Meet our Survivor Volunteers

Susan Berlin

Susan was born an only child to a conservative Jewish family in Roznava, Slovakia. Her mother and father owned a dry-goods store. Susan was thirteen years old when the war began. News of the evils of the concentration camps reached Roznava and Susan’s father decided to take his family out of Slovakia as fast as possible. Her father had a brother in the United States that would assist her family in receiving Visas. They sailed into New York City on the S.S. Washington on August 3, 1939.

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Interview — Describes close call at a collection point.

Transcript:

My mother helped people, escort people, accompany people to the collection points and someone would declare, "what are you doing here? Oh you have a Jewish husband and a Jewish son. Tomorrow they have to, are going to report, at the main deportation, Grosse Hamburger Strasse." It was an old people's home that was used as one of the collection points. And we reported there. At the time they had Gestapo and SS officer, they were brought up from Vienna, and he started to interview us, and he interviewed me too, tried to trick me. But, well, apparently I satisfied him and he let me and my father go. And I remember distinctly it was my 16th birthday.

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