Part III - Faces and Voices of Holocaust Survivors
Survivors&and
Remembrance
"Forget&You&Not"™.
You Not"™:
T&A&B&L&E&
&C&O&N&T&E&N&T&S
&&iSurvived.org&&
&&ForgetYouNot.org&&
prisoners (from the
sub-camp called Allach)
the&liberating&US&Army
Mauthausen
survivors cheer the
soldiers of the 2nd
Armored Division
of the US Third
The banner reads: "The
Spanish Anti-Fascists
Salute the Liberating
"Fear not your enemies, for they can
only kill you.
Fear not your friends, for they can
only betray you.
Fear only the indifferent, who permit
the killers and betrayers
to walk safely on the
poet who survived the Holocaust only to
die in a Communist prison in
Ref: Lookstein, Haskel: "Were We Our
Brother's Keepers?" New York:
of Dachau, at Liberation,
Cheering the Liberating US
Soldiers: We Are Free ... Free
Faces and Voices of Holocaust
Survivors&
You Not"™
<FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Helvetica" COLOR="#.
father was killed by Poles,
but I was saved by Poles.
It really shows that you can
never generalize about
people."&&
<FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Helvetica" COLOR="#.
<FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Helvetica" COLOR="#.
<FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Helvetica" COLOR="#.
"By telling our stories, by
teaching about the Holocaust
and writing our memoirs, we
force ourselves to recall the
painful past in order to
assure future generations of
children an innocent and happy
childhood free of menacing
violence. Now we want to be
assured that our efforts were
not in vain. We want to live
out our lives secure in the
knowledge that these
inhumanities will never happen
again - not because there are
laws which say they are wrong,
but because PEOPLE say so. It
is people who should admonish
one another with the biblical
command Zachor,
Remember!"
the United Nations, 2009)
A Minute Sample of Some Survivors of the
your benefit, learn from our
It is not a written law that
the next victims
must be Jews." --Simon
Wiesenthal
Blumenthal
Hella Pick
Did Not Forget
we come to the other
world and meet the
millions of Jews who
died in the camps and
they ask us, "What
have you done?" there
will be many answers.
You will say,
"I&became a
jeweler." Another
will say, "I smuggled
coffee and American
cigarettes." Still
another will say, "I
built houses," but I
will say, "I didn't
forget you."
--&Simon&Wiesenthal
Helped Escape More than 400 Fellow Jews and
was among the 1,100 Jews saved by the Nazi
Industrialist Oskar Schindler. His secret
marriage in a Concentration Camp in Poland
was immortalized in the movie)
Bau's book,
Rudolf Vrba
On April 7, 1944, two
Slovakian Jews,
twenty-six-year-old Alfred
Weltzler and
twenty-year-old Rudolf
Vrba, escaped from
Auschwitz. They provided
the first eyewitness
account of the
concentration and
extermination camp to the
western world, an account
that set off the chain of
events that led to the
Nuremberg trial.
Martin Gilbert
Lilly Zelmanovic
(n&e Jacob)
&&&18-year-old
Lilly Jacob was deported with
her family, and most of the
Jews of Hungary, in the spring
of 1944. On the ramp at
Auschwitz she was brutally
separated from her parents and
saw any of them again. She was
was not always convinced of
the blessing of having
survived totally alone, bereft
of family, friends and her
all of the other survivors,
she was granted a small
miracle. On the day of her
liberation, in the Dora
concentration camp hundreds of
miles from Auschwitz, she
found in the deserted SS
barracks a photo album. It
contained, among others,
pictures of her family and
friends as they arrived on the
ramp and unknowingly awaited
their death. It was a unique
tie to what once had been,
could never return, and could
never be rebuilt.
was also, as we now know, the
only photographic evidence of
Jews arriving in Auschwitz or
any other death
[&please
see, &]
also, &]
Rubin kept his
promise to join
the U.S. Army
after American
troops freed him
Mauthausen
concentration camp
in Austria during
Jewish Child
Survivors of the
Holocaust saved via
Transports)
November 1938, following the
night of brutal attacks on
Jewish homes across Germany
known as Kristallnacht (night
of broken glass), British
refugee organisations
persuaded the British
government to permit Jewish
children under 17 to come
temporarily to Britain. Each
child's keep, education, and
eventual emigration had to be
paid for by private
individuals. In return, the
government agreed to permit
refugee children to enter the
country on travel visas.
