The woman who survived the Nazi regime and lost a son by the military dictatorship in Argentina

Buenos Aires, January 27, 2012
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Sara Rus is the protagonist of a story full of pain and sadness, but despite this she never stopped smiling. She survived the Nazi concentration camps, escaped to Argentina after the war and in the 70’s during the dictatorship one of his sons was kidnapped and disappeared.

In an interview she gave to the BBC, this brave woman described with tears in her eyes the darkest moments of her life as she was forced to walk for two exterminations.

Sara was 12 when World War II broke out. She belonged to a middle class Jewish family who lived in a spacious apartment in Lodz, Poland. The first image she recalls horror, is a German soldier destroying her violin.

Her family was forced to move to the misery of the ghetto, where she spent three years of famine. There her mother conceived two brothers, something expected by Sara for many years, but never imagined they would come under those circumstances. The first died of starvation within a few months and the second was killed by Nazi soldiers at birth.

The only good thing that she rescues of these years is having met Bernardo, who later became her husband and father of her children. He had told one of his family members had fled to Buenos Aires and that if they survived the war would be met in Argentina’s capital on May 5, 1945.

She was then transferred on a train to Auschwitz. There she was separated from her father, who could not even say goodbye. Never saw him again. Amid the despair she faced a soldier to save her mother and miraculously was not killed because she spoke German, and that impressed the military.

Finely Sara was rescued by the Allies, weighed 27 kilos and her mother 26. “The soldiers saw us and they would mourn. I was three months maintained with serum, because I couldn’t retain the food. There were people who died when ate, because the body didn’t resist it,” she said. “You know what date was when we were rescued? May 5, 1945. The date that Bernardo had told me to meet in Buenos Aires.”

After the war, Sara fled to Argentina with her mother and Bernardo. She married him and against all medical odds, had two kids, Daniel and Natalia. Experts had said she would never get pregnant for the serious injuries she received in the concentration camps.

Her life in Buenos Aires seemed to have returned some of the joy that the war had taken away. But in 1976 began the worst dictatorship in Argentina’s history and his son Daniel was kidnapped and never return. He joined the lists of the 30,000 people missing.

Sara then began an endless struggle to know the whereabouts of her son and joined the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo (founder line). She believes that Daniel was taken to the School of Mechanics (ESMA), where most of the 5,000 hostages were killed.

Her struggle continues today in defense of human rights despite all the pain, Sara has not lost her smile.