Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Going back to my childhood in Germany, my mother always had a bowl of fresh fruit sitting on our dinner table. Fruit was just one thing that was always available, so no big deal. But things changed drastically when I fled with my parents to the United States at age 13.
During my 86 years, I have experienced many countries, and not necessarily for pleasure. I have lived in Poland, England, Israel, and the United States. I owe thanks to each country for allowing me to adapt and live a good life there for some period of time.
In the spring of 1945, the US Army was closing in on Cologne. I was an intelligence agent, a member of Interrogator Prisoner of War Team no.66, a part of an intelligence unit called T-Force, 12th Army Group, with a mission to follow the infantry into large cities as they were liberated.
Once, when I was a very young girl in Poland, I got lost walking with my aunt in the forest. “Are we in America?” I asked her. America was the farthest place on earth for a child my age.
On the outskirts of a small village near Vichy, France, Looms the antediluvian castle the Château des Morelles Housing not grand dukes and duchesses But children from Germany, France, and Italy—waiting Lost from their individual families Scattered by the Third Reich. They eat their meager food Pretending it is the feast of royalty.
I had this premonition that it would happen while I was out of the country. And it did. I was in Tel Aviv when I got the news that Marty, my friend, had only a few days left to live, and I was back in Budapest when I got the note from his daughter, Gail, that Marty was not with us anymore.
After almost a year’s absence from my hometown of Miskolc, I arrived in Budapest with Shosha, my sister, and Rozalia, my mother. We stayed at the home of my aunt, Bozsi, and her daughter, Magda. My uncle, Moka, Bozsi’s husband, unfortunately did not return from forced labor.
Last night I dreamt of my father. He was not my father as I remembered him. He was another man, and yet my father. His face and clothes were from another time, Another place.
Wrapped in history Hearing our words go out in the world.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.