Parents were not allowed to
accompany their
children.Between December 1938
and September 1939, when war
began, the
kindertransport trains
brought around 10,000 children
to Britain. Many would never
see their parents
via the Kindertransport of
May 21, 1939
Astor Professor at University
College London,
August 15, 1924 in Freiburg,
saved through the
Kindertransport of May 18,
photograph of the
nine-year-old Grete Glauber
in the 'Fremdenpass' or
alien passport issued by
the German Third Reich
which allowed her to
migrate from Austria to
England in 1939 as one of
the 'Kindertransport'
&movinghere.org.uk/galleries/roots/jewish/holocaust/holocaust.htm&
Themal's official German
identify card.
The J indicates he is a
deep gratitude to the people
and Parliament of the United
Kingdom for saving the lives
10,000 Jewish and other
children who fled this country
from Nazi persecution on the
Kindertransport&"
of the 1988 book , "A House by the Sea" by
Rebecca Fromer
whose life story is described in her
"I am a Star- Child of the
Holocaust " &and "Beyond
the Yellow Star to
she is the author of the book
"Finding Dr.&Schatz"
that is available both in
===& see also &her
[Writer
and author of several
books.]
-----& See, his moving article
with the occasion of Auschwitz's
60th Year Anniversary of its
Liberation.
See also, this
2001 and 1945...
Birenbaum,
Auschwitz prisoner nr. 48693
Honored by the Polish Government
-----& see also, ...
of Cleveland (USA), share their
parallel experiences during the
darkest days of the Holocaust
didn't ask "Where was
God?" after his time
in the German death
camps. The Falls
Church Rabbi thinks a
more useful question
to ask about the
Holocaust is
"Where&was&man?"
&/about/archive/contents.html&
(b. 1923 - ) of Romania, Holocaust Survivor
of Transnistria
------& see also &...
from her book
The&Hiding&Place
Br&der (Brueder), Auschwitz Holocaust
Survivor from Oradea, Romania,
emigrated to Israel in the 60's
Julia Br&der (Brueder) is the
Editor's double cousin (her father
with the Editor's father, Herman
Br&der, were brothers and, her
mother was sister with the Editor's
father). She was the only relative,
out of some 60, on the Editor's
father side that survived Auschwitz
and the Holocaust. All three
siblings (Istvan, Eva, and Rozsi
Br&der) of the Editor's father
perished during the transport to
Auschwitz (see under Bruder, this
Cuttler, 78, Johnny Chaskeil, 76, Sam Silver,
77, and Jack Unikowski, 79
who had survived Auschwitz and
Buchenwald.
They have four children and seven
grandchildren.
Cohen of The Netherlands
Survived the Holocaust and moved to
the United States.
Other info: Her father was
arrested as a hostage after a
resistance attack, the day before
her mother's birthday. Riwka went
into hidding at a farm in the
village of Hellendoorn (Netherlands)
under the name of Marietje van der
Velde. After the war she was
reunited with her mother and sister.
She never saw her father again.
http://www.oorlogsgetuigen.nl/nl/hoofdstuk_1/cohen/cohen.html
heroes of the Holocaust years were
not those who obeyed the law, but
those who were willing to break
have been able to transfer the
horror of the Holocaust in my
Every individual who survived that
other world, has a duty to leave
documentation behind so that future
generations will remember and will
Survivor from Kovna, Lithuania and
Israeli Artist&Tamara
&&&see also his
() was one of the most
celebrated actors and directors
on the German comedy and cabaret
scene of the 1930s. His brilliant
career was brutally interrupted
by the rise of Nazism that
resulted in him being deported in
1942 to Westerbork concentration
camp in Holland. From there, in
was transported to Auschwitz
where he was gassed.
the Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz,
Neuengamme, and Bergen-Belsen to
identify and testify against her
former Nazi captors.)
&&&DETAIL:
1925, Lucille was born in Hamburg,
Germany and lived with her mother
Sala Landau, and her father,
Benjamin Landau. Her sister, Karin,
was born in 1930. On October 27,
1938, her father was arrested for
the first time, but returned later
in spring of 1939. On the same day
that World War II began, her father
was taken again, but only his ashes
were returned in September 1941.
Lucille was 16 years old in 1941
when her regular schooling ended
after being deported to the
L&dz Ghetto in Poland where
she remained for nearly four years.
