Meet our Survivor Volunteers

Frank Ephraim

“The way the trip went was we left one evening, went to the local railroad station in Berlin, that at that time was called Anhalterbahnhof. It no longer exists as such. Hopped on a train. It was a sleeper. We went overnight, changed in Munich, next morning, and from there we began to head toward Italy, the border. We went through Austria, and the train was stopped in Brenner, Brenner pass, which is the border between Austria and Italy. There everybody had to get out. The German side, we were searched, body search, all the luggage was searched. That delayed everything. The train left without us. We had to wait another six hours for the next train.”
(postwar testimony)

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Survivor Volunteers

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Born October 10, 1924, in Bochum, Germany

Lore Schneider was born on October 10, 1924 in Bochum, Germany. Bochum had a small Jewish community which was able to support one synagogue and one small Jewish day school which Lore attended. Lore’s father was a respected lawyer and judge. She was an only child and grew up in a wonderful and loving home.

When Hitler came to power, restrictions and sanctions were immediately felt in Bochum. Lore’s father was fired and disbarred for being a Jew. One day, he and his law partner were brutally beaten in an alleyway. It was then that her father decided that the family must leave Germany before conditions got even worse.

Lore’s aunt and her family lived in Washington D.C. and they agreed to sign affidavits for Lore and her parents. The family immigrated to the United States in 1934. During Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the synagogue in Bochum was destroyed. Once the war began, Lore’s father spent much of his free time trying to get affidavits for the other members of their family that had remained in Germany. He succeeded in rescuing several of them. Others, however, perished in camps or went into hiding for the duration of the war.

In the meantime, Lore worked as a “government girl” during the war, working in the U.S. Department of the Interior while attending night classes at George Washington University. After the war ended, her father worked for the prosecution team at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. Lore spent her adult life teaching secondary school and adult education. She has volunteered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for many years.