Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
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Grandchildren
November 17, 2022
Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The immensity of this number does not reveal who these people were and does not give meaning to the lives they lived. The number will never tell the full story of what has been lost. All those people who were killed, including most of my relatives, were important. They had all been busy living lives and contributing to society. Any number of their children and grandchildren could have become great scientists, doctors, lawyers, chefs, actors, poets, writers, dancers, engineers, athletes, teachers, and so much more. The loss to humanity is incomprehensible.
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An Alternate View of the Sad Longing
November 14, 2022
When, at the age of five-and-a-half, I was left to survive by my own wits, I was well-equipped with some essential information. I knew by heart many prayers of the rosary. I had a new identity—a Catholic child whose parents had been taken to Siberia. My real mother was to be referred to as my aunt and my father as her friend.
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If Only I Had Pictures
February 4, 2021
I lost my family in the Holocaust. I also lost the images of my past. Everything was destroyed: my home, my material possessions, including nearly every picture. Most importantly, none of my relatives survived. I was one of two children who survived the Holocaust from my town of Dokszyce in eastern Poland, now Belarus. The town’s Jewish population was about 3,000 before the Holocaust. Only a dozen or so survived.
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Bridges
October 22, 2020
The cabinet in my dining room was filled with tchotchkes. All those trinkets were scattered on four shelves in no particular order and, therefore, it was exceptionally difficult to find anything. In order to retrieve a particular dish that I wanted to use, I needed to take out numerous items that all ended up cluttered on the floor. On one occasion, I decided it was a perfect time to throw out some of these objects that had been slumbering there for many years.
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Polana, Czechoslovakia
October 22, 2020
My grandfather, Mayer Weiss, lived in Polana before World War I, when the village was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, Czechoslovakia was established and included the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Karpatska Russ (Carpathian Russ), where we lived.
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Sachwerte
October 22, 2020
The German term sachwerte means “non-cash value.” The term was often used in Germany and countries around Germany after World War I. The economic depression made cash lose its value soon after it was printed.
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Millennials and the Holocaust
October 23, 2019
Headlines from the American media in April 2018 after a Holocaust-related survey was published:
“Holocaust study: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is” (Washington Post, April 12, 2018)
“4 in 10 millennials don’t know 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust, study shows” (CBS News, April 12, 2018)
“Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds” (New York Times, April 12, 2018)
“The Startling Statistics About People’s Holocaust Knowledge” (NPR, April 14, 2018)
“Why We’re Forgetting the Holocaust” (New York Post, April 15, 2018)
“Study Shows Americans are Forgetting about the Holocaust” (NBC News, April 12, 2018)
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Interview with Polish TV
November 13, 2018
On January 27, 2018, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, the Polish government passed a bill that would make it illegal to accuse the Polish nation or Polish people of complicity in Nazi war crimes.
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A New Era Arrived
November 13, 2018
In 2011 I was surprised to get an email from someone in Philadelphia asking me to get in contact with a Mr. Thomas Walther, an attorney in Germany. He was one of two main prosecutors of World War II criminals active at that time. When we finally talked, he asked me if I would be willing to join a group of Auschwitz survivors who were being asked to fill out testimonials stating that Oscar Groening had been the bookkeeper in Auschwitz during the time I was there. He did not promise a positive outcome of the trial but promised that they would put their best effort forward.
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Why I Feel that We Must Move On with the German People
November 1, 2017
Like many Jewish children who were victimized during World War II, I grew up hating the entire German people for the Holocaust. How could a nation commit such crimes as killing men, women, children, and elderly people and still look at other people in the eyes without being ashamed of themselves? How could they round up millions of Jews, Roma (Gypsies), slaves, homosexuals, and handicapped children and send them to gas chambers or perform experiments on twins, among others?
