Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Since I moved from New Jersey to the Washington, DC, area and was given the opportunity to visit the United States Capitol Rotunda in observance of Yom Hashoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), I can’t help getting in touch with my memories and emotions on many levels.
The ship, the Serpa Pinto, was Portuguese. It looked a lot like the St. Louis, which is prominently exhibited on the fourth floor of the Museum. It was painted black with red lettering on its side and loomed above us. My brother Joe and I were among the 56 children who ascended the gangplank on September 10, 1941. We had arrived in Lisbon after traveling by train from Brout Vernet to Marseilles, over the Pyrenees, through Spain, and then to Portugal. The Quakers and the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society helped all of us, from France and Germany, obtain passports and tickets to come to America. Only six of these children had parents who were already in the United States. My brother and I were two of those six.
I did not want to get up that morning because I knew it was very cold outside. I would have a long walk from the Metro to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The hike would entail walking briskly down Independence Avenue, where the wind would surely blow in my face and I would be frozen by the time I got to the Raoul Wallenberg Place entrance of the Museum. I got up anyway because I had committed myself to being one of the tour guides for the 93 members of the Frederick Presbyterian Church who were arriving at the Museum at 9 a.m. that day. Luke, from Visitor Services, had e-mailed me and asked that I participate because he knew me. He had introduced me when I gave presentations to visitors in the Wexner Center, and we had become friends. It was his mother’s church and he was excited to have a survivor tour guide.
I arrived in the United States on November 11, 1947. I was an unhappy child torn from my second home to come to a new land with family I hardly knew. My sister and I were met in New York by two uncles—one my sister knew from Germany and one an unknown American uncle. I knew neither. So I began my journey to becoming an American and eventually a Holocaust survivor.
It was August 1945, the month I celebrated my eighth birthday. My parents, my sister, Rosi, my brother, Mani, and I were on vacation at the seashore in Belgium. We were staying at the Midland Hotel, a small, three-story building separated from the dunes and the sea by the main coastal highway. Very few other guests were staying at the hotel.
I was recently quoted by a young columnist from a local newspaper, saying that I will speak to anyone who wants to listen and even to those who don’t want to listen. But when I was asked to speak to a Rotary Club in Virginia I was curious to find out first about their organization, what they represent and what their purpose is, before I accepted their invitation. I had no previous knowledge about them, and since this was not arranged by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I had to do my own research.
In April 2012, President Barack Obama came to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to talk about the government’s efforts to fight genocide wherever it exists. He also announced awarding posthumously the Medal of Freedom to Jan Karski, a Polish hero whom we, Polish Jews, admire. The president addressed Holocaust survivors, sitting in the front rows, as those who “never gave up.”
The hospital in Bratislava, where I spent a full year, from March 1946 to March 1947, recovering from tuberculosis (TB) on the spine, was a truly remarkably unique place. The doctors as well as the nurses were completely involved and interested in our cases. There were several other Holocaust survivors there, suffering from various types of TB and other ailments that had resulted from being in concentration camps.
Life in the displaced persons camps gave people hope, for the first time, since they left their home. Almost every person there had lost parents, siblings, extended family, and many friends. As people started to feel better, they embraced life with zest. Though they had been dehumanized, sick and at death’s door, many started to marry. In the camps, they made wedding dresses from any material they could find, even parachutes.
After liberation from the concentration camps in 1945, survivors stranded all over Germany and Austria were able to go to displaced persons camps set up by the Allies to be deloused and fed. Thousands of people couldn’t digest the food provided and died immediately. I got some of my strength back in one of these Allied camps and I was anxious to go home to search for family members. Then I heard that many people who returned to their countries of origin in Eastern Europe were not welcomed—in some cases Jews were even murdered as they returned. As a result many people decided to stay where they had been liberated.
