Holocaust survivor Leah Goltzman spent her time in Corpus Christi sharing stories of moving from place to place to survive during World War II.
Goltzman, who frequently volunteereed helping the Jewish community, died Dec. 29, 2017. She was 79.
In 2016, the then 78-year-old spoke to a group of more than 100 Banquete Junior High School students at the Jewish Community Center in Corpus Christi. Goltzman’s message to the students was to never take freedom for granted.
Goltzman, a native of Poland, often spoke about her experiences to crowds at various schools and churches in the area.
In “Every Day is a Gift,” an oral history interview of her experiences on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s website, Goltzman details some of her experiences as a Jewish child in Poland.
As a child, she and her parents moved from Poland to Russia to escape Nazis.
“Children were always more of a danger of giving your hiding place away. But because of my father’s skill with tailoring, which would bring us sometimes food, sometimes some vitamins or a bar of soap that we would need. That’s why I was usually the only child in the group,” Goltzman said in the interview. “I had no friends until later because people didn’t want to be with little children. Children met danger.”
Soon her family was taken to live in a slave-labor camp in Siberia, according to a 2006 article. In 2006, Goltzman told students of Baker Middle School the only reason she survived was because Russia lacked gas chambers and ovens.
Goltzman later found herself married and living with her children, Naomia (Goltzman) Hamilton and Gary Goltzman, in Corpus Christi. She later welcomed her grandchildren Alisa “Shimona” Hamilton, Noah Hamilton, Jonah Hamilton, Sydney Goltzman and Ethan Goltzman and her stepgranddaughters, Kathleen (Hamilton) Harper and Sarah (Hamilton) Robertson.
“Life to me, to my parents and people like us — life has been a gift. Is a gift. I don’t know how to explain it. I’ve had my ups and downs, illness, losses of family members and friends. But on the whole, I still feel very, very lucky,” Goltzman said in the interview. “I have been allowed (and my parents were thankfully allowed) to live out our lives in a normal way.”
Goltzman goes on to say that the first thing she realized when she turned 50 was that she outlived her grandparents, who were murdered by Nazis, she said in the interview.
“To have longevity in that sense, to live out your normal life span of whatever God gives you, is very special,” she said.
Despite all Goltzman has gone through throughout her lifetime, she told crowds she would speak to at schools and churches to never hold grudges, which she believed could damage the world.
“The fact that my husband shared his Corpus Christi town with me because I never felt I had a hometown with my background. This helps me, too,” she said in the interview. “If people complain — life isn’t perfect and they’re getting older — that is such nonsense. Life is good. Life is worthwhile.”