A Furtive Thing
When you are five and a half years old, at what point do you start crying because you haven’t seen your mother?
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The Price I Paid for Survival
Our feelings are always there—waiting, attuned, alert, and yearning for attachment. So we were created. Such is the path of our lives.
A Monument, a Museum, a Sculpture
There is no other monumental structure more powerful than the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
The Yellow Badge
My grandmother had a box filled with buttons, threads, and pieces of fabric.
Tuskegee Airman Colonel McGee
I finished reviewing the Washington Post’s front page and the sports section when a headline in the obituaries on January 17, 2022, caught my interest. “Barrier-breaking Tuskegee Airman flew combat missions in three wars.” The story was about retired Air Force Colonel Charles McGee, who lived until the age of 102. After retirement, he was promoted to Brigadier General.
The German Soldier Who Had to Die
The German soldier described here portrays my feelings toward him and all the German soldiers I met, who never recognized me as a Jew.
Polana, Czechoslovakia
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.
Sachwerte
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.
Tommy Guns and Other War Toys
Following the liberation of Belgium in September 1944, my parents, siblings, and I came out of hiding and our lives started returning to normal. As a child born shortly before the start of World War II, my memory of a “normal” life was very limited. We got back together as a family and soon after moved into a row house at 33 rue Paul Leduc, in a quiet neighborhood of Brussels where we knew no other Jews. Whether that was a choice or happenstance, I don’t know.
Millennials and the Holocaust
Headlines from the American media in April 2018 after a Holocaust-related survey was published: “Holocaust study: Two-thirds of millennials don’t know what Auschwitz is” (Washington Post, April 12, 2018) “4 in 10 millennials don’t know 6 million Jews were killed in Holocaust, study shows” (CBS News, April 12, 2018) “Holocaust Is Fading From Memory, Survey Finds” (New York Times, April 12, 2018) “The Startling Statistics About People’s Holocaust Knowledge” (NPR, April 14, 2018) “Why We’re Forgetting the Holocaust” (New York Post, April 15, 2018) “Study Shows Americans are Forgetting about the Holocaust” (NBC News, April 12, 2018)
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Survivor Reflections and Testimonies
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.