Lucille arrived in Auschwitz in
August, 1944 and was later
transferred to the work camp,
Dessauerufer in October 1944. She
was then transported to the slave
labor camp in Neungamme in November
and December of 1944. There, Lucille
and other inmates cleared bombed
buildings and shipyards until the
long walk to Bergen-Belsen in
February and March
saved from the Holocaust
by a neighbouring Christian family
from France,
their two sons, Rene and
Faber witnessed the murder of his
parents, brother, and five of his
six sisters. When he was finally
liberated from his eight
concentration camps, he weighed only
72 pounds. Despite these horrors,
David feels very fortunate to have
Faiwl, originally from Kalisz,
Poland, imprisoned in Warsaw
ghetto, Czestochowa ghetto -
Hassak labor camp, Bedzin ghetto,
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Swietochowice
and Ebensee, where he was
liberated by the U.S. Army in May
and Samuel Freilich, Holocaust Survivors from
Czechoslovakia
Freilich, the mother-in-law of U.S.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, died on
August&6, 2004. She was 87.
Ella and her husband, Samuel, fled
Czechoslovakia as the Communists
came to power. They arrived in the
United States in 1949, a year after
their daughter, Hadassah, was born.
Hadassah and Lieberman are now
married. Born in Rachov,
Czechoslovakia, Ella was the
youngest of four siblings. In 1944,
her family was sent to Auschwitz,
where her mother and two sisters
died. She was liberated in 1945. She
later worked in Prague and in 1947
married her husband, a lawyer and
rabbi who also had survived a Nazi
labor camp. [AP]
didn't seem so at the time, but Sala
Garncarz was one of the lucky ones.
When the Nazi invaded Poland in
1939, she was a 16-year-old Jewish
girl living in Sosnowiec, a town
close to German border. She
volunteered to take the place of her
older sister, Raizel, who had been
ordered to report to a Nazi forced
labor camp for six weeks. But the
six weeks stretched into almost five
years of servitude for Sala, in
seven different camps, with a
pittance for wages or none at all,
filthy quarters and an abundance of
typhus-carrying lice. Her luck was
that her labor-worthiness as a
seamstress saved her from Auschwitz,
a main extermination center, where
her parents and other family members
died. The story of Sala (she is
alive and well at 82 and has
grandchildren with her husband of 60
years, Sidney Kirschner) is told in
a stirring new exhibition at the New
York Public Library, which draws on
more than 300 cherished from her
and a diary she
managed to squirrel away during her
years of servitude (for a while the
Nazis let forced laborers send and
receive mail, provided it was
written in German). Crucial elements
of her saga --which she kept under
wraps for more than 50 years--
include the protective support of an
older campmate, Ala&Gertner,
later hanged at Auschwitz for her
kindness of a local German family to
whose home she was sent under guard
to us her close
comradeship with female workers at
her introduction to
her husband, then a G.I., at a Rosh
Hashana service after the camps were
her postwar discovery of
her t and her
emigration as a war bride to the
United States in 1946.
Grace Glueck, Art Listings, The New
York Times, March 10, 2006, p.
[Repository
of more than 300 letters written
to Sala Garncarz while she was a
prisoner in various Nazi labor
camps during the
Holocaust.]
(from March&7, 2006 through
June&17, 2006)
time capsule from the
Nazi Labor camps,
carefully&preserved
the Holocaust by being hidden in the
farmhouse of a Polish Catholic
woman, Mrs.&Kowalchik
Born in Romania
Separated by Holocaust
Reunite after 65 years
at Yad Vashem
surviving a concentration camp,
ghetto, four labor camps and a death
of bodies.
One hole for a toilet and
another for graves.
Every body cavity searched
below from US Holocaust
&&&&&&&&&&&&
&[Courtesy
of Center for Holocaust and Genocide
Studies, University of Minnesota,
Ben Guyer, Auschwitz and Buchenwald Holocaust
The grandson
of Ben&Guyer identified him in
famous Buchenwald photograph of
Margaret Bourke-White posted
--94) Holocaust
survivors of the
Bergen-Belsen camp and
bounded for Auschwitz,
immigrated to Israel on
December 30,
CORRECTION
the above online
found out that
my mother was
transported to
Stutthof on
September&25,
1944 and died
December&18,
in May 2005 in Berlin,
Germany at the inauguration
(The Hirsch family is one
of the 15 families on the
exhibition.)
mother, an ashen-faced
skeleton of her former
self, constantly repeated
the words which became my
life's mission: "You must
live, you must remember,
you must tell the
excerpt from her book "Live!
