The World Should Know About Ana’s Christmas When They Have The Dedication for The Liberation of Auschwitz

A major historical development will be taking place soon at the end of this month: there will be the commemoration for the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the remaining victims of Auschwitz after the victory against Germany and the end of WWII.
My mother-in-law and her family had many harrowing escapes during the war. I wrote about the family’s experiences in four previous novels. The fifth novel, which will soon be printed and presented to the public, told the story about Anna’s four sons; they were brought to a farm to hide in a hidden room which was built in the back of a barn. They did escape the Germans but there were at least one or two narrow and harrowing escapes. The name of the book is: Echoes Resounding From The Past: Hidden Truth Poems; and I promise that you will have the sense of wonder and appreciation for the freedom that we have in this country, when you finish reading the book.
It was in the late part of the summer of 1944 that the family fled to the woods. This time was worse than ever. They knew that the Nazis had come to kill for the final solution. They knew that the Nazis wanted to kill off all of the Jews before the war ended and that the Nazis were struggling to overcome the recent victories that the Americans, and British, and French had against them.
The Freier family fled to the woods, which boarded near Micholovce, Slovakia in order to escape the onslaught of the German army. They ran from their home almost naked, in summer clothes—hardly clothed and chilled by the cold of the long, cold summer nights. When they heard gunshots in the background, and tanks firing their fierce rounds of ammunition, they got down on their knees and prayed for their lives. Joseph told his wife Anna, “We must all crawl through the woods. We have no choice but to crawl and hope for the best”. They did manage to escape the fiercest onslaught that had ever come to the people of the town of Micholovce. When the family stopped for the first time in the woods, they realized that they had stumbled upon an oasis. Small quince tree, ripe with fruit dotted the landscape and they were near a lake. The family fished for the grayling fish, and they ate the fish, and they were sustained. Week later they were found by Joseph’s trusted foreman and a friend that both men trusted. They were brought food and clothing, which they warmly welcomed and were grateful for. They continued with this type of routine—fishing for the grayling, and eating the food that was delivered, and eating from the forest’s bounty, until the winter of 1944 and 1945, which was the coldest and the fiercest ever. The snow continued to fall for weeks. The temperature was icy cold and every- thing outside up above their underground bunker was frozen solid.
On the night before Christmas of 1944, my mother-in-law, Anna, climbed out of her bunker to pray to G-d to save her five children, and her husband, and herself, who were literally starving to death. She stood there in the middle of the pitch-black dark night in no-man’s land—deep in the heart of the woods that few people had ever seen. The chill dulled her thoughts. She was no longer afraid of dying; she stood there, almost rigid—in tattered and torn clothing, and in boots that no longer fit her feet—they had become so cold. She prayed to G-d to save her family for as she expressed with all of her strength that she had left, “they were innocent and deserved to live. At that moment, she remembered the many times that she had herself visited the Christian poor and had brought them wood to heat their stoves and their chimneys. The winter’s weather had been so severe that they were unable to find food in the forest.
At the moment that she ended her prayers, she heard voices—they were voices from people, the sounds of people traveling through the woods in the darkness of the night and singing. At that moment, she admitted to me that she didn’t even care if they were Nazi soldiers. She and her family had to have food. She looked in the direction where the sound of the singing was coming from, and she saw sleighs in the distance; she saw lights from lighted torches. She called out to these people, “I am here. I am here”, and they heard her, and they brought her and her family food to eat for the Christmas and the New Year, and they announced the new year.
I would like to ask if anyone has any information on the church in Slovakia that these people who risked their lives, belonged to. I would like to know if these people were partisans from Slovakia? If anyone has any information, please email me the information at cfreier2003@yahoo.com. If I can find the names of the people and more information, then I will have the material, the validation which I am seeking, so I can write my sixth novel on the family’s experiences of the very cold winter of 1944 and 1945 during World War II.
I thank you for reading my article.
I am Cheryl Freier, the wife of Martin Freier, who was a survivor.
http://www.thegraylinghiddentruthpoems.com