In her epic love story Susan Kaszas describes with touching directness, what it feels like to be taken from one's family, to be beaten, cursed at, poisoned, and to witness unspeakable, systematic cruelty. But the hardest aspect of her personal and collective hell was being separated from her one love, her husband, Alex. From Love to Triumph is a love letter to Alex.

It is this love that persists throughout her writing, as the unbreakable golden thread that binds her to life when she is tempted to escape into suicide. Her passionate commitment to her love permeates every day of fear and suffering. It is so strong, she is even more concerned about Alex than about herself, while she is forced into the cattle cars heading for the concentration camps. She says, "It made it easier on me that you did not get to see the long stretch of cattle boxcars we were herded into and I was spared of looking at the expression on your face."

The total devotedness of her heart to Alex gave her the strength to survive the Nazi death camps. The faithfulness of her undying love shines through: "My Dear Alex, you must know that I can't live without love and the only reason I am still alive is that I want to be with you again in this life. If you love me as much as I love you, then my suffering was not in vain."

But the cruelty of the Nazis was not as bad as the psychological torture she had endured while living with Alex's family before the holocaust. She says, "Here I knew the reason for my suffering -- I was a Jew. But it had hurt me so much more at home, when I couldn't fathom the reason for being tormented by your mother and her side of the family so savagely. I remember how hard I'd had to fight my mother-in-law and her ilk for my sanity, while here in Birkenau, Poland, in the midst of the worst concentration camp where people were being mass-butchered, the flames were always visible from the throat of the crematorium and bloodhounds ran rampant, I was in so much better shape emotionally than when she'd been around."

Love is something that cannot be killed. The body can be crushed, the psyche can be beaten down, but nothing can take love away from the human heart against one's will. That is the meaning and purpose of Susan's survival and triumph.

 

June Marshall

Editor

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