Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
I was asked to speak in the Hall of Remembrance at the Museum’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. After all these years of never wanting to speak in a large public setting, I was hesitant. Yet, one day as I was driving, I suddenly saw myself speaking at a lectern and knew that I had decided to say yes to the request.
I love water and every form of it that gives me an opportunity to engage in outdoor activities. I love to swim in a pool, a lake, a river, or the ocean. I like sailing, kayaking, and rowing. I used to ice skate until a few years ago when I had spine surgery. I still like skiing, and I am proud that I can keep up with my grown daughters, at my advanced age.
On Wednesday mornings at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, I sit at a desk where other Holocaust survivors and I meet Museum visitors. I tell my story, and the story of my family’s survival.
I never had a chance to ask the four questions that are traditionally asked by the youngest person at the Passover Seder table. Neither have I had a chance to earn a dollar by being the first to find the Afikoman. I was already 40 years old when I first attended a family Seder in Baltimore with my aunt, uncle, and cousins.
Because I don’t speak publicly about my experiences during the Holocaust, I earn my so-called “keep” as a Museum volunteer by translating. Over the years, my husband, Marcel, and I have done many translations. Even though the texts given to us by the Museum for translating are varied, all of them show the horrors of the Holocaust but also people’s resilience, love of family, hope, and resistance.
My grandfather, Mayer Weiss, lived in Polana before World War I, when the village was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. After World War I, Czechoslovakia was established and included the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Karpatska Russ (Carpathian Russ), where we lived.
The German term sachwerte means “non-cash value.” The term was often used in Germany and countries around Germany after World War I. The economic depression made cash lose its value soon after it was printed.
A few weeks ago, I received a call from a man living in Canada who told me that he is a nephew of Zofia Sawinska, a person who saved me and my family during the Holocaust. He has a lot of documents about his family and how they saved the lives of many more Jews.
During the fall of 1942, concerned about the danger that we might be rounded up and taken away, our parents sent my sisters and me to a farm in Thoiry, outside of Paris, where we stayed with two ladies, Madame Arthus and another lady, who I think was her sister. (I never saw a man there; the men had probably been taken prisoner with the French army during the Battle of France in the summer of 1940.) They were unaware that they were hosting Jewish children, because my parents had not told them, explaining only that we would be better fed on a farm than in a Paris suburb where food was rationed and scarce.
I am a secret Francophile. It must be a secret when even my closest friends are surprised when I show my affection for all things French. I love everything French except the attitude French people have towards anyone who does not speak their language or those who speak it even with the slightest hint of an accent. I do not speak French at all. I know only a few words and expressions; nevertheless, of all the languages I like the sound of French the most.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.