Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Sadly, I have no personal memories of Mima. All I know about her comes from countless photographs of an always serious looking dark-skinned woman with her sleek black hair almost always combed back into a bun, of a few words of Mima’s native languages, Maleis, of a taste for Indonesian cooking, and, of course from the many stories about her that my foster siblings, Dewie, Wille, and Robby, shared with me.
The choice was made, Alone she would travel To a foreign country A new family To safety
Presenting my family’s Holocaust history to a live audience is never easy. I am always looking forward to the last ten to 15 minutes of the presentation, which is a question-and-answer session.
Long, long ago, it was sensational to receive a letter. We used to wait for the mailman impatiently. A letter could change plans, change lives, and fates.
Six months ago, in mid-2023, I suddenly lost much of my hearing. Thanks to the care of my physicians and audiologists, the condition has improved. Still, it has been a life-changing event, which at times has left me anxious and sometimes almost despondent.
The scenes from the bombed-out buildings, destroyed cars and buses, and citizens fleeing for their lives in Ukraine remind me of the bombings in Prague during World War II and what I saw three years later in the city of Dresden, Germany.
My best remembered early days were unfortunately my years in Nazi Germany.
The name of the street was Rottenbiller in Budapest, Hungary. It was named after a mayor of Budapest who served in the 19th century. We got an apartment there after our original flat was bombed out. I was about three years old. My mother, my grandmother, my uncle Herman with his wife and later two daughters, my uncle Sanyi, and I all lived there. I mostly remember certain pictures in my mind.
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.
Fire is wonderful, warms up your home, Fire is terrible, destruction, war. What do I remember about fire? My grandmother’s home, the stove with tile. I came in from the winter, very cold, but I put my back against that warm stove.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.