Chatting with Hannah Sara Rigler

Today's blog comes to us from Abby, who had a lovely talk with a member of the Museum family.

I am so excited to share this story with you. One of our beloved Gallery Educators, Hannah Sara Rigler, was on her way to the Museum on Thursday with her husband, the Hon. William Rigler, when they had an interesting encounter on an Access-a-Ride bus.

Sandy Blum and her father were also riding the bus, although they were heading to the Intrepid, when she recognized Hannah. “I transcribed a diary of yours in 1976,” she said. Sandy was working at Brooklyn College at the time, and Hannah was working with the Center for Holocaust Studies there. (CHS merged with the Museum in 1991.) The diary, which Hannah donated to the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, was written by Willy Fisher, one of the British POWs who saved her life. Hannah had been on a death march following the evacuation of Stuthoff concentration camp in 1944 and left the line in search of food for her mother and sister when a local boy cried out that she was trying to escape. To draw her pursuers away from the line—she was convinced she would be killed and didn’t want her mother to see it happen— she ran. Miraculously, she eluded her pursuers and hid in a barn when she was discovered by Stan Wells, part of the band of British POWS who hid her. Together they protected her for three weeks. The diary, which describes the discovery of Hannah Sara and what happened when the area was liberated by the Soviet Army in February 1945, lives on the Museum’s second floor. You should know, the POWs were declared Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1988.

Sandy told Hannah that the diary made a tremendous impact on her, to which Hannah replied, “You know, I wrote a book.” As the Access-a-Ride bus dropped off Hannah and her husband, Sandy jumped off the bus, and ran into the Pickman Museum Shop where Warren happily sold her a copy of 10 British Prisoners-of-War Saved My Life. But before Sandy leapt back on to the bus, she and Hannah exchanged phone numbers.

Hannah and her husband came into my office to tell me the story and to opine on other matters of the day. For instance, she knows Daniel Lubetsky, one of our speakers on Nov. 17, because she was close to his father Roman Lubetsky z’l. And she is the only person I know who calls mayoral hopeful Bill Thompson Billy. (She’s known his father a long time, too.) And, she sends Christmas cards to Andy Goldsworthy’s mom. They met when Hannah and her husband planted a tree in the Garden of Stones with Andy. “I taught her the word naches. I told her when you have pride in your children you have naches. And she wrote back that she was still shepping naches for Andy.” And then that led to a discussion of Yiddish and how there seems to be a Yiddish expression for everything, including things you probably don’t need to express.

In our day-to-day lives, it is easy to get caught up in the administravia. But, I have to say, mornings like this one make it all worthwhile.

Pictured: Hannah Sara Rigler and her husband, William Rigler, plant a tree in the Garden of Stones.