Devorah and Avraham Zwiegl

Name of the parents: Devorah and Avraham Zwiegl. It is possible they wrote Zwiegl and it was accidentally recorded as Zvigel. My parents had recently immigrated, having been in the country for about a year. They were Holocaust survivors who arrived from the Displaced Persons’ camp in Bergen-Belsen, Germany. Originally they were from Poland. My father survived Auschwitz, with a number on his arm. In 1951 my mother gave birth to a boy in the Meir hospital in Kfar Saba. They brought her the baby for breastfeeding. He was a fair-skinned child with fair eyes. She breastfed him for two days I think, and then the next day when they didn’t bring the baby. She asked what happened and they told her he died. My father and my mother’s sister asked to see the baby’s body but were told it was impossible as he was transferred to Hasharon hospital and buried. Some years ago I tried to find the hospital’s notes about my mother’s maternity stay to determine her date of birth but there were no records at all. It was as if the boy had never been born. As if he had never existed. My parents were broken, another addition to the pain over the loss of their families in the Holocaust. Obviously they never considered that a crime was committed against them. All they heard was: “You’re still young you will have more babies…”

This event caused my mother such trauma that for years she would wake up screaming and crying from nightmares. It returned her to scenes of the Holocaust. Years later she received psychological treatment and lived on valium.

My parents were broken, another addition to the pain over the loss of their families in the Holocaust. Obviously they never considered that a crime was committed against them. All they heard was: “You’re still young you will have more babies…