Dr. Tal Ben Shahar: My Grandmother Was A Medical Miracle

  • 3 months ago
Dr. Tal Ben-Shahar’s grandmother, a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, teaches him a very important lesson about gratitude and beauty.

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Transcript
00:00My role model is my grandmother.
00:02My grandmother, Goldie, was born in Sziget, Romania,
00:08and everything was wonderful until 1939,
00:11when war broke out.
00:13They rounded all the Jews in the village
00:15and sent them to war camps and concentration camps.
00:19Both her parents were murdered in the camps.
00:24Her five brothers were murdered
00:26in front of her very eyes in Auschwitz.
00:32When D-Day came, the Allied forces won the war,
00:36the British came in to liberate Auschwitz.
00:40And the soldiers came in,
00:42and next to the soldiers were doctors.
00:47And they moved person by person,
00:49the soldiers with the doctors,
00:52and the doctors would say yes or no.
00:57Yes, meaning take that person, put them on the truck.
01:01No, meaning leave that person here.
01:04He or she is going to die anyway,
01:06and we don't have much space in our hospitals or in our trucks.
01:12Person by person, yes, no, yes, no.
01:17They come to my grandmother.
01:20She's in her 20s then.
01:22She was skin and bones.
01:25She, of course, had no hair.
01:27She was very sick.
01:29The doctor looks at her and says no,
01:34and then moves on to the next person.
01:37The next person is Scheinke, my grandmother's sister.
01:43She was sick, but she was better.
01:46And the doctor said yes.
01:50She was too weak to stand up,
01:53so a soldier bends over to pick her up.
01:58And Scheinke does not speak English,
02:01but for a few words, screams no.
02:06She holds on to my grandmother's wrist,
02:10her very thin wrist,
02:13and she screams no, no, sister, sister, no, sister.
02:20And the soldiers try to open her hand,
02:24and they can't because she's holding on so tight.
02:29No, no, sister, sister.
02:32And the doctor looks at them and says,
02:37Okay, making this motion, put them both on the truck.
02:43And both go on the truck, and they go to hospital.
02:46And for over a month, my grandmother does not put on a gram of weight,
02:52but she refuses to die.
02:55Doctors from all over come to see her
02:58because she becomes one of those medical miracles.
03:03And she puts on weight after a month, after two months,
03:07and she continues to put on weight.
03:10And after seven months, she's healthy enough to walk,
03:13and she's sent back home.
03:15She arrives in Sziget on a cart,
03:18a farmer's coach with a horse pulling it.
03:21And a man on his bicycle sees that coach coming in
03:25and recognizes the woman there.
03:28The man's name is Josef, Josi.
03:31And he bikes over to the coach,
03:33and he sees Goldie and recognizes her,
03:37even though she doesn't look like she looked before.
03:40But he recognizes her eyes, the sparkle there.
03:44And she hides when he comes over
03:46because she doesn't want him to see her as she is now.
03:49And he says, Hello, Goldie.
03:51And she says, Go away.
03:53And he says, No, I will come with you.
03:55And he holds on with his bike to the cart,
03:57and the cart pulls both of them to her home.
04:00And he helps her up the stairs to an empty home,
04:04to a wrecked home.
04:06And he comes later and gives her a gift, chocolates.
04:11And she savors it.
04:13She hasn't had chocolate for four years,
04:16and she savors every bite.
04:19And he says, I will come to pick you up tonight.
04:23We will go to a movie.
04:26And they go to a movie together.
04:28And two weeks later, they get married.
04:31And she's pregnant.
04:33And she gives birth to a little girl.
04:37And I fast forward now to 1987.
04:41I go with my grandmother to her sister's grave,
04:45her sister who had just passed away a year earlier,
04:50Shindy, her sister who saved her life.
04:54And we go to her grave just outside Tel Aviv.
04:57And we're standing there, and my grandmother is talking to her.
05:00And she says, Shindy, Talik is here with me.
05:05And things are going so well and so wonderful.
05:09Sipi is doing well.
05:11Moti, my father, is doing great.
05:14The children are just so wonderful.
05:16And she's telling them, and she's talking to her for half an hour.
05:19And I'm just observing this wonderful, amazing woman.
05:27And then she looks at me and she says, Talik, let's go.
05:32And we walk, and it's a beautiful September day.
05:37The wind is blowing.
05:39The sun is shining.
05:40And I see a dove flying.
05:43She holds my wrist as we walk among the graves.
05:50And then suddenly she stops.
05:54And she looks up and she says, what a beautiful world this is.
06:04Such a pity we have to leave.
06:08And she continued to walk.
06:12My grandmother lost her entire family.
06:20My grandmother went through horrendous experiences that are not imaginable.
06:29And my grandmother chose to live.
06:33And my grandmother chose to appreciate this wonderful, beautiful world that we live in.
06:43My grandmother told me that this is a beautiful world.
06:52I believe her.