NEW YORK (VINnews) — After a year in which many elderly people have been confined to their homes due to lockdowns and the fear of contracting coronavirus, the vaccines now available have enabled them to once again rejoin society. It is no surprise therefore that they are among the most excited to receive the shots.
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97-year-old Mira Rosenblatt’s second vaccine shot was due on February 2nd, when snow blanketed New York with 17 inches of snow, more than all the previous year combined. However Rosenblatt, who survived Nazi ghettoes, labor camps and a death march, was undeterred by the snow, climbing over a 4-foot-tall snowbank to get into the car of her granddaughter-in-law, who was picking her up to take the shot. Outside the hospital, she waded through a pool of water that went up to her ankle.
It must have brought back memories of her experiences in the war, because after the shot she started telling graduate nurse student Sylvie Jean Baptiste about those experiences. Baptiste’s task is to check up on patients during the 15-minute wait after the vaccination.
“I am there for them if they need support,” Baptiste told the New York Times. “I offer them a snack, maybe water or juice. If they seem nervous, I start conversations with them.”
Rosenblatt, an older woman wearing a raspberry beret and pushing a bright blue walker, caught Baptiste’s attention.
Mira Rosenblatt (center) with Sylvie Jean Baptiste (left) and Kristine Ortiz (behind)
“She said, ‘I am not nervous. I’ve been through way worse,’” Baptiste recalled. “Then she started telling her story.” Other nurses including Kristine Ortiz also came to hear Rosenblatt’s amazing story. Ortiz, the nurse overseeing the vaccine operation has also noticed Ms. Rosenblatt, with her bright purple striped shirt and sad but alert eyes, as soon as she walked in through the door. “She had a presence about her,” she said. “Sometimes with elderly people you have to be mindful about their mental side, but she was sharp.”
Rosenblatt was born in Sosnowiecz, Galicia. In 1939, she was just 15 years old when her family was forced into a ghetto. In 1942, she was taken from her family and sent to a labor camp. In early 1945, while on a midwinter death march — when Nazis made inmates walk long distances with no rest, water, food or coats — she escaped the group and hid in a forest.
She stayed alive there by eating worms and other creatures, digging into the frozen ground to find them, and sleeping in holes underneath snow for warmth. (It is no surprise that she was unfazed by the New York snowfall). After several days of this, Mira found refuge on a farm, but she was scared of being turned in and went back to the wilderness. Later she successfully blended in with a group of dairy farmers by hiding her Jewish identity and stayed with them until the war ended
In 1945, as a 21-year-old, she was reunited with a former suitor from Poland named Henry Rosenblatt, who had survived Auschwitz. They immigrated to America and were happily married until he died in 2017. The had four children, eight grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. Rosenblatt spent the coronavirus period working on a memoir with her daughter Belinda. The memoir was published last fall on Amazon under the title “Strength: My Memoir”.
Rosenblatt believes that she has a responsibility as a survivor to tell as many people as possible about her experiences. Before the pandemic, she used to speak at in-person engagements, but now she has resorted to zooming to spread her story. Never one to shirk opportunities, she went straight from her second shot to a Zoom event organized by the American Society for Yad Vashem, Israel’s official Holocaust memorial center. She told her story there for more than an hour to some 250 spellbound participants, including Baptiste.
“It would be hard to tell if she had side effects from the Zoom,” she said. “I did feel a little like I was watching a celebrity. I was like, ‘I met her.’”
Ortiz also felt in the presence of greatness. She ended up buying Rosenblatts’ book and asking her to autograph it. “When you have someone who has survived something like this, you can’t help but stand still,” she said. “There were definitely tears. I had to ask someone to take over for me for a few minutes afterward because I felt shaky from the story.”