Remember! Tell The World! The
Story of a Hidden Child Survivor
of Transnistria")
won't be able to travel
and talk about these
children must know about
this. It is a message
too important to die
with the last
survivor."
living in Argentina and saved
through the deeds of Raoul
Wallenberg
Weissmann Klein (Born in
Bielsko, Poland,1924),
Holocaust survivor
liberated in Czechoslovakia
by U.S.&soldier
1939, Gerda's
brother was
deported for
forced labor. In
June 1942, Gerda's
family was
deported from the
Bielsko ghetto.
While her parents
were transported
to Auschwitz,
Gerda was sent to
the Gross-Rosen
camp system, where
for the remainder
of the war she
performed forced
labor in textile
factories. Gerda
was liberated
after a death
march, wearing the
ski boots her
father insisted
would help her to
[USHMM]
youngest child of a
middle-class Jewish family
in Oradea, Northwest
Romania, was an eyewitness
to the rise of fascism in
Europe and the horrors of
World War II. She saw and
felt the vicious attitudes
of the ruling Horthy
Hungarian government (that
annexed Northwestern
Romania) at that time as
her family was first
forcibly removed to the
Jewish ghetto in the city
of Oradea (Hungarian,
Nagyv&rad), then
deported to the
concentration camp at
Birkenau-Auschwitz. Magda
survived, but lost many of
her family members, a loss
she could not bear. She
became increasingly
reclusive, and in June 1946
she died of an overdose of
medication.
poetic journal Magda kept
during those years was
translated from Hungarian
into English by her nice
Susan Simpson Geroe under
the title "."
<FONT SIZE="-1" FACE="Helvetica" COLOR="#
Mozes Kor and her identical
twin, Miriam Mozes born in
Transylvania, Romania.
the deadly genetic experiments
conducted by The Angel of
Death, the infamous
Dr.&Mengele, in the
deathcamp Auschwitz during
. In 1950 Eva and
Miriam received visas for
Israel and went there.
Miriam died in 1993 from a
rare form of cancer. Eva,
currently lives in Erre
Hautte, Indiana, USA and is
the founder of the
living in Argentina that was saved
through the deeds of
Raoul&Wallenberg
(responsible
for the creation of the Holocaust
Memorial in Buttonwood Park, New
Bedford, Massachusetts,
Langberg, Holocaust Survivor, 1953 Princeton
Univ. Ph.D., and Author of the 2003 book
memory of the collaboration between
the Judenrat and the Nazis has
tortured me for years.
How do I dare to call it
collaboration when the Judenrat had
presumably no choice?
I dare because I saw what happened
and I experience it.
I dare because I want to understand
how the Nazis corrupted the
Judenrat, left the Jewish population
leaderless, and expedited the Final
Solution.&
and the author of the 2009 memoir
belongs to us any more.
They've taken away our
clothes, our shoes, even
our hair. We are more than
stripped bare --we are
naked as worms. If we speak
they will not listen, and
if they listen they will
not understand." --From
Primo Levi's memoir
Survival in
Auschwitz.
think it could not get any
worse, yet it became worse
every day." --Rev.
Terezin and Auschwitz Holocaust
Survivor urges students not to
forget the Holocaust
Siblings from the Romanian Lustig
Family that Survived the
Lustig (b. 1923 - ), Holocaust
Survivor from Northern Transylvania
currently living in
(b. 1924 - ), Holocaust Survivor
from Northern Transylvania that
survived Birkenau-Auschwitz and
Kaiserwald, Dundaga, Stutthof, and
Malchow concentration camps before
being liberated by the Soviet
of Romanian Jewish
see also his
Lustig (b. July 28, 1928 - ),
Birkenau-Auschwitz and
Dachau (Prisoner No. 11236)
Holocaust Survivor.
for a while as a mechanic at the
Meserschmith Aviation Plant in
Augsburg and then in Tutzing,
At the end, he contracted typhus but
was able in three weeks to recover
Eva, Oliver, and
worked as a slave laborer in a boot
factory in a Lithuanian ghetto,
watched her mother forced into a gas
chamber and posed as a Catholic to
hide from the Nazis before she fled
to safety in Denmark. She was 16
years old and weighed 47
...&Genia&then&and
55 years latter
in New York in 1998 by the
Jewish Foundation for the
...&Julian&then&and
55 years latter
(Are Ukrainians
"Traditionally
Anti-Semites"?)
