Oma Fanny was a survivor in the truest sense of the word. In 1938, when she was just seven years old, the boots of war were already echoing through her Belzer family’s hometown of Wiesbaden, Germany. Oma Fanny’s parents, Opa Ahron Chaim and Oma Esther Leah, wisely sent Fanny, her two elder sisters, Mary and Rosie, and a young cousin named Gita on a Kindertransport to Holland. The parents hoped the girls would be safe there until the winds of war passed.

I recalled that as a child, I’d seen something about my grandmother in an orphanage in a Holocaust memoir, but nobody in my family could remember the name of the book. Was there any way I could find out more?

Then one Shabbos, only a few months after I started my research project, my mother-in-law showed me several books she’d taken out of the library — something she doesn’t usually do. One of them was a war memoir called The Living Miracle, by Margot Dzialoszynski. I opened it at random even though I don’t read Holocaust memoirs on Shabbos. Flipping through the pages, some names jumped out at me: Miriam, Rosi, and Fanny Ehrenreich. It couldn’t be — but there it was — Hashem revealing the details of Oma Fanny’s life to me. The author wrote of how Oma Fanny’s older sisters would soothe the children in the orphanage in Holland in which they were all placed post-Kindertransport. The book also tells of how my Oma Fanny, at just ten years old, mesmerized the children and adults at the home with musical performances and solos.

It was inspiring to read about Oma Fanny’s and her sister’s strength and heroism during such a dark time. My online research and Gita’s recollections continued to fill in the blanks from there.

As the war intensified, Opa Ahron Chaim and Oma Esther Leah managed to join their girls in Holland. But the war was still brewing, and in July of 1942, the Nazis called up Mary and Rosie to a work camp. Oma Fanny wasn’t old enough to work yet.

Opa Ahron Chaim and Oma Esther Leah were torn. To listen to the Nazis, and send their daughters away? But the alternative was sending their daughters into hiding with the non-Jewish Dutch Underground, an unsavory group. Finally, the parents decided to send their girls to work. After all, the Germans would feed their workers, wouldn’t they? And how could they send two pure Jewish girls to live with the immoral members of the non-Jewish Dutch underground?

Cousin Gita told me that she remembers the girls packing their bags with the Nazi packing list in hands, crossing items off the list as they placed them into their rucksacks. And then they were gone. Forever. The impeccable records of the accursed Nazi show that they were killed in Auschwitz only days after they left their parents behind in Holland.

When Opa Ahron Chaim and Oma Esther Leah realized that they’d unwittingly sent their girls to their deaths, they were broken. Before the war, they had four children; the older two girls, a prized son named Moishe Dov, and their youngest, my Oma Fanny. Moishe Dov was off in the Belzer yeshivah in Poland since before the war, and by this point, contact with him had all but ceased. His parents had no way of knowing anything for certain, but they must have feared the worst. With no end to the war in sight, my great-grandparents had only one last hope to hold onto: my Oma Fanny.

But the European noose was tightening over Holland. I knew that eventually, Oma Fanny ended up with her parents in Bergen-Belsen, and that they survived. But how did they get there, and how did a young child and her broken parents survive?

Again, Divine Providence jumped in. I suddenly recalled that shortly after I got married, I’d avidly read Dignity to Survive, the war memoir of my husband’s great uncle, Yona Emanuel. I remembered seeing my grandmother’s name in the book, and I turned back to the book to see if it could fill in any blanks. It does. The book details how Yona Emanuel was instrumental in saving Oma Fanny and her parents in the Westerbork Transit Camp from the death camps by having them sent to a more decent section of Bergen-Belsen. The book also detailed the emunah peshutah of Opa Ahron Chaim, a staunch Belzer chassid even in times of duress. Yona Emanuel recalled how at the war’s end, Opa Ahron Chaim returned to Holland, where he remained a loyal chassid of the Belzer Rebbe, corroborating Mr. Yaakov Yehoshua’s memories.

I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the stories I was reading about my grandmother and her family, and in shock by how they were so suddenly uncovered.

After the war, the Ehrenreich family, like so many other survivors, was completely lost. Two parents, one daughter, alone in Holland, their past wiped out, their future a giant question mark. What next? The next part of the story was one we’d grown up with.

