David Wisnia and Helen Tichaur were a couple who lived through the horrors of Auschwitz Nazi death camp, but they were forced apart during the ordeal. After 72 years, the two have finally found each other again.
The two were Jewish victims of persecution being held at the infamous camp in 1944 during World War II. They secretly were lovers, and they both miraculously survived the ordeal that so few came out of alive. They were torn apart when David was sent to the Dachau camp. They planned to meet again after the war at a community center in Warsaw after the war ended, but the meeting never took place.
Their lives went in diverging paths after the war, but the couple finally met each other again 72 years later in the United States in 2016. When they finally met again after decades, it was at Helen’s New York apartment. They had not seen each other since they were imprisoned at the concentration camp.
Helen had married and received the surname Tichauer, but her husband passed away before the meeting of her lost lover. She told David that she had gone to Warsaw to meet him. David never went to Warsaw because he felt it was necessary to flee to the United States for survival.
The two first met in 1943 at the camp. It was an unlikely encounter because prisoners were kept separate by gender. They both had special privileges, and this enabled them to meet. David had some singing talent, and this gave him some special privileges as an entertainer of the guards.
Helen had been given a unique job in the camp as a graphic designer, and she made female prisoners’ uniforms. The two gave other inmates food so that they could be given some secret time alone together. Prisoners would serve as lookouts for the two for up to an hour at a time.
David says that he never knew how the meetings were arranged, and Helen was the one who orchestrated them. He didn’t know how much effort she expended to keep him alive. Helen said that she had saved him five times from being shipped to a worse situation. She also used her office job at the camp to secretly aid the resistance. She manipulated paperwork and reassigned inmates. She helped get intelligence reports to resistance fighters.
When the couple learned that the Russian army was drawing near, they both made successful escapes during prisoner transfers. Both of them ended up marrying other people. David ended up in Pennsylvania while Helen lived in New York. Helen recognized David who had been in his 20s the last time she saw him and was now over 90. They both confessed their love to each other once again as they finally met in Helen’s New York apartment. In 2018, Helen died at the age of 100.
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