Sometimes, Riva Kremer’s memories of the Holocaust are so painful that she chooses not to think about the past. Other times, she reaches farther back in her memory and is comforted by recollections of a pleasant life in Grodno, Poland, where her husband, Chaim, ran a dry cleaning business and Riva cared for their two children, Linda (b. Lyuba) and Josef.
Although the family was confined to a ghetto after the Nazis overran Grodno in the summer of 1941, they managed to stay together until February 1943. On a cold and wintry day, they were loaded onto a crowded cattle car bound for an unknown destination. When the doors opened, they found themselves at Treblinka, one of the most notorious Nazi death camps, where the killing machinery operated with chilling efficiency. Riva considers her survival a miracle. As the family was herded from the train, Chaim and Josef were immediately sent to the gas chamber. But Linda was pulled aside. Crying, “I want my mommy, I want my mommy,” she clung to Riva, who was inexplicably permitted to go with her. Both escaped the fate of the vast majority of Jews who were sent to Treblinka; instead of being murdered, Riva and Linda were sent as slave laborers to the camp of Majdanek.
In Majdanek, Riva and Linda were assigned the macabre task of sorting the belongings of the dead. While there, they met Vivian Chakin, a girl they had known in Grodno. The three immediately grew close, Riva caring for Vivian as if she were her own daughter, and nursing her back to health when she fell ill. Determination and luck kept Riva, Linda, and Vivian together for the next several years. Together, they endured horrific conditions at Trawniki (where they were forced, once again, to organize the clothing of the Nazis’ victims), Bergen-Belsen, and Auschwitz. At Auschwitz, death surrounded them night and day. When dusk fell, the lights from the crematoria lit the sky. Riva, Linda, and Vivian were in Theresienstadt, a ghetto transit camp in Czechoslovakia, when Allied troops liberated them on May 8, 1945.
Attempting to reach Palestine, the three made it as far as a camp for displaced persons in Austria, Vivian came to the United States in 1946, and Riva and Linda arrived in 1951 under the sponsorship of distant relatives. They lived in New York, where Riva found a job in the garment industry. Linda married Morris Penn, a survivor whom she had met in Austria, and the couple settled in Texas, establishing dry goods businesses in Newgulf, League City, and La Marque. In 1965, Linda and Morris settled in Houston and Riva joined them there. Explaining why she chose not to remarry, Riva says, “I didn’t want to. I had a very good husband.”