Miriam Eshel's Journey

View Miriam (Rot) Eshel in a larger map

 Miriam Eshel (maiden name: Rot) is a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia. In the map above I trace out her journey both during and after the Holocaust. She is the last surviving member of her family. Her entire family perished during the Holocaust except her and one younger brother, however he was killed in later years during military service in Israel. 

During the Holocaust Miriam moved around several times. She experience both ghetto life and concentration camp life and was lucky to survive a brutal death march near the end of the war. I found that by mapping out her journey, I was able to better understand and grasp the distances she had to travel during this time. Even though I do not know what exact routes she would have taken to get to these places, just the "bird's eye view" really put the distance into scope. She had to travel almost 200 miles (probably more, given that her route would not have been a straight line) in a crowded, barely breathable cattle car from Munkacs, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz in Poland. Some months later she was transferred to a work camp in Stutthof camp. While her story doesnt say how she got there, my speculation is that it was again by crowded cattle car. This journey was twice as long as the first.

Another thing that blew my mind so to say was her journey from Stutthof, Poland to Bramberg, Germany. From a bird's eye view this was more than 450 miles! And she had to make this journey by foot in the middle of winter with barely any food. This was during the death march and was was 1 of 100 out of 1000 who survived. This journey is like walking from Chicago, Illinois to Memphis, Tennessee with barely any food or rest. I think it is safe to save that her survival is nothing short of a miracle.

A photograph taken in the Munkacs ghetto of Miriam and her family. Miriam is the older daughter (top right side)

In 1945 Miriam was liberated by the Russian army, but her journey was not over yet. However, her living conditions dramatically improved. After liberation Miriam was reunited with her brother and they wanted to leave Europe. Because Miriam and her brother were just kids and had no money they couldn't get certificates to places like the US or England and technically not even Israel. But Miriam found a group to help her and her brother get to Israel, but it was not easy. What I found interesting about this journey, after the Holocaust, was not so much the distance, but all the places she had to jump around to before getting to her intended destination. As you can see from the map Miriam moved around twice as much or more than she did during the Holocaust. What is interesting is that this movement wasn't caused by the fact that she had moved around a few times during the Holocaust and couldn't settle in one intended area, but rather that to get to the place she wanted to be (Israel), she had to endure the sort-of politics of getting those to get her and her brother there. They were often told either to wait or to go somewhere else for an wait there. Miriam didn't even step foot on Israeli soil until late 1947, more than 4 years after she had been liberated by the Russian army. 

Overall, I think that mapping Miriam's story really enabled me to put event to a place and gave me a spacial understanding of the events that occurred. To me, personally, I think this is a better way to learn about the Holocaust overall, because it is not just facts or a story from a book, but now there is some really physicality to the facts, to this story.  Not only is there a visual map that I can look at, but there is now a mental map in my own head, which I think will help commit this story to memory.

Miriam and her husband, Jacob, during their 50th wedding anniversary in 2003