Russian Schejne Maria Laskier, the woman who learned to hold back her tears, died on Wednesday in Buenos Aires, just a few hours after turning 97. Known as Sara Russian, she had endured so many extreme trials that courage became her constant companion, and tears grew rare. Born in 1927 in Lodz, Poland, she was taken to Auschwitz and Birkenau, survived, and escaped Europe to enter Argentina illegally. She came from Paraguay. Thirty-one years after surviving Nazism, her eldest son Daniel fell victim to Argentina’s military dictatorship. She joined Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo and never lowered her arms or removed her white scarf. She would say, I fight not to forget, so that the Nazis and those who are here will never regain the power they once had.
When Hitler’s army arrived in Lodz in 1939, the town trembled. Her father Jacob was a tailor, and her mother Carola cared for the family with quiet devotion. She began violin lessons, but a Nazi soldier shattered the instrument right before her eyes. Sara soon learned to dodge the clutches of barbarism in Auschwitz, where her mother’s life hung in the balance in a gas chamber. She never saw her father again. After two months in a concentration camp, she was sent to a German aircraft factory to rivet wing plates with a compressed air gun. The Allied advance brought her to another death camp, Mauthausen in Austria. The Red Cross arrived as the camp stood under its shadow. During her years of captivity, she met Bernardo, and together they left Europe for Argentina, drawn by the promise of a life free from fear and the chance to start anew. They had two children, Daniel and Natalia.
Years of the Argentine dictatorship
The wave of political violence in the early 1970s turned into a torrent that rose with the fall of the government. When Isabel Perón was in power, on March 24, 1976, concentration camps and walls marked with Nazi symbols became more common in Argentina. The regime targeted individuals who stood in the way of control, including people at the National Atomic Energy Commission (CNA). Daniel, described as a bright child who excelled in every subject, later studied to become a nuclear physicist. He was kidnapped at the door of his job on July 15, 1977. The CNA was a particular target for the army, whose anti-communist zeal led them to ban the book La cuba electrolítico, labeling it as secret. The book was not about a device for decomposing ionized substances; it was a symbol of Castroism in their eyes. Daniel’s life was endangered by this paranoid fervor. He was taken by force into a van that afternoon and vanished without a trace. Sara believed he might have been at the Naval Mechanical School, known as ESMA, a secret center located near the CNA facilities.
History repeats itself, but not as farce. The family gunfire of misfortune found a second act. Sara filed habeas corpus petitions and, with her husband, wrote to everyone, even the Pope. She joined the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, becoming part of the original core that surrounded the pyramid in the square as police forced them to retreat. These gatherings became a ritual of resistance against the de facto government, which mocked them as mad. Sara was one of those people who refused to abandon their captured children or accept the regime’s logic of state terror. In Buenos Aires, she remained a steadfast survivor among a circle of war veterans. She recalled, the saddest moment was when Daniel disappeared, and even the survivors grew wary of the fear that gripped the country.
Democratic years
The dictatorship’s defeat in the Falklands War of 1982 sped the return to democracy. Her husband’s hopes dimmed as time passed; Daniel did not reappear, and a tumor eventually claimed his life on May 2, 1984. When Raul Alfonsín took office, Sara was already in her early forties and became a continuing symbol of mothers who sought justice. Even as the 1990s arrived, she remained engaged with the Founding Line and continued to advocate for accountability for those who violated human rights. Her daughter blessed her with four grandchildren, and the family saw hundreds of former oppressors face justice through the reopening of cases. Former dictator Jorge Videla died in a regular prison. Through it all, Sara believed that life had given back much to those who stood up against injustice. She carried herself with quiet resilience and, even in her later years, held onto a sense of grace, facing the memory of the era with courage. The stories of the survivors and their families continued to echo in the public imagination, reminding a country that political violence must never be forgotten. Even in old age, she never ceased to dance with the memory of the life she built after so much loss.