--------& see
also his blistering
attack on Judenrat in
Auschwitz at the age of 17 and stayed
in that hellish place for two and a
half years.
There's a story from the Holocaust
about some death camp inmates who
decide to put God on trial...
They&prepare for several hours,
and then carefully argue the
prosecution and the defense.
No&sooner do they find God guilty
for their fates...
Broude, Rabbi Emeritus of Oakland's
Temple Sinai, recalling that story to
describe one of his longtime
congregants,
Ren&&Molho.
-- a poem by
Michael Nadel
(grandson)
&&&&&&&(see
his book )
[Courtesy
of Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies,
University of Minnesota, USA]
***Passed away on November 22, 2004.
University Professor, a colleague of
Einstein at the Princeton Institute
for Advanced Study and the author of
the1982 critically acclaimed
biography of Einstein.
of several books whose life's
mission is to raise awareness about
the largely unknown tragedy of the
many camps in Transnistria, and also
of the 284 people who have been
deported from
Bucharest)
Polgar, Hungarian Holocaust Survivor
living in Montreal, Canada that was
born in the Auschwitz
mother, Vera Polgar (ne&
Bein), born Veronika Otvos,
Auschwitz Holocaust survivor, died
at 73 in 1992.
of the 78 people in my family, I am the
to&survive."
and the author of the
Stephan Ross
Stephan Ross,
Polish Holocaust Survivor of
and other concentration camps
currently residing in the
Boston area,
family owned a business in
Slovakia that produced
railroad ties. Ironically,
Roth's family helped create
the railroad ties that took
his family and so many
others to Auschwitz.
Rovan was an historian, a member of
the French Resistance and an adviser
on Franco-German relations to
Presidents de Gaulle and Chirac as
well as to Chancellor Helmut Kohl.
He was awarded the Legion d'honneur
and the Ordre National du Merite,
the German Order of Merit with Star,
and the Bavarian Order of
[March&20,&1930
-- Jan.&26,
Holocaust Survivor of
Transnistria
(Mogilev and
on March 20, 1930 in
Dorohoi, Romania, he is the
author of several books on
the Holocaust in Romania
under the Antonescu regime,
most recent one published
in 2004, both in Romanian
and English, by the
Association of the Romanian
Jews Victims of the
Holocaust under the title:
"The Holocaust under the
Government."
also, this
the United States Holocaust
little Jewish boy, ,
sits on a United Nations Refugee
Relief Agency truck in the KZ camp
Buchenwald. He miraculously survived
the horrors of the Holocaust and was
four years old when American troops
liberated Buchenwald in 1945.
"A Reason to Live"
75 and at 18...
of Poland:
(photo&at&right)&-------&
Witness to War
Spiegel was born in Dinslaken
Germany, in 1932, After
Kristallnacht he was sent to live
with relatives in Holland, When the
Germans invaded Holland, Fred was
sent to three concentration camps:
Vught, Westerbork, and
Bergen-Belsen. On April 13, 1945, he
was liberated by the Americans near
the River Elbe. After the war, Fred
was reunited with his mother and
sister. Since then he has lived in
England, Israel, Chile and the
United States. Retired, Fred now
lectures at schools and colleges
about his experiences as a child
during the Holocaust.
hope for the day when people can
practice their religion of
when race and
discrimination is no longer an
the 21st Century, which we have
now embarked, never experience
the horrors of the Century we
have just left behind.
we be given the strength to build
together with others a world of
security, mutual respect, and
Spingarn, Irving and Rachel Senor --Auschwitz
and Dachau Holocaust Survivors
born on March 20, 1909, in
Radauti, Romania.
Romanian Holocaust Survivor
of Transnistria
(Vapniarka --the so-called
the Ghetto of Death, and
Grosolova)
the United States Holocaust
Stern (b. 1926 - )Hungarian Holocaust
survivor of Auschwitz
the German occupation of Hungary in
March 1944, Bart was forced into a
ghetto established in his home town.
