Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
Our Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, pleaded with Americans during a televised program on Monday, March 29, 2021. With emotion in her voice, she implored all of us to still be vigilant and to keep all of the previous proposed measures, such as masks and distance mitigation. At that time, the coronavirus threat was not over yet. She said, “Please stay with it for a little while longer.”
When I returned from the deportation to Miskolc in 1945, my uncle Gabor Zoltan was already back home. He had survived years in a forced labor camp.
It all had started in Germany. With hate, the Nazis got tough. We Jews were placed in jeopardy. That should have been enough!
Wrapped in history Hearing our words go out in the world.
We live in a rented apartment shared with an obligatory additional person. My mother works, and my grandmother takes care of me. My father is absent from home. He has been on a business trip during this particular December. I am eight years old. Tito is our adored and undisputed Communist leader.
As long as I could remember, I had always wished to learn to drive and, of course, to own a car. But I would be well into adulthood before this happened. When I was 13 years old, we—my father, mother, sister, and I—settled in England. We had survived the Holocaust and were trying to restart our lives. England was very different from Poland, but we were free and looked forward to a better future.
I wanted to help my mother, you see, and at the same time to establish a certain authority about myself.
Our feelings are always there—waiting, attuned, alert, and yearning for attachment. So we were created. Such is the path of our lives.
My two best subjects in high school in Poland were biology and chemistry, so it is no wonder that I decided to study pharmacy, a profession that would combine my scientific abilities and my desire to help people.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.
