Man crafts Holocaust plaque for synagogue

Reprinted with permission from the Journal Inquirer May 02, 2000

By Heather Nann Collins, Journal Inquirer May 02, 2000

WINDSOR - Beneath the miniature replica of the Yad V'shem are a handful of Hebrew words: "They gave to us their hands and their names, which we will never forget."

The V'shem, a menorah representing eternal remembrance for the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, is mounted on the wall at Congregation Beth Ahm, Windsor's only synagogue.

And next to it, built by congregation member Manuel "Manny" Stein, is the newly installed Holocaust Memorial Board.

The board's dedication came on Monday, the start of Yom Hashoah - the observance of the Holocaust victims.

Stein, a self-described "jack of all trades" who is retired from United Technologies, took two years to build the mahogany board. Bronze plaques will be attached by congregation members to remember and honor families and friends.

For now, there is one plaque on the board, a memorial to his wife Ronda's families - the Wittlins, Lifschitzes, and Schildhauses - many of whom died at the hands of the Germans.

Ronda Schildhaus Stein doesn't like to talk about her experiences as a persecuted Jew, so her husband shares her story.

Born in the 1930s in the Ukraine, near Lvov, Poland, Ronda was one of five children.

The beginning of the end for her family life came one day when she was a little girl. A group of Nazi soldiers came to the family's home and demanded that Ronda's father dig a grave.

Fearing it was for himself, Schildhaus refused - and was severely beaten by the Germans. The Nazis then took Schildhaus to a camp for detained Jews, but he was freed shortly afterward, when the family bribed some guards.

But it was too late. Schildhaus died two days after his release, from the injuries inflicted by the soldiers.

The Nazis would return to the family's home, first confiscating the farm animals, and then, eventually, moving Ronda, her mother, and four brothers to a ghetto.

The ghetto was the last place Ronda saw her mother and three of her brothers.

Nazi soldiers eventually arrested Ronda's mother and one of her brothers during a sweep one night; the four other children managed to hide. But the Germans returned a few days later.

Two more Schildhaus brothers were taken, leaving Ronda and one of her older brothers.

Orphaned, without money or food, Ronda and her brother decided to try and return to their old home but were warned against it by those sympathetic to the Jews.

The children wandered the countryside, begging for food and shelter, and eventually were taken in by a family. That family took an enormous risk, Manny Stein says; the punishment for harboring a Jew was death.

In the spring - Stein isn't sure of the year - the children were forced to go out on their own, where they met a teen-age boy, a Christian, who sympathized with their plight.

The boy convinced his parents to take Ronda in. Her brother remained on his own, though the family fed him when they could. But eventually, Ronda's brother stopped coming by the family's home, leading Ronda to believe he had been captured by the Nazis.

Ronda attended Catholic school while she lived with the family, keeping her safe from Nazi suspicion.

When the father of the family was drafted into the Russian army, the son also left, leaving Ronda and the mother on their own.

After the war, the two went to Lvov, to live in a boarding house run by the woman's brother.

In Lvov, Ronda was discovered by a cousin who was a soldier in the Russian army. She was eventually sent to a refugee camp for Jews in Germany. A refugee camp organizer tracked down a brother of Ronda's mother, who was living in New York, and arranged for her to travel to the U.S. in 1949.

Ronda lived with her surviving family for a few years, when she and Manny met at a relative's Bar Mitzvah. The couple were married in 1956; they raised four children and have six grandchildren. The Holocaust memorial is for their children and grandchildren, too, Manny Stein says, so that they will never forget the family they never met.

"When a person passes away, we set up a stone in the cemetery showing that they have been here," he says. "Many people have families who perished in the Holocaust, and no one knows but them. That's why this is important, as a reminder."