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Esther Moses
Hatterberg's People
Reporter: Larry Hatteberg
| July 12, 2004--On Hatteberg’s People, she is an East Douglas icon.
Wichitan’s see her every day minding her downtown store. But what a new generation doesn’t realize is that this woman is the last link between the Nazi concentration camps. She survived Auschwitz. |
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“My father was here since 1928.”
Esther Moses is Sam Zelman’s daughter. He ran this little clothing store for years. Now all that is left is Esther.
She is a fixture along East Douglas.
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She is one of those people we pass by. Time is passing her by. Life too.
By all accounts, she may be the last living Wichita memory of the Holocaust. Her mother died in Auschwitz, but Esther somehow survived.
“And I think – why me?” |
On Liberation day in 1945, the American’s opened the gates and Esther walked out of Auschwitz. She was excited and talked too fast for one of the soldiers.
“And he said say it slow and I said ‘Father America’. Oh he says, your father is in America. And I said ‘yes’. Then he was the one who wired my father and a half an hour later my father knew I was liberated.”
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So long ago, so many memories.
“That’s my husband.”
In one of the liberation camps she met a man who would be her husband…Herbert Moses, also a concentration camp survivor. He died in ’91. |
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In her 80’s now she tends to the store daily. Never selling much….but that’s not the point. It’s a place to go.
“I have to. Look, I don’t play cards. I don’t go to meetings. I
don’t go to the Synagog like they have all the way over there on 21st
street. I just come down and I go home. Keeps me busy.”
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In a life of great pain, there has been great joy. Her father, her
husband, her children. Today she is in History’s shadow --- presiding
over a business of yesterday – and watching life go by. I’m Larry
Hatteberg.
“Well whatever.” |
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