On the Edge of the Abyss

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Ella Lieberman after her release from Nazi Germany's concentration camp in Neustadt - Gleve near Hamburg on May 2, 1945.

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The publishing of this book was made possible through the generous contribution of the Mendel B. Mitchell Fund of Winnipeg, Canada & Sanford C. Bernstein & Co, Foundation Inc. of New York, USA

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© Ghetto Fighters' House • Beit Lohamei Haghetaot. Ella and Emanuel Schieber - Wedding day, February 12, 1946 in 8ydgoszcz, Poland (Emanuel Schieber wearing the uniform of an officer in the Polish army).

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Ella Liebermann-Shiber

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Ella and her mother Rosa Lieberman, and her Husband Emanuel Schieber With their children: Ada, Yehoshua, Shmuel-Samy, and Alexander in their courtyard, at home: 10, Louis Pasteur

Ella Schieber - Lieberman, 1993

- Haifa, October of 1968.

I have tried to express through my drawings all that I felt and saw in my youth, all that made my world dark, so that my work will bear witness to those terrible things. It is a meagre attempt, for I do not believe it possible to convey the horrors we suffered either

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through drawings, or any other form of expression . I began to draw, to sketch whatever was released from within me, grey lines on faded paper.

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I reconstructed each picture shortly after I was liberated. With trembling hands I began to reconstruct the hell from which, by a miracle, my mother and I had emerged. I felt that every drawing

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that disclosed the horrors I had endured in some way eased my mind. My faith in mankind and the world of today gradually returned, despite the cruelties my people and I had so recently suffered. ELLA LlEBERMANN-SHIBER

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ON THE EDG E OF THE ABYSS Ella Lieberm ann-Shiber was released form Nazi captivity in May 1945 near Hamburg, Germany. She was 17 years old, very th in, and clad only in a striped prison garment. She says of herself that she was conce rned with one thing alone - the urge to draw, to bear witness. This collection of 93 sketches bears graphic testirl]ony to the horrors she witnessed; it is a direct representation of recent

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nightmarish memories. awareness; they will serve as a testimony for future generations Born in Berlin, Ella Li ebermann-Shiber survived years of hell . Her ordeals began in 1938 when her family was forced to leave Berlin and reached Bendin in Poland. With the German invasion her

and as a deterrent to those who attempt to deny the real ity of the Holocaust.

family found themselves in the ghetto, "in a hovel where the lack

Ella Liebermann -Shiber chooses a direct, unadorned and exact

of air was such that one could not even light a cand le." She

form of representation , but whi ch conveys "whole-hearted hate".

witnessed the humiliations, torments and destruction of life and

Her sketches give expression to the helplessness and terror of

property wh ich no family was spared .

those subjected to the horrors. It is a voice that warns against the evil and the bestiality in man, against the hardheartedness and

In August 1943 Bendin was declared "Judenrein". Ell a Liebermann-Shiber was sent together with her family to

the cruelty which become uppermost in a society that has lost touch with its humanity, for "the imagination of the murderer far exceeds that of the victim. " (Leah Goldberg).

Auschwitz-Birkenau. Her father and brothers were sent to their

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death. Her mother and she survived, thanks to her artistic talent. She painted portaits for the Germans . As the Russ ians advanced

The uninterrupted flow of drawings created by El la Li ebermann-

towards Auschwitz in 1945 , Ell a Liebermann-Shiber and her mother set out on the westbound "death march" to Germany. They survived the march and were released in May 1945. El la Liebermann-Shiber immediately began to document her experiences through her sketches .

Shiber during the years immediately fol lowing her re lease from the Germans was the beg inning of a process of rehabil itation, a process of return to life. Ella Liebermann-Shiber has also perpetuated the final moments of those of our people that are, in the words of Alterman, "impri nted in every fib re of our be in g" - a mute scream echoing from

She is aware of the fact that once an event or experience is

generation to generation, a scream for life on the edge of the

comm it.ted to graphic form it takes on a universal dimension. The

abyss

image is released from the trammels of time . The sketches incorporate event, time, and memory, thus creating historical

AVI HURWITZ.

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Ella Schieber - next to four of her orginal paintings from 1945, which were in Poland and were transferred to a museum in Auschwitz, where they are preserved to this very day. They were presented to Ella - the painter - during her visit to the Auscwitz museum on May 4.1997, shouted 8S,

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on the occasion of a special reception by the museum's director, Mgr. Jerzy Wroblewski

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Ella ScI" were trE They WE

"Hear 0 Israel, The Lord our God, the Lord is One"

May 4.

With this affirmation the Jews went to their deaths. It was shouted

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in the gas chambers, the crowded trains, the waiting graves, the death camps. "Hear 0 Israel" was the martyrs' last prayer, as they waited helplessly at the mercy of the barbarians. "Hear 0 Israel", that fe ll on deaf ears, sti ll echoes all around us.

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The enjoyment of heavenly, wonderful nature, that was created by God for all mankind gardens, and forests, lakes and mountains was forbidden to Jews. The bright and beautiful sun no longer shone for us.

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human beings. Which child hugged this doll to its small bosom? No more. She lies in a lime-covered pit.

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4 a.m. A shout "Bring the coffee", rings through the barracks. We go to bring coffee. The pot is heavy, th e handles thin, our wooden

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Bread is often stolen at night. A piece of bread and some soup have to last us for 24 hours. A bite every few hours has to carry us over to morning. But sometimes thieves in the night try to steal

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I am sick, My legs no longer carry me, At roll call my mother supports me so that the supervisor won't notice, My stomach is turning, My friend Hanni bursts out of the barracks, She found a beet near the kitchen, J'~~)!nY.l

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She bent over it. Too late l A guard grabbed her, beat and kicked her, She remained crouching over the beet. The guard left, she picked it up, and reeling like a drunk got back to the barracks, Face alight, in spite of the pain and the blood, she thrusts the beet

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a beating every day in return for a beet", At night I could hear her groaning in her sleep,

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The crematoria are dismantled. The Germans' last attempt to erase the traces of their terrible crimes is useless. The Allied armies come upon mountains of dead bodies which the Germans did not have time to burn. In Auschwitz the Red Army found huge piles of human hair, shoes, spectacles and bodies of men, women , and children in open pits.

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The morning of May 2nd 1945 at Neustadt-Gleve . It is roll call . The commander of the camp yells: "We may have only 2 minutes leff to live but you have on ly one. We are still the masters." A shot rings out One of the girls in our row falls. Leaflets fall from the sky:"Surrender!" .

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Were all the seas of the world to turn to ink and paper to cover the surface of the earth, the ink and paper could not suffice to convey the pain and tears of those inhuman tortures. lowe it to my mother that I, a young girl, emerged together with her from that hell. It was she, so we ll versed is suffering, who constantly sustained and supported me whenever I was on the verge of collapsing. "Keep going , my ch il d, this can 't last forever." She herself, weak and broken as she was, refrained from showing her exhaustion, so that I would not give in . Thus, we supported each other. One other factor was instrumental in saving my life - my drawing. drew their faces, their cold, murderous eyes. I drew their famili es, their wives and their ch ildren . Oespite the fact that they had wives and children at home, they murdered the wives and children of others in other countries. Many great artists perished in the camps and the fact that my mother and I survived is - a miracle.

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\ EDITOR - THE LATE AVI HURWITZ DESIGN - SMADAR SCHIENDLER PHOTOGRAPHS - YAIR PELEG

TRANSLATION - YECHIEL YANAI, URI ALONI, IRENE ARB ELL TYPESETIING - "TADPIS", HAIFA PRINTING - AYALON OFFSET LTD. HAIFA