Sarah Goodman's story of survival

May 1941. One day, my dad managed to buy four tickets for a ship sailing to the other side of the Atlantic. The family packed our few belongings quickly and we were soon on the dock, ready to board the ship.  

To our horror, when we tried to get onto the ship, we learned that our seats were also sold to other people who managed to board ahead of us. My dad paid good money and yet we were left behind. Of course, he never received credit or a refund. Once again, we found ourselves trapped in burning Europe.

While watching the ship sail away without us, my dad understood the great importance of leaving Europe before it was too late. At that time, my mom was heavily pregnant and the Nazis had conquered almost all of Europe. Ships were extremely rare.  

One day, my parents met a distant relative in Lisbon. Everything they went through had changed their appearance and it was hard to recognize them. Still, the relative helped them get the money needed to buy tickets for another ship. My dad decided that we had to live close to the port so that when seats became available, precious time would not be wasted walking to the ship and our seats would not be taken by others. We left the rented apartment in which we lived and moved into a small, gloomy hotel located on the beach, next to the port. The four members of our family had to huddle in one small room for several weeks.

The ship on which my dad managed to get us tickets was the last ship to sail legally from Lisbon to Cuba. Afterwards, sea voyages were stopped because they became too dangerous. The German army aimed to sink all foreign ships with its torpedo missiles.  

It was only with G-d’s help that we were able to buy those tickets and sail on that ship in June 1941.  We later learned that the first ship on which we were supposed to sail was sunk by a German torpedo, and there were no survivors! We felt divine providence on our little family.

On Israel’s Independence Day in 1948, we were in New York. I remember dancing in the streets. My mom heard Golda Myerson’s lecture at Yeshiva University.

Sarah Goodman was born on 28.06.1936 in Dortmund Germany. She currently lives in Reuth’s Beith Barth nursing home in Jerusalem.