The family stayed in Europe for a while, traveling between Holland and a DP camp in Wiesbaden, their prewar hometown. A young American Shomer Shabbos soldier named Shalom Schneider was in the Wiesbaden vicinity, part of the American force keeping the peace in the area.

Somebody introduced Schneider to Opa Ehrenreich, but Opa wasn’t familiar with American boys. Besides, he was a Belzer chassid, and Schneider was an American misnagid. But he was shomer Shabbos, and he was a nice boy. Opa Ehrenreich sent a message to the Belzer Rebbe asking him for his input on the shidduch. When the Belzer Rebbe bentshed the potential couple with gutte kinder, the deal was sealed: Oma Fanny and Zayde stood under the chuppah in The Hague in Holland in 1954, and soon thereafter moved to the US.

The family started off in Pittsburgh, where Zayde taught in Hillel. Later, they moved to Far Rockaway, where Zayde again taught in Hillel. The couple raised six children. Then, when the branches Oma Fanny had miraculously planted were just taking root, she was diagnosed with cancer. This time, it wasn’t meant to be.

Oma Fanny merited to see the gutte kinder the Belzer Rebbe had promised, but she didn’t live to marry any of them off.

My family’s war trajectory was now mostly clear, but my short biography was missing so much. It lacked the perspective of friends, of people who could tell me about Oma’s personality, her life during the war and then life in New York as a survivor, a young mother, a teacher, an immigrant. It outlined the dry historical facts, but said so little about the choices that Oma Fanny made during her life.

I wished to know people who had known my Oma, who I was sure had contributed to the lives of so many. I wished to interview them live, to ask them questions about her life, especially post-war.

In the summer after I started writing the booklet, I sat with my husband at a table in the restaurant he owns in Tannersville, New York, and vented my frustrations at the book’s slow progress.

“It’s like she never existed!” I exclaimed. “I have no idea how I can find one of Oma’s friends if I don’t know their names. But from what her cousins described, Oma definitely had friends. I wish someone who isn’t related could tell me about her!”

As the words exited my mouth, a man walked into the shop and warmly greeted my husband. He’d been in the shop a few years before, before we’d gotten married, and they schmoozed now, catching up for a few moments.

“Mazel tov!” the man exclaimed, and we all laughed, because we’d been married three years already.

“What’s your maiden name?” The fellow, who introduced himself as Rabbi Lappa, asked.

“Schneider.”

“Schneider from Far Rockaway?”

“Yes! That’s my father’s family, but I didn’t grow up in Far Rockaway,” I clarified. “Why? Did you know my father’s family?”

“Sure!” Rabbi Lappa replied. “We were very close family friends!”

My husband and I looked at each other, delighted.

“Do you remember my grandmother?” I asked tentatively.

“Of course I do!” Rabbi Lappa answered. “She was such a nice lady. I loved playing at her house. She gave good treats.”

I could not believe it.

My words tumbled out. “Can I interview you? I’m trying to put together a booklet about my grandmother, but I’m having real trouble finding people who knew her!”

Rabbi Lappa cocked his head. “I didn’t know her so well, but I’d be happy to share what I can,” he said. “But why don’t you talk to my mother? She was your grandmother’s close friend, and she’d be happy to help.”

I almost fell out of my chair.

“Your mother would agree to it?”

Rabbi Lapa shrugged. “I don’t see why not. She still lives in Far Rockaway. Here’s her number.”

I wasted no time calling Mrs. Sheila Lappa. I explained who I was and asked if I’d be able to set up a time to talk to her, by phone, or if she preferred, in Far Rockaway.

Mrs. Lappa was happy to help.

“Where’s your area code from?” she asked.

“I’m in Tannersville, New York,” I explained. “Just for the summer.”

“Tannersville?” Mrs. Lappa exclaimed, “I’m going there in two days for a vacation! Come meet me in person!”

I couldn’t believe the Hashgachah.

Two days later, on a balmy night in Tannersville, I sat on the porch of a hotel with Mrs. Lappa, who held my hands in hers tightly.

“To speak to tze’etzaei Fanny!” Mrs. Lappa exclaimed. I marveled in awe at those hands, which had surely once hugged my grandmother.

