Shoshana Sheinfeld-Kaspi was born in Topolcany, Slovakia in 1926, immigrated to Israel in 1948 with her husband Yosef Kaspi and her daughter Idit, and after a difficult acclimatization period, moved to Ramat Gan where she lives until today. Her story is interwoven with various chapters and events experienced by the Jewish people and the Jewish community of Slovakia throughout the Second World War, their immigration to Israel and their lives in the young country that was being built.
Shoshana was 14 when war came to Slovakia and struck the Jews there. At the age of 17 she joined the Slovakian partisan forces and went through the horrific experiences of the capture and murder of her first husband in front of her eyes and a year later, the death of her firstborn daughter from an infectious disease.
The stories encompass the process of rehabilitation after the war, her marriage to Yosef Silber-Kaspi, her immigration to Israel with her one-year-old daughter and the difficult acclimatization to the Land of Israel that the family went through. Shoshana didn’t give up and when her daughter became ill and her life was in very real danger, she saved her much as the Biblical Moses was saved, by laying her down on the threshold of the hospital at the mercy of the doctors.
By means of her battle for survival in Israel, her finding means of making a living, bringing up her daughter and son, and subsequently coping with her son’s serious injury in the Lebanon War of 1982 when he was an officer in the armored corps, we delve into the life and experiences of a Jewish family that underwent the hardships of the Holocaust even up to the fourth generation (great-grandchildren) who were born in the Land of Israel.
The stories are moving and inspiring and illustrate the harsh realities of the Holocaust alongside a tale which gives us pause for thought and reminds us that we are nonetheless here in the Land of Israel in spite of everything.
