By the time Guta Birman arrived at Auschwitz in 1944, she had already survived the Lodz Ghetto, the loss of her parents and the disappearance of her two brothers. Head shaved, starving and freezing, Guta clutched her sister, Minya, and said, “Don’t walk away. I won’t recognize you.”
From then on, the two sisters held onto each other for dear life, through Bergen-Belsen, liberation and a new life in America. Despite having lived through the horrors of the Holocaust, Guta Birman Wickens led a happy, prosperous life in her adopted home of San Francisco. She died Sunday, May 13 at age 86.
“Mom was very warm, loving and outgoing,” said her son, Marvin Wickens. “She really loved people and wanted to be with her friends and family. The more the better, any time, day or night.”
Born in Wloclawek, Poland, Wickens and her family were swept up in the Nazi nightmare early on. One brother escaped to the east but was deported to Siberia, where he later died. The family struggled to survive in the Lodz Ghetto, where Wickens’ father died. Guta found subsistence work there making shoes out of straw.
When the S.S. came to empty the ghetto, the Birman sisters hid their mother in a clothes hamper, but they were discovered. Their mother was sent to the gas chamber when she arrived at Auschwitz. The sisters were soon transferred to a work camp, and then to Bergen-Belsen.
How did they stay alive? “It was a miracle,” said Minya (Mini) Birman Fox, who lives at Rhoda Goldman Plaza in San Francisco. “When the war ended, we heard, ‘Girls, don’t be afraid. The war ended.’ I hadn’t seen Guta for days. When we saw each other, she said, ‘from now on we are not going to part.’ And I stayed with her. Then the English came in.”
Among those intrepid liberators was a young Jewish Brit named Leslie Wickens. He met Guta at Bergen-Belsen, and the two struck up a friendship that blossomed into romance. In the months after liberation, he returned to England but eventually sent for Guta. They were married and lived in England for two years.
But she never forgot that pledge to stick with her sister. When Minya moved to San Francisco with her husband, Guta and Leslie Wickens followed suit; in 1948 the couple arrived in the Bay Area to stay.
With little money but plenty of chutzpah, they started a life here. Leslie Wickens found work as a carpenter, and eventually opened a 24-hour grocery store at Ellis and Powell. Son Marvin was born in 1950. “Mom used to say these were the best years of her life,” Marvin Wickers said.
The couple sold the grocery and opened Leslie’s Hofbrau, a Financial District eatery. That led to careers in real estate, which proved a wise move for the couple.
Whatever she was doing, Wickens was only too happy to share her joie de vivre. “When I was growing up, my mom had a big thing for getting together with people,” remembers Marvin Wickens. “We would have these large gatherings, mostly Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. They built a life for themselves here, did fine financially, appreciated what they had and loved America.”
The couple belonged to Congregation Ner Tamid in the Sunset. In addition, Guta Wickens served as a volunteer with ORT. Leslie Wickens died in 1991, but Guta persevered. Son Marvin Wickens recalls one especially happy day: his son Zachary’s bar mitzvah in Madison, Wis.
“Mom was glowing with pride,” he recalls. “It was a kind of triumph at having beat Hitler. That evening at the reception we had klezmer music. Mom started to dance around the tables. She had congestive heart failure, but damned if she didn’t get up, join this line and dance around.”
Though in ill health the last few years, Wickens never lost her fighting spirit. “Survivors often say it was just luck surviving. But I saw in my mom this strength and will to live, a real determination to go on,” Marvin Wickens said.
Guta Wickens is survived by son Marvin Wickens of Madison, Wis.; grandson Zachary Wickens of Madison; and sister Mini Fox of S.F.