Rena Quint

Rena Quint / Freida Lichtenstein (F / Poland, 1935), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Ghetto> <Camps> <Bergen-Belsen> <Liberation of Bergen-Belsen>

• MEMOIRS : A Daughter of Many Mothers (2017)

Book : A Daughter of Many Mothers (2017)

• A Daughter of Many Mothers: Her Horrific Childhood and Wonderful Life (Mazo Publishers, 2017)

Yad Vashem

Rina Quint was born as Freida "Freidel" Lichtenstein in December 1935 in the city of Piotrkow Tribunalski, Poland. In 1939, when Rina was three years old, the Nazis invaded and occupied her hometown. In October 1942, her mother and her two older brothers were deported to the extermination camp of Treblinka where they were murdered. Rina, who was not yet seven years old, was deported with her father to a concentration camp, where she pretended to be a boy in order to survive. When Rina's father was murdered, she was left alone in the camp. She was finally sent to Bergen Belsen concentration camp. In the various camps she was interned she was adopted by different women, but they all died. At the end of the war, Rina went to Sweden, where she was adopted by a Holocaust survivor who passed away a few months later. In 1946, Rina emigrated to the United States with an adoptive mother, also a Holocaust survivor, who after three months also passed away as a result of her poor physical condition. Rina was then adopted by a Jewish couple who didn't have children. Rina earned her bachelor's and master's degrees in education and worked as a teacher in schools and, as a lecturer at Adelphi University in New York and at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. In 1984, Rina and her husband emigrated to Israel with their four children who were already married. Rina has been volunteering for more than 30 years at Yad Vashem where she meets with groups from around the world.

Hadassah Magazine (July 2018)

Each Friday evening as she blesses the Shabbat candles, Rena Quint “brings to mind the mothers I have known,” she writes in her moving memoir, co-authored with Barbara Sofer, Hadassah’s Israel director of public relations and communications. In A Daughter of Many Mothers, Quint and Sofer chronicle the stories of those women.

Born Fredzya Lichtenstein in 1935 Piotrkow, Poland, Quint’s childhood was cut short by the Nazi invasion. Her birth mother, Sarah, whose face she can barely remember, was her first savior, thrusting 6-year-old Fredzya into someone else’s arms when she herself faced arrest; Sarah as well as Quint’s brothers were murdered in Treblinka. “She lets me go. She saves my life,” Quint acknowledges in a simple statement that belies the emotional deprivation that ensued.

She calls her second mother “the Teacher,” a woman to whom her father entrusted his beloved daughter when they were deported to Bergen-Belsen. The Teacher and a cadre of unnamed women protected her in the concentration camp, sheltering her from the cold and keeping her alive until the British liberated the camp.

Other mothers appeared during Fredzya’s postwar recuperation in Sweden, which had welcomed 6,000 Jews: beneficent volunteer caregivers, gentle nurses and another survivor, Anna, who had precious visas to America for herself, her son and her daughter. Tragically, the daughter died, allowing Fredzya to assume her identity and visa. Fredzya was 10 when she reached New York City with Anna, who was determined to adopt her—but then Anna died. Once again, the orphaned child was alone and abandoned. “The war is over,” she writes, “and all my mothers are gone.”

Remarkably, another mother—as well as a father—soon appeared: generous, kind and childless Leah and Jacob Globe, both 46, who invited her to spend Shabbat with them. The search for family was over. Fredzya became Rena, a Hebrew name chosen because it means “joy,” a joy that goes on to characterize her future—college, a happy marriage, a fulfilling career, aliyah to Israel, meaningful volunteer work, speaking about her experiences at many institutions and gatherings and, most important of all, motherhood. The daughter of many mothers became the mother of four, the grandmother of 22 and a great-grandmother of 19. For Quint, a horrific childhood morphed into a wonderful life.

Quint’s story, fluidly written and threaded with scholarly references to works by psychologists, sociologists, historians and theologians, throbs with faith and hope, insight and optimism.