Private Shani with Sultana, a Holocaust Survivor.

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On Sunday, April 19, 7000 soldiers from several different units in the IDF visited more than 9,000 Holocaust survivors all over the country as part the Flower for a Survivor project, which was created in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The visit was organized by the Education and Youth Corps in conjunction with The Foundation for the Benefit of Holocaust Victims in Israel. High ranking officers and soldiers currently in their mandatory period of service arrived at the homes of the survivors and listened attentively to each of their stories.

Knowing that the number of living survivors is decreasing, the Education and Youth Corps and the Human Resources Branch increased the number of survivors that were able to participate in this project, which is in its fifth year of operation. The Chief of the General Staff, Lt. Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, also participated in the project and made a scheduled visit.

Among the many officers that took part in this project were many senior ranking officers, such as the Chief of the General Staff, The Head of the Human Resources Branch, Commander of the GOC Northern Command, the Head of the Computer Service Directorate, the Head of the Technological and Logistics Directorate, the Chief Commander of the Navy, the Commander of the Military Colleges, and other senior officers with the rank of Brigadier General—all of whom visited survivors at their homes.

"We’re trying to give survivors a token of our appreciation not only for surviving what they did, but for also having the strength to come to Israel and to build a nation", said Major General (res.) Yoram Cohen, one of the reserve officers participating in the project.

House Visit

Sultana Cohen celebrated her 92nd birthday several months ago at the home of her daughter Sarit. Sultana, who is one of the only Jewish survivors of the Holocaust in Salonika, Greece, cannot tell her stories because of a recent speech impediment and other health problems. "I vowed that I will take care of her until her last day so that she doesn’t ever have to suffer again," said Sarit to the IDF Website. Sarit takes care of all of her mother’s needs and prepared her for the visit of Private Shani Rosenwasser, a soldier from the Education and Youth Corps, who arrived to her house in Tel Aviv.

Sultana was born in 1917 to a bourgeois family of seven in Greece. When she was very young, her family moved to the city of Salonika where they stumbled upon economic turmoil. Her parents had no choice but to give her away to another rich Jewish family when she was seven years old. "Her new family never accepted her as part of the family and treated her as a maid; she didn't go to school and my mother has remained an analphabet until today," recounted Sarit.

When the Nazis invaded Salonika, Sultana and her family members fled to a group of villages in the mountains. There they settled with a Greek Christian woman who had a roof and hid the family behind an old cupboard. In that tiny room, they ate, drank, and slept. During their three years in that attic, they almost never saw the light of day; their short trips out of the attic where just in order to find food, being that the woman that hid them rarely supplied them with things to eat.

Sultana used to sneak over to the barn that housed the landlord’s chickens, and she broke the eggs that she found in order to drink the yolks right there, on the spot. Then, to get rid of the evidence, she would bury the peels of the eggs in the ground. She would try to put eggs in her shirt and smuggle them to the attic for her family. That is the way Sultana and her family managed to survive during the war.

At the end of the war, Sultana turned to the Jewish Agency to find out what happened to her biological family, who she used to visit from time to time before the war; she lost contact with them during the war. Her entire family-- her parents, two brothers and two sisters--were murdered at the Auschwitz extermination camp.

Even though Sultana suffered a great loss, it didn’t stop her from living. Without any family, friends, or education, Sultana built her life from scratch. She got married, came to Israel, and had three children. In 1999, her husband passed away and for a long time, Sultana lived alone in a small apartment in Tel Aviv until her daughter Sarit, married with a child, took her into their home in order to take care of her. "If she could speak, she would say that she is happy," explained Sarit to Private Shani. "Mom loved Israel and even more than that, she loved its soldiers." The recognition of Sultana's story was very important to Sarit. "I'm very happy that people will finally hear her story and that people other than us will be able to remember it," she concluded.

Private Shani was also very excited after the visit. "It was very interesting to get a glimpse of Judaism in Greece. The Holocaust in Greece is an aspect of the Holocaust that people don’t hear about very often." She said and added, "Her little smile at the end of the visit made coming here completely worthwhile."