The interview proceeded well. Mrs. Lappa regaled me with stories about raising young families in Far Rockaway in the ’60s and early ’70s. Her tale was full of colorful vignettes that shed so much light on the person Oma was. She spoke about Oma’s choice to send her children to the frummer schools, to educate her children in every spare moment she had, to sacrifice to pay tuition to TAG. She asked me more about my grandmother and blanched in shock when I told her that my grandmother had spent two years of her adolescence in Bergen-Belsen.

“I would have never guessed,” Mrs. Lappa said softly. “She never spoke about it, and she fit in so well among the American ladies. I only knew she was in the war because she once said she had wounds on her legs from her time in the war, but she never elaborated.”

I was shocked that Oma had never told her close friend about this traumatic portion of her life; and I understood more how radically different were the two worlds which Oma’s life bridged.

Mrs. Lappa’s interview gave a lot of oomph to the booklet, but I still wanted more.

Back at home in Montreal when the summer ended, I visited an older neighbor one Shabbos afternoon. When I got there, I met her sister, Mrs. Sara Patchen, who was visiting from Florida. I introduced myself, and then Mrs. Patchen asked my maiden name.

“Schneider.”

“Schneider from Far Rockaway?”

I almost fell down. Never, until I met Rabbi Lappa, had anyone ever asked me if I was related to Schneider from Far Rockaway. And here was my second score in a few weeks!

“Yep, that’s my father’s family,” I answered. “Why, did you know them?”

“Did I know them?” Mrs. Patchen laughed. “Fanny Schneider was only my close friend and confidante!”

Motzaei Shabbos found me back with Mrs. Patchen, this time with a laptop and voice recorder. Mrs. Patchen was happy to tell me all about my Oma: her wisdom, her hospitality, and her kindness to her younger friend.

The booklet was coming together.

A few weeks later, I was sitting in my kitchen, pulling supper together, when my phone rang with a number from the Netherlands.

The Netherlands? I assumed it was a telemarketer, but for some reason, I answered anyway.

“Hello?” The voice on the other end of the line sounded tentative. “Is this Zahava?”

I put down the peeler I was using and looked back at the caller ID. “Yes, it is. May I ask who’s calling?”

“My name is Anneke,” the woman on the line answered softly. “Anneke Eidjpe. It’s a long story, but I live in what was once the home of your grandmother, in Holland.”

I nearly dropped the phone.

“I’ve been doing research, and it bothers me that a whole family was deported from this home to Bergen-Belsen. I have done a lot of research on your family, and I want to put up memorial plaques on my home in memory of your grandmother’s family, who lived here.”

“That’s very nice of you.” I was floored. “How did you get my number?”

“Well, I found your family on Yad Vashem’s website, and the contact for the family is a Gita?” Anneke’s voice was warm now.

Of course. Oma Fanny’s cousin, the family historian whom I recently interviewed for this booklet.

“She told me you recently interviewed her for a family project, and she said you’d be a good contact for more family information and to consent about the memorial plaques.”

I couldn’t put the phone down. I abandoned supper as Anneke shared that she had reams of papers she’d dug up about the family’s stay in Holland, including their matzah order, which they’d placed with the shul in Holland even as their daughters were being deported to Auschwitz and they were desperately trying to escape. I was awed — by this tidbit, and more by the way in which Hashem had been sending me vignettes about Oma Fanny, seemingly from thin air. Anneke promised to send me photos of the matzah order cards and other things, and we hung up warmly, promising to stay in touch.

Over the next few days, Anneke sent me valuable material: photos, documents, and small details that brought the Ehrenreich family’s tale together.

With Anneke’s additions, the booklet was finally ready for print. My cousins, talented design artists, laid it out, and we printed it for the extended family. It’s an accomplishment, and it feels good.

“How did you pull it all together?” different cousins ask me after reading it.

I don’t hesitate. “Yad Hashem,” I answer. “I guess it was just time for the tale to be told.”

Oma passed away nearly 20 years before I was born. I never met her; her life could easily have been a mystery to me forever. But in His kindness, Hashem parted the curtains so that my family and I could get a glimpse into the life of my majestic grandmother; so that we could, in some way, finally meet our Oma.  Ff

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 944)