Stephen Shooster purported heart attack in a ghetto hospital. I believe she was injected with poison. This was a common practice, uncovered after the war, in the hospital that admitted her. The main doctor was convicted of war crimes. I was in need of a change. I wanted to refresh my identity after what I had been through. I was married once before in the USA, and that ended in divorce. “So I went to Haifa, and I was standing on a terrace overlooking Ben Yahuda Street. On another outside patio, I saw my friend Celia and said, ‘What are you doing?’ She said, ‘I have family here would you like to meet them?’ “I decided to visit with no idea it would lead to meeting someone I would want to spend the rest of my life with. Standing on the side was a young man fixing a radio. “My eyes glistened as I met him and learned he was from a small town near where I grew up. He understood implicitly what I had been through. At the time I did not have much of an idea of the extent of his incarceration. We both liked each other and decided we would meet at an outside restaurant. “The next day or two we were sitting at Hadaris in Haifa. We gradually started talk- ing about the time Leon was in Krakow after the war. I knew the areas he was talking about, so this made for an easy conversation. Then I told him about Oscar Schindler and my sister, Helen. At the time, Schindler was not as famous as he has become. Leon was very interested in my story and happy to hear about this man who took
Leon and Betty Schagrin at the Beach in Israel.
250
Made with FlippingBook Digital Proposal Creator