The late Julia Field was the most courageous woman I have ever known. She was strong, determined and feisty.
We met in a creative writing class at the Jewish Community Center of San Francisco. Six months later we were inseparable, more like sisters than good friends.
Julia showed all of us in the class the concentration camp number etched into her arm. I shuddered and my heart ached for her. She was sent to Auschwitz as a teenager with her mother, brother and sister. Julia was the only one of them to survive. While in Auschwitz, her captors ordered her to inspect the purloined clothing of other inmates and remove and set aside whatever jewelry she found. Along with the other women sharing her duties, she hid the jewelry from the Nazis by grinding it into the dirt. At the end of the war, Julia immigrated to the United States and lived with her father, a professor at U.C. Berkeley.
During her last days, I visited Julia in the hospital with another classmate. I was with her the day before she died. I watched as a tremor shook her whole body. She fought for her life until the very end. I will always remember Julia’s courage, both in her life and in her death.