The Holocaust, cancer ... and she's still here

A lot of things can make us grateful for another birthday. Coming face to face with death --- your own or a loved one's --- is one them.

Either way, you learn to take life as it's handed to you. That's been Sally Nyssenkorn's way for more than a century now. Through childhood malnutrition. Through family separations during World War II. Through breast cancer and a double mastectomy at age 72. Through the deaths of two husbands.

Come what may, she always tried to make the best of it.

"As long as you can walk and talk and know what's going on," she says, "then it's OK."

On Dec. 26, surrounded by dozens of friends and family, she celebrated another birthday. Her 102nd.

"Parties are good," she says.

In a lot of ways, her story sounds like so many other Holocaust survivors. And unless you've had the good fortune of avoiding the evening news lately, you might want to scream enough already.

If you haven't, you know we can never tell their stories enough. The inhumanity against humanity that continues to play out here and across the globe demands it.

And so that's why Nyssenkorn stopped awhile recently to share her story. She and her children survived one of the worst moments in history.

Nyssenkorn was born in Rimanov, Poland, in 1904, at a time when life was anything but OK.

Still in 1929, after marrying the man of her dreams, she moved to Antwerp, Belgium, and started a new life and family. She learned a new language and new customs.

As World War II became imminent and Belgium the next target for the German invasion, they packed only the things they could carry and fled to safety in France.

Months later, however, her husband, along with about a half-dozen other family members, was ordered to report to a work camp and ultimately deported to concentration camps. None of them ever returned.

After placing her children in "safe" houses, Nyssenkorn went into hiding with her two sisters, working as long as they could for French families willing to hide them.

By some miracle in 1945, she learned her children were still alive in a small mountain village near Grenoble. With the help of a group of American soldiers, Nyssenkorn hitchhiked to Tulins, where she was reunited with her children.

"It was unbelievable," said Regine Rosenfelder, Nyssenkorn's oldest daughter.

Back in Belgium, they found all their belongings gone. Nyssenkorn's husband, her children's father, was dead, killed in Hitler's gas chamber.

Somehow they managed to piece together their lives, taking odd jobs. Then in 1951, Nyssenkorn's only brother who'd managed to escape to the United States brought the family to Atlanta.

It was another hard beginning. A new language to learn, and new customs to get used to.Nyssenkorn, always a quick study, got a job at Lovable Brassiere. She became the quickest "cup seamstress" on the line. Slowly she began rebuilding her life and, after her daughters were married, found love again.

Abe Nyssenkorn was six years younger, but after 39 years of marriage, he suddenly died. He was 89. Nyssenkorn was 95.

The thought of outliving two husbands, one younger than her, leaves a twinkle in her eye, the same one you see when she talks about her sister, Sabina Rose.

"She died taking a nap," Nyssenkorn smiled. "That's my wish when I die."

Until then, she'll just keep enjoying life.

That means mingling with the others at the Buckhead assisted-living facility she calls home. It means daily exercise and, by all means, chocolate and bingo.

It might not be the party she wished for, but while she's here, Nyssenkorn said, she'd just as soon, well, dance.

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Copyright 2007 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution