Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
I lived in Italy with my husband, Sidney, and our three daughters for almost four years from 1973 to 1976. We lived between Pisa and Livorno in Tuscany—one street away from the Mediterranean. We were stationed there with the US Army. It was a different posting from others we had experienced.
My answer is no, and I have reasons, because wars come around like the seasons. Where there is a man with absolute power, his rule can be a disaster.
Our life is an endless series of choices and consequences from those choices. Many choices are reversible if the outcome is not satisfactory, but at least one is not: the choice between life and death.
The first person to come to the United States from my family was my elder sister Jacqueline, who was hired by the United Nations as a secretary. It was in 1953. I was not even 15, and it made me dream of America, which I had discovered through movies, like How to Marry a Millionaire, with the beautiful skyline of New York City and Marylin Monroe.
We live in a rented apartment shared with an obligatory additional person. My mother works, and my grandmother takes care of me. My father is absent from home. He has been on a business trip during this particular December. I am eight years old. Tito is our adored and undisputed Communist leader.
As a Holocaust survivor and volunteer at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I think much of the work we do here qualifies as building a kind of monument.
There is no other monumental structure more powerful than the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
My mind was in turmoil. From one day to the next, I was whisked away from my happy, carefree life as a 10-year-old in Thorpe, England, to a large ship, on my way to America.
The blue aerograms, bleached by age, tied with a bow, take up a lot of room in a dresser drawer and in my heart. Physically, they weigh very little, but their emotional impact on my life is tremendous.
As we got closer to America, the sea became smooth and life returned to normal. The SS Nieuw Amsterdam finally entered New York Harbor on the evening of November 8, 1948.
