THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, July 10, 1996 TAG: 9607090122
SECTION: VIRGINIA BEACH BEACON PAGE: 04 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, CORRESPONDENT
LENGTH: 109 lines
Every July 4, for half a century, as fireworks burst in the sky, two sisters kept a holiday quietly in their hearts, marking their adopted country's official birthday as their own personal day of freedom.
This year, friends and family gathered to help Anne Friedman of Virginia Beach and Mina Weiser of New York City celebrate their 50th anniversary of coming to America. The surprise party took place at the Little Neck home of Anne's youngest son, Bobby Friedman.
It was mid-morning, July 3, 1946, and 15-year-old Anne Altenhaus stood on the deck of a freighter in Philadelphia harbor watching her American uncle, Oscar Awner, grow more and more agitated as he argued with the ship's captain dockside. Beside Anne was her sister, Mina, 13.
The Belgian girls' visas had expired just three days earlier, and it would take some string-pulling to get them off the freighter. The necessary red tape, which began with her uncle's desperate phone call to a New York congressman, was taken care of in short order because of the upcoming national holiday.
Anne and Mina stepped onto the land they would come to call their own at 4 p.m.
The girls were orphaned during World War II when their parents, Isador and Pepi Altenhaus, were gassed to death by the Nazis at Auschwitz. They spent two years in an orphanage outside Brussels before another uncle, Barney Goldman, then serving in the U.S. Army in France, tracked them down and saw to it that they got passage to America. Goldman, now 82, was on hand Thursday to help mark the occasion.
``If it wasn't for him, we wouldn't be here,'' said Mina Weiser, 63.
Goldman, who lives in Ringwood, N.J., recounted how he had come to locate the two orphaned girls in 1945.
He was stationed near Paris, serving in the Army's ordnance corps, when he received a letter from Awner, saying that the Altenhauses' extended American family had not heard from their Belgian relatives for a long time. Awner wanted to know whether Goldman could help. Goldman tried several avenues, including the Red Cross, in his attempt to learn the whereabouts of the Altenhaus family. Finally, he went to the Belgian military attache's office in Paris.
Goldman couldn't speak French, and the attache couldn't speak English, so the two were having a hard time communicating when a man and woman, both doctors from Brussels, came into the office, overheard the conversation and offered to make inquiries on his behalf. Two weeks later, Goldman got a ``big manila envelope in the mail'' telling him that Anne and Mina Altenhaus were alive and in the Brussels orphanage.
Soon afterward, Goldman signed up for a motor pool detail that was headed for Brussels with the intention of finding his nieces. In Brussels, he went to the orphanage and asked to see Anne and Mina.
``Fortunately,'' said Goldman, ``Anne spoke a bit of Yiddish. She looked a lot like Ingrid Bergman, and Mina was the most gorgeous little girl I've ever seen.''
Anne Friedman remembered Goldman's visit.
``It was like a dream come true when Barney told us about our extended family from New York looking for us . . . before that, I had no idea what would become of us.''
The smell of a peeled orange makes Goldman's visit swim back to both women even 50 years later.
``I brought chocolate, soap and one orange,'' said Goldman. ``Anne said to Mina, `How will we divide one orange among 30 girls?' And Mina said, `You get your best friend, and I'll get mine.' ''
``He brought gum, too, and Mina had never seen it,'' said Norman Weiser, Mina's husband.
Goldman returned to Belgium some months later and took the girls to the American embassy in Antwerp where he arranged for their visas and their passage to Philadelphia.
The girls' father, Isador Altenhaus, was a master tailor, and when it became apparent that his family was in danger from the Nazis, he entrusted his valuable bolts of material to a friend, then went into hiding. Later, the family returned to the Antwerp apartment and tried to conceal themselves there, living without electricity and water.
It was a bolt of wool that led to the Nazis' discovery of the Altenhauses' hiding place.
In order to feed his family, Isador came out of hiding to recover some of the fabric for sale, but was told that it had been confiscated. Three hours later, Nazis raided his apartment. The family had been betrayed.
The two girls were ``dragged out of the car and into a Jewish orphanage - 60 kids, 15 from families picked up through betrayals,'' said Anne Friedman. Isador and Pepi Altenhaus left for Auschwitz on No. 3 transport.
``They were supposed to pick us all up (the 15),'' she said. ``But they never came for us.'' The underground resistance had managed to steal the list from the Nazis.
It would be two years before Anne and Mina learned their parents' fate from the mother of a girl they'd befriended in the orphanage. The woman had survived Auschwitz, and during a reunion with her daughter heard Mina's and Anne's last name mentioned. She told the girls that she had watched as their parents walked toward the gas chambers disguised as showers when they arrived at the Nazi death camp together.
``God was very good to us,'' Anne Friedman told well-wishers Thursday. ``He took away a lot but gave back more. Even though my roots are in Antwerp, Belgium, this is my home, my life.''
Anne Friedman lives in the Thalia section of the city with her husband, Thomas. The couple have three other sons besides Bobby. Brian and Barry also live in Virginia Beach and, with Bobby, run the family business, Birdland Music in Kempsville. Bruce lives in Durham, N.C., and works for IBM. Anne Friedman recently retired after 18 years of employment with the Virginia Beach Department of Social Services.
Mina lives in New York City with her husband. They have two children. ILLUSTRATION: Photo by NANCY LEWIS
Sisters Mina Weiser of New York, left, and Anne Friedman of Virginia
Beach are reunited with their uncle, Barney Goldman of New Jersey,
who helped bring them from an orphanage in Belgium to America 50
years ago. by CNB