Fay (Aranka) Zeller (Herskovics)

Youtube video of Fay Zeller http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XlIaBqAFuag&list=LL6RQMPgad10nKvPp6k...

Excerpt From an article in Annapolis paper: A-25742. That’s the number tattooed on the inside of Fay Zeller’s left forearm.

“Auschwitz,” she said as she looked out into the distance. “I think all the (Nazi) sadists got sent to the camp.”

“I can’t add it up … All my uncles … All my aunts,” Mrs. Zeller, 86, said of the names and faces of loved ones who died or vanished, their fates unknown even now.

“I got to thinking the whole world is bad,” Mrs. Zeller said. Some pointed memories stick in her mind 60 years later: “A soldier asked me what I was thinking, and I was scared and couldn’t tell him, and he slapped me ….”

She and her husband Herman Zeller arrived in Annapolis in 1950. He worked at a kosher deli and butcher’s shop on Market Space, where City Dock Coffee now operates. Eventually, the Zellers bought the business – he was the butcher, she served customers up front.

“I worked days and nights,” Mrs. Zeller said. “I cooked everything (at home). I schlepped it to the store,” she said.

Mrs. Zeller worked nights as a seamstress in her home, and raised two children.

“I slept three hours at night. The rest of the time, I worked,” Mrs. Zeller said.

Kneseth Israel was the center of the Zellers’ lives.

They lived first on Murray Avenue and then on Thompson Street, both locations close enough they could walk to the synagogue on sabbath, as required by Orthodox doctrine. And when the synagogue moved to Spa Road and Hilltop Lane, they did too.

Mr. Zeller died in 1986 and Mrs. Zeller is now weakened by age, and no longer able to cross the street for religious services.

Regardless of the pain and suffering she has known, Mrs. Zeller brightens up when discussing the one thing that seems to be nearest and dearest to her heart. Her religious faith.

“I raised my (two) children Orthodox, and they all stayed Orthodox. And my five grandchildren are all Orthodox.”

Fay Zeller lived a long and meaningful life, and was nifter at the age of 92