Valentina Michailovna Kopytina

For most of us who would read this, it is beyond belief that a leader of any country would issue orders that would lead to the deliberate starvation of millions of his own people. But that is what Stalin started in the Ukraine in 1929. Equally hard to imagine, is the authorization of the murder of millions of Jews and others by Hitler. Vallie not only lived during that starvation but survived nearly ten months in Auschwitz. Rescued by a German officer, she was trained to be a war nurse for Germany and then volunteered to work on the front lines of battle. How that all came to happen is the story of the neighbor I came to know as Vallie. I just knew her as someone who loved bright colors, painted beautiful flowers, and enjoyed making cookies and having tea with friends. But it was over time, tea and cookies the stories began to unfold. Not all were hard to hear. Survivors seem to have an ability to see humor in themselves and some of the situations they find themselves in. For Vallie, it was her own disbelief at some of the things she managed to do while a nurse working on the front lines of battle. Other humor emerges in the USA working as a nurse in a doctor's office while learning English. I would add this. Nothing about starving and nothing about Auschwitz was ever funny. Nothing.