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Survivor Reflections and Testimonies

Echoes of Memory

Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.

These essays and testimonials come from our guided writing workshops for Holocaust Survivors. Learn more about our Writing Workshop for Holocaust Survivors.

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Topic:Concentration Camps

Displaying 1-6 of 6 Essays

  • Yahrzeit

    Yahrzeit is the Jewish yearly observance of a loved one’s death. Traditionally, we light a candle at home and recite the kaddish in the synagogue in their memory. I learned the words of the kaddish sometime in 1950 when I was eight or nine, shortly after my mother found out the precise date of my father’s death—July 25, 1945, which translated to the Hebrew date 15 Av—in what had been the Ebensee concentration camp. I have observed the ritual ever since. The kaddish makes no reference to mourning but is a reaffirmation of our faith in the Almighty despite our loss.

    Topic: Memory, Hidden Children, Concentration Camps
    Volume: Volume 13

  • Dreams

    June, 1944. My family was in a concentration camp; my mother, Rosalia, my sister Shosha, 13 years old, and me, Agi, 14 years old. My father, Zoltan, had died a few months earlier, on the same day that the Germans occupied Hungary. 

    Topic: Life After the Holocaust, Concentration Camps, Liberation, Memory
    Volume: Volume 12

  • Freedom in Holysov

    In February 1945, I was one of 500 women shipped from a concentration camp in Nuremberg, Germany, after it was totally destroyed by constant bombing. We arrived at Holysov, Czechoslovakia, near Plzen. Some 250 of the women were Jewish and 250 were political prisoners from Poland and Russia.

    Topic: Concentration Camps, Liberation, Partisans, US Army
    Volume: Volume 6

  • Negotiating with the Gestapo

    After Kristallnacht, I returned to my hometown in Bremen, in northwest Germany. A number of Jews had been released from concentration camps. I had been set free after eight days of imprisonment. I was then in Würzburg, Bavaria, where I had gone to school. The Nazis called these arrests “protective custody.” From whom did we need protection?

    Topic: Kristallnacht, Gestapo, Anti-Jewish Legislation, Schools, Concentration Camps
    Volume: Volume 3

  • An Ominous Night Call

    About two weeks after Kristallnacht, my father and I returned to our house in Bremen. During that fateful night, my father had fled over the roofs and had been hiding with family in Hamburg. He was lucky, for if he had been found at home, he would certainly have been taken and sent to a concentration camp like my brother and all other men. I had met my father again in Hamburg when I was released from imprisonment in Würzburg.

    Topic: Kristallnacht, Nazi Party, Concentration Camps
    Volume: Volume 3

  • Two Decent Germans

    I met them at the first concentration camp I was sent to. Their appearances and personalities were completely different from each other. One, called Shaika, was emaciated, thin. He had to wear suspenders to hold up his trousers. He had a lean, drawn face, protruding cheekbones, searching eyes, and a pipe forever hanging from the side of his mouth—even when it wasn’t lit.

    Topic: Forced Labor, Concentration Camps
    Volume: Volume 3

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Survivor Reflections and Testimonies
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Survivor Reflections and Testimonies

Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.