Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
My husband Jackie and I were invited for a reunion of his former Seward Park High School friends from New York City. These were the young people with whom Jackie had grown up. They and their families had lived and some still were living in the neighborhood where Jackie was born, played, and attended both secular and religious school.
That quaint small town in central Poland, my hometown, Chmielnik, once teemed with Jewish life. There were houses of worship, including the “big synagogue,” and houses of learning. The orthodox young men studied the Torah; others, after attending public school in the morning, attended Hebrew schools.
I was in the water up to my neck. The water was cold. We were hiding in the bulrushes and I knew we could not move. It was very quiet and any sound would give us away. Mama gave me some soggy bread. It tasted awful, but she insisted I had to eat it to keep strong.
The annual spring cleaning was in full swing. The windows were open; the carpets were airing on lines outside. People were coming and going, each one busy with a specific chore. The mattresses were being turned over, feather beds aired and stored for next winter, closets emptied and cleaned and the contents replaced or discarded.
When you handed me over did you hug me, kiss me, give directions to my caretaker, was it someone you or I knew? Could you picture me as an adult? The years have passed, and I am now many years older than the age you were when you died.
In 1970, on one of my visits to Israel, I attended, with my Israeli cousins, a meeting of members from my hometown. As on previous occasions, I was warmly greeted, both as an old acquaintance and as a visitor from America expected to make a donation.
In May 1995, my husband Jack and I traveled to Brussels, Belgium, on a mission to attend a ceremony to be held at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. I was very excited. At the ceremony during that month, Yad Vashem, the memorial in Jerusalem for the Jews and others murdered during the frightful years of World War II and the Holocaust, was going to honor several “Just of the Nations,” the term for those who dared to risk their lives to save others condemned to death by the Nazis.
In the spring of 1943, three high school classmates and I became part of a work crew that, after air raids, tore down ruined buildings and cleaned the rubble from damaged structures. The members of the crew, Jewish husbands and sons of mixed marriages, came from all walks of life—a truly motley crew. They gave me an early course in human nature. Some of them I remember vividly.
Lieutenant Block had never been to a party like it. The gothic, high-ceilinged hall, more than the length of a football field, was full to overflowing with people in costumes and masks, some humorous, others hideous.
He was only nine years old when Germany invaded Poland. The youngest of three children, he was a skinny little boy on spindly legs, agile body, and a small pale face. The only outstanding features were his two large brown eyes, mischievous and alert. Since Jewish children no longer were allowed to attend school, he became restless and was constantly on the move.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.
