‘A Thousand Kisses’ As Yad Vashem Spotlights Hopes Of Doomed Holocaust Victims
![](https://images.forwardcdn.com/image/970x/center/images/cropped/screen-shot-2018-04-11-at-95612-am-1523455061.png)
Image by Yad Vashem
“Hope to see you in good health, a thousand kisses, mommy,” were the last words Betty’s mother wrote to her before being sent with her eight-week-old baby to their deaths at the Sobibor Nazi concentration camp in eastern Poland in 1943.
Sitting at her home with a pastoral view from a hilltop town overlooking the Mediteranean sea, 76-year-old Betty Kazin Rosenbaum read the hand-written letter in Dutch from the mother she never really got to know.
Betty keeps her mother’s original letter in her home, but she provided a scanned copy for a new digital exhibition unveiled at Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust research center and museum in Jerusalem.
After spending several years in a ghetto in Amsterdam, the family separated. In 1943, two-year-old Betty was sent to a Christian foster home in the town of Eibergen in The Netherlands until the end of the war.
Her mother and eight-week-old baby brother were hidden by a Christian family in Neede, but were betrayed by locals.
“She always wrote with a lot of hope and never depressive,” said Betty with a smile. “Here she writes mommy. It is her and then I feel very close with her.”
Yad Vashem recently launched its third digital exhibition of letters obtained from the Holocaust, entitled “Last Letters From The Holocaust: 1943.” The exhibit “I Left Everyone At Home” includes ten handwritten letters in different languages.—Reuters
A message from our editor-in-chief Jodi Rudoren
![](https://forward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/Jodi-Headshot.jpg)
We're building on 127 years of independent journalism to help you develop deeper connections to what it means to be Jewish today.
With so much at stake for the Jewish people right now — war, rising antisemitism, a high-stakes U.S. presidential election — American Jews depend on the Forward's perspective, integrity and courage.
— Jodi Rudoren, Editor-in-Chief