Echoes of Memory

Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.

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Another View of a Survivor
The survivors who volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum were notified about a new project to help younger audiences relate to us and I thought it was a fine idea. We were told that members of the Museum’s marketing team had conceptualized a new video series. They envisioned a casual video conversation with us, focusing on parts of our life beyond the Holocaust, “something you are passionate about—a hobby, a moment in your career, or events or experiences that show a more complete view of who you are as people, as individuals.”
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- echoes of memory volume 12
- Susan Warsinger
Pocahontas, Arkansas
It had been a long time since the Speakers Bureau of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum requested that I give a presentation in a far-off place, so when I received an e-mail asking me to go to Pocahontas, Arkansas, I was delighted. The trip was sponsored by Black River Technical College, and I was scheduled to give three lectures to 800 people at each session. It was to be a four-day trip: two days to get there and back, and two days for the speeches themselves. Museum staff member Emily Potter accompanied me on the trip.
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Ashburn Colored School
When Diane Saltzman, the Museum’s director of Survivor and Council Stewardship, sent me an e-mail to ask me to speak at a program in Ashburn, Virginia, at a schoolhouse that had been defaced with graffiti, I had already heard and read about the historic one-room Ashburn Colored School. The phrase “white power,” swastikas, profanities, and crude drawings were spray painted in black, blue, and red on the outside of the wooden walls and windows. Diane informed me that I was to speak for only a short time with other invited presenters. I accepted the invitation because I wanted to be part of that historic occasion, and I wanted to do something to confront hatred. I did not know where the school was located and what was being or would be done with it.
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- echoes of memory volume 10
- Susan Warsinger
Sense of Being Jewish
From my earliest memories, I have always had a sense of being Jewish. My father, who had grown up as an Orthodox Jew, made sure we observed all the Jewish traditions. My mother, who wanted to please him, kept a kosher home. She prepared all the traditional dishes for the Sabbath, and we celebrated all the Jewish holidays with great enthusiasm. My brother and I accompanied my father to the synagogue almost every Saturday. It was there that I learned that it was important to pray to God and that God liked it when the Jewish men worshipped him.
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- echoes of memory volume 9
- Susan Warsinger
Feeling Good
Another year of observing the Days of Remembrance at our United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has just passed. The revered event that took place was not much different from other years except that I was there with my two brothers most of the time. On the morning of the first day of the DOR, my brother Joe and I attended a program on our Museum’s collection as well as the dedication of a display about the Shapell Collections, Conservation, and Research Center that is currently under construction. It was held in the Hall of Witness of the Museum. Other Holocaust survivors and I joined the Shapell family in a ribbon-cutting ceremony for this new center to be built. I was feeling good because my brother was in the audience and sharing this experience with me.
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Bringing the Lessons Home
When the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum first opened in 1993, there were no tours of the Permanent Exhibit. After my fellow survivor, Susan Berlin, and I came to volunteer at the Museum we wanted to conduct tours for the many high school students who visited the Permanent Exhibition. We met with three staff people in the Education Department and they gave workshops on how to conduct educational tours of the Permanent Exhibition for a few volunteers and some staff. This was a significant beginning for many tours to follow.
Tags:
- echoes of memory volume 9
- Susan Warsinger
Memories and Defining Yourself
In an interview at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a few weeks ago I was asked, “Do your experiences in the Holocaust define you as a person?” Before writing about my answer to this question I would like to review some of my thoughts and questions about this matter. Do memories make us the person we are? Sometimes I have wondered if I would be a different person if I had not been born in Germany when the Nazis and Hitler came to power and when they immediately set out to implement anti-Jewish policies.
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Hulda and Tante Anna
I sometimes think about why I never met any of my grandparents. They lived in a small town in Poland called Kolomaya, which is now part of the Ukraine. My father told me that he left his family when he was 16 and immigrated to Germany because he did not want to join the Polish army. He acquired a job in a shoe store in Dusseldorf and made a life for himself. My mother also lived in Poland with her large family of seven brothers and sisters. She revealed to me when I was an adult, that since her family was poor and had many children, her mother gave her away to her well-off sister who lived in Viersen, Germany. This was my mother’s aunt and my great-aunt, Tante Anna. I was really astonished and had much compassion for my mother, because I had experienced this kind of separation from her during the Holocaust and I knew exactly what it felt like.
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The Berlin Conference
When I heard that the World Federation of Jewish Child Survivors of the Holocaust and Descendants Conference was going to be held in Berlin, Germany, I felt very ambivalent about going. I was hesitant because my memories as a child born in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, were still painful because of the atrocities that the Nazis committed there. I felt uncomfortable listening to the German language and was suspicious about Germans my age and older. When new acquaintances asked me where I was born, I usually responded that I had been living in Washington, DC, for a long time. Only if they pushed me and asked where I was born did I reluctantly tell them. I did not want them to think that Germany was my “homeland,” because I never thought that it was. On the other hand, I was enthusiastic about going to Berlin, because I wanted to confront these feelings and finally get over them.
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American Friends Service Committee Refugee Case Files 7219 and 7321
When the director of the OSE’s Chateau des Morelles children’s home in France called me to her office to tell me that our parents had found us and that my brother and I would be going to the United States, I was overjoyed and my entire being shook with anticipation of seeing my mother and father again. I had no idea when or how my parents had gotten to the United States from Germany.
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