Callwood Essay 1

Sabina Callwood Virtual Book Sabina Callwood was born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1936. Her father was taken away in 1942 by the Gestapo and her mother stayed with the children but she became ill and had to be hospitalized. The children, who had to be registered with the Gestapo, went to an orphanage. The director was Madam Rosi Rothschild. Rosi Rothschild (right) Yad Vashem She fed and guarded the children but could not save all her charges. She was able to save Sabina and her brothers. Madam Rothschild really wanted to help these children because she knew their mother was still alive. It became apparent that the children had to leave Antwerp to escape the Gestapo. All three children were separated. Her brothers were taken to different shelters outside the city and she stayed in the orphanage. She was very ill and almost died of dysentery. When the Nazis decided to make Antwerp Judenrein, free of Jews, in 1943Madam Rothschild got permission to take her charges to Lasne, away from the city. After that the children were sheltered in a hospital for the handicapped and at the end of 1944 they were sent to another orphanage in a hamlet. They stayed there until the end of the war. Her mother survived Auschwitz and looked like a skeleton when she came to collect Sabina. Then the two of them went to collect her brothers and ultimately they were reunited with her father who had survived by escaping a French labor camp and pretending to be a Christian deaf mute.