From May to July 1944, the Germans
deported Jews from Hungary to the
Auschwitz extermination camp in
occupied Poland. Bart was deported
by cattle car to Auschwitz. At
Auschwitz, he was selected to
perform forced labor, drilling and
digging in a coal mine. As Soviet
forces advanced toward the Auschwitz
camp in January 1945, the Germans
forced most of the prisoners on a
death march out of the camp. Along
with a number of ill prisoners who
were in the camp infirmary, Bart was
one of the few inmates who remained
in the camp at the time of
liberation. He survived to be
liberated by hiding in the camp even
after many other prisoners had been
forced on a death march in January
1945. [USHMM]
Sittsamer, Holocaust Survivor and President
of the Holocaust Survivors of Greater
Pittsburgh
was the sole survivor of
the ship "Struma"
which sailed from
Constanta, Romania on
December 12, 1941 to
Palestine. More than 700
jews were aboard. The ship
was detained by the Turks,
who refused to let the
passengers in. The English
refused them visa for
Palestine. The ship was
towed back to the Black Sea
where it was sunk by a
Russian submarine. David
was hurled overboard and
saved by a commercial
vessel. He was arrested by
the Turks but sent to Syria
after a few months
imprisonment. Later, David
became a member of the
Jewish Brigade of the
English Army.
"Democracies
are extremely fragile. I experienced
the collapse of a free society, the
collapse of democracy. Hitler did
not come to power by force, by
terrorism, but by the rules of
democratic law. The Germans elected
Tranca with other Romani Holocaust
Survivors from Romania:
Veres (b. 1923 - ),
Hungarian Holocaust
Survivor saved by the deeds
the Germans occupied
Hungary in 1944, Tom was
ordered to work in labor
camps and factories. He
escaped after a few months
and decided to contact the
Swedish legation, where he
met Raoul Wallenberg in
October 1944. Tom stayed in
Budapest and, using his
training in photography,
became active in
Wallenberg's efforts to
rescue the&Jews of
Budapest. He made copies of
and took photographs for
protective passes
(Schutzpaesse), and
documented
deportations.
United States Memorial
residing in the
lot of survivors, we feel guilty
we&survived and our families
perished."
Hirschberger
Yosselevska, Polish Holocaust
Yosselevska family led a happy life
in the village of Zagorodski, near
Pinsk, highlighted by the births of
the children Chaya, Feige, Rivka and
a brother named Moshe. Their father
had a leather goods shop and was
considered one of the notables of
the village. In the summer of 1942
the Einsatzgruppen arrived. Along
with her little girl, father,
mother, siblings, relatives,
friends, and villagers, Rivka
Yosselevska was shot, naked, in a
pit - miraculously she survived.
During the Adolf Eichmann trial in
Jerusalem, on May 8, 1961, she bore
witness about what
http://victim./
(Including the Woman above, a
Grandmother and Auschwitz Holocaust
of the American Society for Yad
father was killed by
Poles, but I was saved
It really shows that you
can never generalize
about people."
Romanian Holocaust Survivors living
in Bucharest that
were able to survive the
Oct 30, 1922, Iasi - )
Zilberman]
(b. March 27, 1927, Iasi -
Author of the 2007 Romanianon book
on the Infamous and Torturous Train
Journey of June 1941 in Iasi,
entitled "Cu Trenul Express Spre
[To Death Via The Express
Train]
(currently
the director of the Jewish
Adult Education Center in
Seel is a still living
Frenchman who was deported
to the Schirmeck
concentration camp in 1941.
After the war, in shame, he
hid and in fact married and
had children. In 1982,
spurred by the denouncement
of homosexuals as "sick" by
Msgr. Elchinger, Bishop of
Strasbourg, Pierre Seel
went public with his story.
[http://victim./]
(now living in Israel)
- Born Poland, 1925; deported to
Auschwitz, 1941; in Israel since
1947; 5 police
a forced labour camp, following
which he was sent to Auschwitz,
where he was one of 16 out of 4,000
prisoners to survive the death march
of January 1945. Later, in Israel,
he participated in the Eichmann
trial as part of the Israeli police
detachment, and as assistant to
Gideon Hausner, the chief
prosecutor.
Born Romania, 1935; deported to
Mogilov ghetto in Transnistria,
1944; in Israel since 1950; 2
hairdresser.
felt terribly guilty for the murders
committed in my family by the SS.
