Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Berlin fall 1944, the Americans and British are approaching the Rhine, and the Russians are on German soil. Our group of Jewish husbands and sons of mixed marriages was doing its usual work, demolishing ruins and cleaning up after air raids, when suddenly we were “detached to special duty.”
One day in 1941, four men came to our house. They took my family and me to the outskirts of the town, where all the Jews from the town where gathered. We were about 500 Jews. The saddest part was that a lot of the killers were our neighbors.
It was August 1989. Fred and I were in Adelsheim, my birthplace. There was silence everywhere; no people were visible. We tried to locate the Rathaus, City Hall. Bertl, my sister, had written a letter to the Rathaus. She had explained, in German, that we were coming to visit and would like some assistance in finding places associated with my family.
Upon our arrival in New York we were met at the harbor by two men. I vaguely recognized one of the men, but the other was a total stranger. After being introduced, I learned that the one I vaguely recognized was my father. Although I recognized his face, something was wrong.
Every time Helena, or Heleneke, as she was called by everyone in the family, wore her light blue ensemble, I was filled with envy. I loved the dress and the cape she wore over it. My favorite part of the dress was the skirt, which fluttered up and outward when Heleneke twirled round and round. When she wore the cape she looked regal, like a real princess. Heleneke had many beautiful dresses; I did not.
Once, when I was a very young girl in Poland, I got lost walking with my aunt in the forest. “Are we in America?” I asked her. America was the farthest place on earth for a child my age.
My two best subjects in high school in Poland were biology and chemistry, so it is no wonder that I decided to study pharmacy, a profession that would combine my scientific abilities and my desire to help people.
Our feelings are always there—waiting, attuned, alert, and yearning for attachment. So we were created. Such is the path of our lives.
Last night I dreamt of my father. He was not my father as I remembered him. He was another man, and yet my father. His face and clothes were from another time, Another place.
They took my father away. They came one evening and took him away on a stretcher. Two policemen in blue uniforms bent over the black, blanketed heap And heaved up the poles And opened the door and left.
