A Fateful Letter
Long, long ago, it was sensational to receive a letter. We used to wait for the mailman impatiently. A letter could change plans, change lives, and fates.
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Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
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The Street I Lived on after the War
The name of the street was Rottenbiller in Budapest, Hungary. It was named after a mayor of Budapest who served in the 19th century. We got an apartment there after our original flat was bombed out. I was about three years old. My mother, my grandmother, my uncle Herman with his wife and later two daughters, my uncle Sanyi, and I all lived there. I mostly remember certain pictures in my mind.
A Blissful Event
The year was 1963, and I was serving in the Israeli air force. I worked as a programmer on that famous huge Philco computer that filled a whole floor.
Where I Feel Best
After I survived the Holocaust in Poland, my mother, father, sister, and I moved to England, where we were generously accepted as we tried to move past the terrible years of World War II. We were among the few lucky ones who survived. So many did not. According to statistics, only about 2 percent of Polish Jews lived through the Holocaust.
The Choices We Make, Part I
There have been many moments in my adult life when I have had to make a decision. Sometimes, I had to choose one option from a list of many. Sometimes, I had only two bad options. And, rarely, I had two good ones.
To Share
When I returned from the deportation to Miskolc in 1945, my uncle Gabor Zoltan was already back home. He had survived years in a forced labor camp.
A Trip to a Dream Beach, 1951
My mother pined for the Adriatic Sea. Everything in that sea was so much better than the sea off the coast of Tel Aviv.
How I Learned to Drive
As long as I could remember, I had always wished to learn to drive and, of course, to own a car. But I would be well into adulthood before this happened. When I was 13 years old, we—my father, mother, sister, and I—settled in England. We had survived the Holocaust and were trying to restart our lives. England was very different from Poland, but we were free and looked forward to a better future.