Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
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?
“Have your husband and son report tomorrow morning to the deportee collection center on Grosse Hamburger Street!” the Gestapo officer ordered my mother. She had accompanied friends who had received their deportation orders to the collection center in the Levetzow Street synagogue, where the officer questioned her, wanting to know why she was concerned about “those Jews.”
The sound was unlike anything I’d ever heard. Bewildered, I spun around and became alarmed. A burly man about my age appeared to be having a convulsion. Steadying himself against the Information Desk, he was sobbing uncontrollably, his face crimson and contorted.
“Forget what has happened over there. You are now in this golden country. Start a new life.” Those were the words uttered by my American cousins every time I mentioned the Holocaust.
I don’t remember the name of the displaced persons camp, or which country I was in, but I do remember that first day.
Dear Papa, During the day I think about you. In the night I dream about you.
The window of the pawnshop on Second Avenue had not been washed in a long time. Peeled black paint showed ridges of rust on the heavy iron frame that surrounded the window, and only the three globes hanging above the doorway appeared to have received any maintenance care.
“The roof tiles are here, take your places on the steps.” Oh not again we thought; why all this nonsense? We work all day to get the heavy brick tiles up to the roof of the apartment building, and tomorrow morning, after an air raid, they probably will all be in small pieces on the ground. But we had to do it.
It must have been a few days after the Soviet soldier dropped me off in that house in the small town of Chinow when other soldiers came to take us to the school that was converted into a hospital. When I arrived there I saw some familiar faces, women who recognized me from the camps and the barn. Some of them were helping and translating what the soldiers were saying.
One day my mother asked me to take off my yellow star because we had to go to the country. We lived in a ghetto, and we were not supposed to leave. If we were caught on the outside we could be killed and they also might kill other people in the ghetto for good measure.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.