Document text
Oregon Road Conditions & Cams Email Story to a Friend March 16, 2006 Photographs provide a window from Killough�s time spent after World War II in an American camp in Austria for dislocated Jews. Her final immigration papers are also shown. Mail Tribune / Jim Craven RELIVING THE HORROR OSF’s ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ rekindles haunting emotions for a Medford woman who fled the Nazis during World War II By JOHN DARLING for the Mail Tribune The sound of bombs in Sunday’s Oregon Shakespeare Festival performance of "The Diary of Anne Frank" hit close to home for a Medford woman. Pauline Killough jumped in her seat, and cried frequently during the play about a Jewish family in hiding, trying to survive Nazi terror. As a girl of 7, Killough, like many Jews in Poland, fled the Nazis. Bombed out of their home in Bilgoraj in 1939, she and her family began a trek through hell, starving, freezing, hiding and trying to scratch out a living in Russia — where Jews historically have been the victims of considerable persecution. "The play was very upsetting and exhausting," said Killough, 73. "I don’t normally watch anything about war, bombs or tanks. It’s all too fresh in my memory. It never leaves you. What I hope is that my grandchildren don’t have to go through what I went through: the discrimination over religion." The play catalyzed a post-show panel where Killough brought home the realities of genocide before the congregations of Ashland’s Temple Emek Shalom and First Presbyterian Church. Advertisement On the panel with Killough were Catherine E. Coulson, who played in "Anne Frank"; and Judith Rosen, dramaturg for the play and head of the Jackson County Sexual Assault Response Team. All are members of Temple Emek Shalom. With America’s "national myth of optimism and shiny new cars," it’s important for us to hear stories like Killough’s, said Rosen. "We have to understand how lucky we are — and we have to realize how close this (the stories of Anne Frank and Killough) are to us." Like the play, Killough’s story served to personalize the Holocaust for people 60 years later, said Coulson. "She was about three years younger than Anne Frank. She could have been Anne Frank — and I was so amazingly moved and uplifted by her story," said Coulson. "It’s the idea that we will prevail. The Jewish people will survive — and the more she can impact people, the more her travail and journey will have been worthwhile." The play, based on teenager Anne Frank’s years spent in hiding with her family, is important to watch, Killough noted, because many people think the Holocaust never happened — and many believe it could never happen again. After much Nazi bombing, Killough’s town was burned by Poles to deprive its resources to the German Army, she said. Russians, battling the Germans, told inhabitants that German forces would soon occupy the region and send Jews to death camps, so they fled east and lived a few years near Kiev, where her parents worked and she and her two sisters went to school. In 1942, however, the Germans invaded Russia and the family for three years again became refugees, working on Soviet collective farms, grubbing menial jobs, hitching rides in boxcars, living in railway stations and, because they had no identification papers, being interrogated many times by KGB agents. "We were on trains for months, in rags, freezing," Killough said. "We’d find work in one place and it would run out and we’d move on. We were cold, scared, hungry and had lice, with no baths for months on end." Killough remembers some things — having a swollen stomach from hunger, rounding up geese from the pasture, picking up cow chips to burn — and feeling bullets from nearby combat whizzing by them as they lived in the forest. As the Germans advanced, Pescha Bitterman (her name then) and her family fled to Siberia, where the girls were trained as welders and found work. After the Nazis surrendered in early 1945, the family struggled back to Poland and were soon put in an American camp for dislocated Jews in Austria. Her older sister, Sonja, was put in an arranged marriage, the custom then, with a man whose wife and baby were killed by Germans. "They were in hiding in a bunker (in Poland) and the wife was afraid the baby’s crying would give them away, so she came up out of the bunker," said Killough. "They were taken by the Germans and killed. The (gentile) Poles would turn them in. The Poles had no love for the Jews, ever." Killough went to school in the Austrian camp until 1949, when she and her family, after many medical and bureaucratic obstacles, were able to join relatives in the U.S. Her parents’ health was broken, so she supported the family by working in a necktie factory. Killough, then only 17, worked hard on getting rid of her accent and learned to hide the fact she was Jewish, she said. But the scars of war fade slowly, if ever. "You’ll never find me without the doors locked," said Killough. "When I put the menorah candles in the window at Chanukah, I’m apprehensive about what could happen. I still experience fear. I hope it goes away before I die." But, even though America fought to liberate Europe from the Nazi scourge, Killough has had moments where Americans, when they learned she was a Jew, turned away. When her story was printed eight years ago in a newspaper in her former home of Port Angeles, Wash., several friends who didn’t know she was Jewish "never spoke to me again." But the hiding is over. Killough doesn’t ask others what their religion is — and doesn’t expect to be asked hers. If it comes up, however, she will tolerate no slurs of Jews and will proclaim her heritage. "I’ve earned it," she laughed. John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at [email protected]. Mail Tribune Home | Local News | Sports | Business | Obituaries | Life | Opinion AP News | Archives | Site Map | Community | Classified Copyright © 1997-2006 Mail Tribune, Inc. All rights reserved. Privacy Policy | Terms & Conditions | Website Feedback www.bingo.com Absinthe Supply Home Security Systems Trunks, Footlocker Custom Build Computers Computer Security Discount Hotel Reservations online casinos news Debt Consolidation California Casinos Generic Viagra Windermere Van Vleet Deep Muscle Stimulator Sports Equipment Online Casino Reviews Hammocks Online Bingo Entertainment Guide Online Casino Fundraisers Sudoku Online Casinos Canada King of Spirits Advertisement s Advertisement