Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
My sister Tia came home from work ill. She couldn’t even eat the soup that Mama prepared for supper. We were putting thin slices of potato on her forehead to bring down her fever—precious potato slices that should have been put in the soup instead.
The apartment on Broome Street on New York’s Lower East Side is steamy in the sweltering heat of July. Odd smells waft from the old furniture; the dark brown wood casts a depressing mood over the crowded room. Only a single bright square—crisscrossed by shadows of the fire escape—illuminates the floor, its shellac worn by generations of tenement dwellers. Emma kneels on the floor and tries to concentrate on her book.
I stood at the front of the classroom facing my students, who were themselves teachers within the same school district as I was—Montgomery County Public Schools in Maryland. They had enrolled in the summer in-service class for teachers to study the history of the Holocaust, as well as to learn methods for teaching this history to their own students when they returned to their classrooms the following fall.
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?
“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.
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.
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.
Jon, our grandson, was studying biographies when he was in second grade. Jon loved to read and was familiar with this type of literature. I had told him a little bit about living in England and of course he knew Alan, my foster brother. So he was aware that my life had been a little out of the ordinary.
On March 10, 1945, the Soviet Army found us in the barn. We had been there for three weeks. The Soviet soldiers told us that the Germans were losing the war, that the Nazis were retreating. They informed us that they had already found other camps and some survivors.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.
