breath,” Rosner said to rousing applause.

“I’m not a speaker ... I just tell what I can’t forget,” she said. “You don’t forget the details but you can turn them into something good.”