Echoes of Memory provides survivors who volunteer at the Museum with a powerful outlet to share their experiences and memories—through their own writing. In these videos, survivors who participated in the workshop read a selection of their essays.
This program is one way the Museum enables eyewitnesses to the Holocaust to help new generations gain insight and understanding of Holocaust history from a deeply personal perspective.
Our Jewish Life in Italy
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.
Reflections on Pope Francis’s Visit
An article by Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne Jr. during the pope’s visit to Washington, DC, in 2015 touched me deeply and brought back some old memories. During World War II I was a child in Poland. I am Jewish, and I wanted to live—which was contrary to what the German occupiers had in mind. After a few close calls where we had to hide to avoid being caught and killed or transported to a concentration camp, my brave mother purchased false identity papers from a Catholic priest for my baby sister, me, and herself. She then took us to a town where we were not known and where we would go by our new assumed names and religion. My part was to go to school, attend church, and act like a Catholic child. I was eight years old and had no knowledge of this religion.
The Chosen People
It all had started in Germany. With hate, the Nazis got tough. We Jews were placed in jeopardy. That should have been enough!
The Choices We Make, Part 2
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.