By Susanna Rajala

The seminar hall in Helsinki is silent. The audience listens intently, while some wipe tears from their eyes. It feels as if even the ticking clock on the wall has paused for a moment to listen, as 86-year-old Holocaust survivor Bella Haim Rothstein shares her harrowing childhood memories from the Holocaust, as well as her recent experiences of the October 7th massacre.

Bella currently lives in the Eshkol region of southern Israel and takes part in a Holocaust survivor group. This group has become a vital support network for her and many others. Following the massacre of October 7th, the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem has been sponsoring the group as its members gradually return home after months of being evacuees.

The sponsorship ensures that survivors have transportation to attend community events and covers expenses surrounding the group meetings. This assistance has been of great value for survivors who have endured the horrors of the Holocaust and the October 7^th attack with some even losing grandchildren in the attack. The support group provides a safe space with other survivors who understand their pain.

Recently, Bella travelled to Finland to speak at the Finnish branch of ICEJ for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, sharing her experiences as a survivor of both the Holocaust and October 7th. She also attended several other events, visited a synagogue in Helsinki, and participated in a radio program.

Childhood in the shadow of the Holocaust

Bella Haim Rothstein was born in 1938 in the village of Stok, Poland. Besides her parents, Bella was the youngest of three sisters. At the time, Poland had the largest Jewish community in Europe, and many of them believed themselves to be safe in the country.

But then everything changed. Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and war began. “We were stripped of all our rights, and suddenly we had to flee,” Bella shared. “Father left first, but mother stayed at home with me and my two sisters.” Eventually, Bella’s mother also decided to escape, carrying little Bella in her arms and the two older daughters accompanying her on both sides.

Mother and children set off towards the city of Bialystok in northeastern Poland, where their father was waiting for them. The family hid in Bialystok until the Germans captured the city forcing the family to escape across the border into Russia.

“I was four years old at the time and was starting to remember things. In Russia, my parents put me in an orphanage so that I could eat there. I had no childhood at all,” said Bella describing her difficult years during the war.

Returning home to Poland

The family stayed in Russia throughout the war, until it was possible to return to Poland. “The same trains that took people to the death camps were now transporting people back to Poland,” Bella recalls.

Returning home, however, was not easy. “There was a lot of antisemitism. It was scary to go out in the evenings. We stayed in and locked the doors. And again, we had to think about where we could escape to.”

At the same time, the survivors of the war were worried about their relatives and other survivors.

“My father had eight brothers. He went to Warsaw to look for them and find out if any of them were alive. But there was no one left, only my father and his sister survived.”

However, most of Bella’s mother’s family survived, as they had already fled to the Russian side.

After the war, Bella’s family stayed in Poland and Germany. By this point, the family had grown, and there were now six children in total.

A new life in Israel

A significant change in Bella’s life occurred in 1951 when the family decided to make Aliyah to Israel, the Jewish state that had been established only a few years earlier.

“It was a good feeling, like a dream come true,” Bella describes her arrival in her new homeland. “People came by boat and kissed the ground when they stepped on Israeli soil.”

At the age of 12, Bella started school and began studying Hebrew. A couple of years later, the family settled in southern Israel, in Kibbutz Gvulot, founded by Romanian and Turkish Jewish immigrants.

“I got married on the kibbutz at the age of 18. My husband was a Bulgarian Jewish artist. We had three children, and I was very happy. For the first time, I had a home!”

Years passed, and Bella enjoyed the communal and carefree kibbutz life with her family.

However, in 1987, the family was faced with great sadness when the eldest daughter, Tal, fell ill with cancer. She died before she turned 30, leaving behind a three-and-a-half-year-old child.

“At the age of 52, I became a ‘mother’ again,” says Bella, who, as a grandmother, took care of the little one.

The October 7th massacre

“I thought the world was a beautiful place to live,” says Bella, a long-time peace activist who has worked to promote the peaceful coexistence of Jews and Arabs in the country.

“I fought and worked for peace. Standing in front of Gaza, I often wondered how we could co-operate together. That’s why it was hard for me to believe that an attack like October 7th could ever happen.”

Bella’s home village, Kibbutz Gvulot, is located just eleven kilometers from the Gaza border. It was one of the few villages in the region that Hamas terrorists failed to invade on October 7th.

Although she herself survived the attack, her family was tragically affected by the events.

“My family is a family of musicians. My grandson, Yotam, plays drums and was supposed to play at a gig in Tel Aviv that Saturday. But then we woke up on Saturday morning… I called Yotam and heard that he was in trouble because his kibbutz was overrun by terrorists.”

Yotam lived in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the villages most severely destroyed that day.

At first, the family did not understand what was happening until pictures and videos of the attack began flooding the internet and social media. “It was like the Holocaust,” Bella exclaimed. “People you thought were friends, suddenly became murderers. They took people from their homes, including children. They burned houses, like during the Holocaust. They took people hostage to Gaza in our cars.”

Devastating news

A week after the attack, the family learned that Yotam was taken to Gaza. He was alive, but a hostage, so it was hard to feel joy.

In a video released by Hamas, Bella saw how the terrorists kidnapped her grandson. “Two terrorists were holding Yotam by the arms, and he was standing in between them, like Samson from the Bible. For a moment I thought, if only he could defeat his captors like Samson.”

For weeks, Bella held on to hope. “Every day, musicians and singers came to the border to sing and pray, hoping that maybe he and the other hostages would hear us,” she says.

The fragile hope of her beloved grandson’s survival was crushed on December 15, 2023, when Bella learned that Yotam had died in Gaza. Yotam and his two friends had managed to escape from their guards, and for a few days, they moved from house to house in Gaza, seeking refuge.

At the same time, Israeli soldiers were already fighting in the Gaza Strip. As the trio approached the soldiers, they mistook them for terrorists and shot them.

“Yotam returned to Israel, but not alive,” Bella continues with a trembling voice. “He was buried on Kibbutz Gvulot, where he was born.”

No one can destroy us

The loss of the beloved grandson was an immense shock to the family, and especially to Bella, who had already experienced the pain of the Holocaust.

“After the Holocaust, I swore I would never return to Poland or Germany,” she said. “But when I received an invitation last year to attend a Holocaust memorial service at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, I decided that this time I would go.”

“‘Am Israel Chai’ – no one can destroy us! That’s what I thought as I walked, wrapped in the Israeli flag and holding my head high in honor of my grandson’s memory.”

The visit to the concentration camp was particularly meaningful also, because her grandson had visited the same place with his school group in his youth.

We must learn to love

After October 7^th, Bella was evacuated from her home for a long time, as were other residents of the communities near the Gaza border. Now, however, she has returned to her beloved home in the Kibbutz.

“I am strong, and I will continue to be strong!” she promises.

“I believe that the world can be a better place if we take responsibility for it. We must teach everyone about this so that these kinds of things cannot happen again. We must learn to love, not hate,” says Bella, sending her blessing and greetings to everyone, hoping that all people could one day live together in harmony.

Show your support for the resilient people of Israel and help us rebuild in communities affected by the October 7th attacks. Please contribute to our Israel in Crisis fund.

help.icej.org/crisis

Main photo: Bella speaks to a large audience at the public event in Kuopio at Kuopio City Hall.

Photos courtesy of ICEJ-Finland.