Holocaust survivor, educator honored
She will receive honorary doctorate, Founders’ Award.
— Barbara PLAIN TWP. Turkeltaub says she will share her story for as long as she is able, for anyone still willing to listen.
Stark County’s last living Holocaust survivor is being awarded an honorary doctorate in humane letters from Walsh University in North Canton. She’s also receiving the university’s Founders’ Award.
“They asked me to address the graduating class,” she said. “It was a great honor for me. I was very surprised and very happy.
“I try to educate and inform the public about what happened as long as there are people who are denying what happened.”
Turkeltaub, 83, was instrumental in getting a Holocaust memorial placed on the grounds of the Statehouse in Columbus.
“I bear witness,” she said. “There’s not a day that goes by that I don’t remember.”
A nurse by profession, Turkeltaub often lectures at Walsh, where she also oversaw the health needs of the university’s brothers. She views her contributions as a way of repaying the kindness shown to her by Catholics when she was a child.
One of five siblings born in Vilnius, Lithuania, to a middle-class family, Turkeltaub was about 6 when the picturesque town came under attack by the Russians. When the Nazis invaded in 1941, Jews were herded into barbed-wire ghettos and forced to wear Star of David patches. When the ghetto was dismantled in 1943, the family was forced to split up.
‘Take care of your sister’
“My parents didn’t explain what was happening, but my father put me on a stool and said, ‘Basha, something terrible has happened. In order for us to survive, we have to separate,”’ she recalled, adding that he also strictly instructed her not to speak Yiddish or reveal her last name.
“He told me, ‘Always take care of your sister,”’ she recalled. “The separation was terrible.”
Turkeltaub and her younger sister, Leah, were sent to live with non-Jewish acquaintances in a nearby village, but the girls ran away after she overheard plans to turn them over to the Germans. They hid in a brickyard, where a young Catholic priest found them. He took them to a convent, where they stayed until two years after the war ended.
“We weren’t told the war was over,” she said. “My mom was going door to door and tracked us down with photos.”
The three eventually were reunited with their only brother. Her father, two older sisters, grandparents and numerous other relatives perished.
Turkeltaub moved to Israel, where she studied nursing. There she met her future husband, who was visiting from Canton.
She emigrated to the United States in 1953.
American dreamers
Mark Turkeltaub said his parents not only embraced the American dream, but also did what they could to help others achieve it. Joseph Turkeltaub, a successful homebuilder, died in 2006.
“No one appreciates freedom and living in the United States more than people who are not born here,” he said. “They (survivors) appreciate the freedoms in this country more than any other group of refugees. ... The students who hear her speak now will likely be the last generation to hear and speak with a survivor.”
Barbara Turkeltaub worked at the Menorah Park Center for Senior Living in Beachwood, a facility which had a high concentration of Holocaust survivors. In addition to her nursing duties, Turkeltaub said, she worked to educate the staff on how to be more sensitive in dealing with the survivors. Because she speaks Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish, “I could speak to them in their language.”
“Anybody can give a pill,” she said. “It takes a person to understand why they cry.”
Turkeltaub urges people to be more accepting of others, describing some people who doubt the veracity of the Holocaust as “naive.” She lambastes calls to bar Muslim visitors as “fascist.”
“We live in such a diverse society,” she said. “Get to know other people. You have tremendous opportunities today to connect with other people.”
Servant leadership
“If ever the phrase ‘servant leadership’ applies to anyone, it applies to her,” Walsh President Richard Jusseaume said.
Turkeltaub not only oversaw the health needs of Walsh’s Christian Brothers of Instruction, he said, but took them to doctors’ appointments, made them meals and even traveled to Alfred, Maine, to see Brother Francis Blouin, Walsh’s third president and best friend of her late husband. In 1994, the two men led a group from Walsh to Auschwitz, one of five Nazi concentration camps that Joseph Turkeltaub survived.
“I’ve watched her over the years. She was extremely helpful to the older brothers as they were advancing in age,” Jusseaume said. “When you think about the tragedies she experienced, she never lost her faith in people. She never got beaten down to the point where she couldn’t help.”
Rabbi Emeritus John Spitzer, co-founder of Walsh’s Jewish-Catholic Institute, said no one would know what Turkeltaub endured as a child.
“Barbara is a beautiful, gentle woman,” he said. “She projects humility and a deep, spiritual faith. One would think she would have lost her faith and her hope because of her past, yet she is the soul of spiritual belief.”
Spitzer said Turkeltaub’s qualities radiate when she’s on campus.
“Her story, which she shares when asked, grabs the soul of the students and of the community,” he said. “In a world so filled with turmoil and violence, she models quiet strength and beauty.”
A rare honor
Jusseaume noted that Walsh seldom confers honorary doctorates, estimating about 50 have been awarded since the school’s founding in 1964.
“The last one was in 2013,” he said. “We often give out Distinguished Service and Founders’ medals. But I knew from her mentor, Brother Francis, that she always felt bad about never having received an official college degree. She qualified for our Founders’ medal, but I also thought it was a marvelous opportunity for someone who values education.”