KEEPING MEMORY ALIVE AUSCHWITZ SURVIVOR WON'T FORGET HORRORS.

Byline: DENNIS McCARTHY 

Rena Drexler was a young 14 when she jumped off a cattle car at Auschwitz in 1941 with her seven sisters and six brothers, clinging to the apron of her mother, Rose.

Nearly four horrifying years later she was an old 18 - still alive but down to skin and bone when the Allies arrived to liberate the concentration camp.

Everyone else in her family, except for one sister, was gone. Either starved, worked to death, shot, or burned in the ovens. All of them.

Rena survived by being a hard worker, one of the fastest the Nazi guards could find to rifle through the pockets of the clothes stripped off the backs of Jewish families arriving in cattle cars.

``The guards would stand over us as we went through stacks of clothes looking for rings, money, anything of value people were trying to hide from them,'' Rena says. ``When we found something, the guards would smile and grab it from us, stuff it into their pockets.''

The 78-year-old North Hollywood Holocaust survivor has erased the ugly smiles of the guards from her mind, but she still sees the young, beautiful faces of her brothers and sisters frozen in time every night when she goes to bed and every morning when she wakes up.

She refuses to forget them because that would mean forgetting a big part of the horror of that Godforsaken place where millions of her people died. And forgetting is something Rena Drexler will never do.

Not on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz and not on the 65th or 70th anniversary, if she lives that long.

And if she doesn't, she will go to be with her family again knowing she has done everything she could possibly do as a survivor to make sure we never forget, either.

Dozens of warm thank-you letters from college and high school students are scattered across Rena's dining room table, along with proclamations and awards from city and school officials.

They thank her for opening young eyes to one of the darkest chapters in history - for showing them there are no guarantees that good will beat evil, so love and respect your parents and grandparents now, treat them with dignity because you never know.

``That education came too late for many of us, but not for them,'' Rena says. ``Our power as survivors is to teach our children.''

She will go anywhere, anytime - speak to any group - to keep the Holocaust from becoming just another footnote in the history books for future generations.

It wasn't always that way. Like many survivors, she kept the gruesome details inside for years, hiding the horror of her youth from her own two children until they were adults.

``I didn't want them growing up feeling sorry for me,'' she says. ``They shouldn't live my life. They should live their life.''

She even went so far as to have the identification numbers tattooed on her left forearm at Auschwitz - 52057 - removed by a doctor in 1965. The scars are still visible.

``I got tired of waking up every morning still feeling like a prisoner.''

The only time she regretted removing the numbers was on two trips back to Auschwitz to be with other survivors.

``I couldn't cry when I was a prisoner there, but I cried plenty on those two trips,'' she says. ``I remember thinking I belong with this group - with all these people with those numbers tattooed on their forearms.''

It wasn't until about 20 years ago that his mother finally opened up fully to her own children, says 53-year-old David Drexler, an Encino attorney.

``Burbank has a very progressive program for the Holocaust memorial, and they had finally convinced her to talk about her experiences at a local church,'' he says. ``Mom invited my sister, Nina, and me to come with her.

``I remember leaving that church drained and depressed after her talk, realizing why she didn't want to darken and depress our lives as kids with all the horror that had happened to our family.

``Now it was personal. Now I realized fully for the first time why I didn't have grandparents on my mother's side, why there were no aunts and uncles around.

``The full magnitude of it had come home,'' David says. ``Since then, I've taken my own two sons to visit Auschwitz. I wanted them to see it firsthand, to know their family history, and keep it alive.''

Her husband of 55 years, Harry Drexler - a Polish soldier who fought in the Russian army in World War II - tries to coax his wife to turn off the television set Wednesday night and come to bed.

``Rena, why do you torture yourself?'' he says, as his wife continues to watch a TV special on the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.

``I can't help it,'' she says, quietly.

Dennis McCarthy, [phone]

dennis.mccarthy(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Rabbi Marvin Hier places a candle at the Simon Weisenthal Center on Thursday night during ceremonies honoring the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp.

(2) Rena Drexler, 78, who gives lectures on her experiences at Auschwitz, holds a photograph of herself in her younger years. She arrived at Auschwitz at age 14 in 1941 with 13 siblings and her mother, Rose. Only she and one sister were alive four years later.

Hans Gutknecht/Staff Photographer