They took me by surprise when I was
playing outside the Mogilov Podolsk
ghetto. This sadist took my little
sister, who was only four months
old, out of my grandmother's arms,
placed her on a stone, and split her
in two with an axe. Then he killed
my grandmother, my aunt, and five of
my cousins. I felt so guilty because
until 1997 I never dared tell my
story. I was afraid that no one
would believe me. Now I have broken
my silence and I weep, and so I
release myself from this terrible
burden of suffering which has
weighed on my conscience all my
- Born Romania, 1929; deported to
Auschwitz, 1944; in Israel since
1946; 3 airline
six years after my liberation from
Buchenwald, on 12 April, 1951, the
chief of staff pinned on my chest
the Israeli Air Force pilot's
emblem. On the same spot where, just
a short while before, I was forced
to wear the yellow star of David
that symbolized disgrace and
humiliation. I was so proud to wear
now the blue star of
- Born Czechoslovakia, 1922;
deported to Theresienstadt and
Auschwitz, 1942; in Israel since
1949; 2 writer.
tormentors tried to dehumanize us,
to kill every part of our
personality. They had not reckoned
with our spiritual and intellectual
resistance. And the Germans could
not reduce that to nothing...it was
hope that enabled me to survive and
then presented me with the most
precious of all gifts: a family,
children, grandchildren, all in a
new homeland."
- Born Poland, 1926; deported to
Vilna Ghetto, 1941; in Israel
since 1949; 3
saved twice from certain death in
Estonia. Immediately after the war
he worked helping surviving children
and orphans, continuing his work as
a member of the Ghetto Fighters
Kibbutz in northern Israel. He
returned to Germany several times to
give evidence against Nazi criminals
and is today a member of the
International Commission of
Female Hungarian Holocaust Survivors
that became Olympic
was four times Olympic
champion at the 1952
Olympic Games in Helsinki
and 1956 Olympic Games in
Melbourne, received the
Trophy of Merit from the
Hungarian National Olympic
Committee. Keleti won all
together ten Olympic medals
over three Olympiads (1948,
) and was also
World Champion on uneven
bars in Rome in 1954. See
at the age of
at Foro Italico (Rome)
for the World
Championship
in 1956 when
she fled Hungary for
1940 and 1958, &Eva
set 10 World and 5 Olympic
swimming records. She set
an Olympic record in the
200-Meter Breaststroke en
route to a gold medal at
the 1952 Helsinki Games. In
1976 &Eva was elected
to the International
Swimming Hall of Fame. See
also this .
Dr.&Peter&Tarjan
from the University of
Miami, Coral&Gables,
FL, USA ,)
for the gold
*** Footnote: In 1952,
&Eva Sz&kely
Gyarmati is considered the
greatest water poloist of
all-time. His feat of
winning water polo medals
at five successive Olympic
Games (gold ,
1964; silver 1948; bronze
1960) has never been
matched. See also
2. Oral History Archives and Holocaust
Survivor Testimonies
keep alive not only memory
but also its voices
is a noble undertaking.
- Elie Wiesel
still do not want to talk about
these things. When I do, it is
not like reading a book, it is
having to live through it again,
and I have never wanted to keep
feeling the misery of it. And I
particularly did not want my
children to know, especially
about the sexual parts. I did not
want to explain what I had to do.
It is not nice, nor something
that they have to know. They can
read about these
things…"
the field of Holocaust literature,
nothing is as important nor as
meaningful as the personal accounts of
those who survived its nightmare only
to tell the tale." --Elie
people in the above photos are
Holocaust survivors who now live on
Moshav Nir Galim in Israel.
Professor&Moshe&Davis has
recorded their Holocaust stories in
collection of over
4,300 videotaped
interviews with
witnesses and
survivors of
the&Holocaust
that is part
Memorial Library,
Yale University,
New&Haven,
Connecticut,
&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
Catalog Search
downloadable Video and
testimony is in German.
Sobibor Camp Escapee and Author of
Sobibor: The Forgotten Revolt
and From the Ashes of
Sobibor (later made into a movie
called "Escape from Sobibor").
German-Polish
survivor of the L&dz Ghetto,
Auschwitz, Neuengamme &
Bergen-Belsen
[Source:
tellingstories.org - Oral History
Archives Project of The Urban
School, San Francisco, CA,
downloadable Video and
candid conversation with Leah
Sephardic survivor of Auschwitz,
Mauthausen, and Ebensee
- among the last transported out of
downloadable Video and
German/Dutch
survivor of Auschwitz, Dachau - also
slave laborer within the Warsaw
[Source:
tellingstories.org - Oral History
Archives Project of The Urban
School, San Francisco, CA,
downloadable Video and
describes her entrance into
Auschwitz and life within. She
describes how she escaped from being
sent to the gas chamber and her
subsequent moves to different camps.
) She is a Czechoslovakian survivor
of 7 camps including Auschwitz,
Bergen-Belsen, Beendorf and
Ravensbr&ck.
[Source:
tellingstories.org - Oral History
Archives Project of The Urban
School, San Francisco, CA,
refugee who experienced the rise of
Nazism and returns to Germany as an
American soldier to fight against
[Source:
tellingstories.org - Oral History
Archives Project of The Urban
School, San Francisco, CA,
child refugee who experienced the
Anschluss and fled to the United
States in 1939
[Source:
tellingstories.org - Oral History
Archives Project of The Urban
School, San Francisco, CA,
downloadable Video and
downloadable Video and
Voice/Vision: Holocaust Survivor Oral
History Project of the University of
Michigan-Dearborn
of Dr. Sid Bolkosky, Professor of
History at the University of
Michigan-Dearborn, USA.)
Schindler's
Sigmund&Boraks,&&Jeannine&Burk,&&Felicia&Fuksman,
Eva&Galler,&&Henry&Galler,&&
Anne&Levy,&&
Dora&Niederman,&&Leo&Scher,&&Martin&Wasserman,&&Shep&Zitler.
&-----------&&
Photos of Holocaust Jewish Survivors at
Liberation
at the Auschwitz-Birkenau death
camp after their liberation
on January 28, 1945.
Three Polish Jews liberated by
the Red Army
-- Auschwitz, Poland,
the afternoon of 27 January,
1945, Red Army soldiers entered
Auschwitz. They found 7,650 weak
and sick prisoners. The Germans'
hasty retreat made it impossible
for them to evict the last
prisoners and force them onto a
"death march". The Russians
documented the horrific scenes
they witnessed, in thousands of
pictures and many
Yad Vashem
Jewish female survivors from
Budapest, Hungary
-- Fenig, Germany, April
corpses" was how a US Army
photographer described the group
of 68 women from Budapest,
Hungary found by soldiers of the
3rd Battalion of the US Army in
the Fenig camp, Germany. They had
been starved and worked to death
in a factory for aircraft parts.
The women, several of them dying,
were transferred to a German Air
Force hospital for treatment.
photograph was one of those
distributed by the Allies for
explanatory purposes.] --
From Yad Vashem
children of the Auschwitz camp walk out of
the children's barracks.
women who survived the slave labor
inmates at Birkenau-Auschwitz after Soviet
soldiers liberate the camp on
January&27,&1945.
Buchenwald
Survivors at Liberation in April
These four Jewish detainees were
photographed four weeks
after the arrival of US troops in
Buchenwald. [Gedenkst&tte
Buchenwald]
of the Block/Barrack 61 at liberation
[AFP/Spiegel]
Bourke-White's famous photographs at the
liberation of
Buchenwald.
(published
in the May&7,&1945, issue of
Life magazine)
Prisoners at liberation in front of
Block/Barack 62.
[Gedenkst&tte
Buchenwald]
children from Buchenwald at
liberation.
[Gedenkst&tte
Buchenwald]
group of survivors in Buchenwald at
liberation.
man in the middle has lifted his
trousers to show the effects of
malnutrition to the photographer.
Archives]
the liberation, prisoners prepare food in
the Dachau camp.
Memorials and Celebrations to Life in the
Shadows of Death and Destruction
at the Liberation of
Yad Vashem Archives:
&www1.yadvashem.org/education/German/Liberation/photo2.htm&
prisoners in Dachau toast their
liberation from the camp.
credit: German National Archives
their stories
27, 1945 -- the liberation of
Auschwitz-Birkenau by soldiers of
the&Soviet&Army
&http://fcit.coedu.usf.edu/holocaust/gallery/p538.htm&
&/Danmark/home.htm&
Jewish survivors, who
had been confined to
the infirmary
barracks at Ebensee,
are gathered outside
May&7,&1945,
the day after
liberation. The
survivor at
center-left holding
his metal name tag is
Joachim Friedner, a
21-year-old Polish
/fs-bin/click?id=CvX0BJWyom4&offerid=5365&type=2&subid=0
of the most
photographs
were those
taken by the
liberating
forces upon
entering the
camps. The
liberating
were met by
corpses and
thousands of
who were on
the brink of
death. Yet,
liberation
unequivocal
relief. They
not return
was no home
other than
graveyards
and rubble.
Emigration
was blocked
immigration
laws around
the world,
survivors'
demands to
be allowed
resisted by
the British
authorities.
Bergen-Belsen
Liberation
Suggestions
for further material to be included in here are
Remembrance, Sanctuary, and Beyond
Not"™..
