Tears
My brother and I heard shouting and loud noises all around us. He was five years old and I was three. We had lived a very quiet life for two and a half years between our safe walls.
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Echoes of Memory provides survivors who volunteer at the Museum with a powerful outlet to share their experiences and memories—through their own writing. In these videos, survivors who participated in the workshop read a selection of their essays.
This program is one way the Museum enables eyewitnesses to the Holocaust to help new generations gain insight and understanding of Holocaust history from a deeply personal perspective.
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Helpers at the Gate
Finally, we had arrived in Montreal, Canada. Our goal had been to move to the home of my father’s cousin—our sponsor, Louis Wolinsky, who lived in Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada. It had been a long and difficult procedure to find any person to help us leave Germany.
Separation
After the night of broken glass, when the Nazis organized and carried out a pogrom of anti-Jewish violence, my parents—like most Jews in Germany—wanted to leave. There was no more waiting to find out if events such as Kristallnacht would cease, or if life would ever be normal again for all of us. Our first choice was to come to the United States, where we had cousins living in New York. They were most anxious to assist us by sending us tickets for the voyage and helping us settle in this new land. However, like most countries, the United States had a quota which had been established many years before and, therefore, we found it impossible to immigrate.
Looking for My Father
I know my father, Adolf Rosenfeld, was born in 1898 in Korb, Germany. Korb is a very small place. He apprenticed as a baker when he was a young teenager. During World War I he was in the army. During his service in the war he lost a leg. Consequently, when he returned to Korb after the war, he could not work as a baker.
Smuggling
By 1941, Jewish people in Belgium no longer received food ration stamps. The only way to obtain food was to buy it on the black market. Mama started to smuggle food across the border from northern France, where food was still more easily obtained and less expensive. Part of the food Mama bought was sold and some of it kept for the four of us—Mama, my two younger sisters, and me. Also, with the proceeds, we were able to buy perishables like milk and eggs, as well as some vegetables and fruit. During Mama’s trips, I stayed home to care for my two younger sisters, Charlotte and Betty, which was quite a responsibility for one not quite 11 years old.
Hunger Winter
It was cold, bitter cold. I was only two and a half years old. My feet itched and hurt and then itched again—the result of chronic cold feet. The attic where my family was hiding had no heating, only a very small camping-like stove that was only used to heat water or some food, if we had it. It was the coldest winter in a long time. The southern part of the Netherlands was already liberated. We were in Amsterdam, the northern part. We were isolated and it was very difficult to get food, oil, or wood to heat. Trees were chopped down clandestinely in the night. Punishment for that action would be fierce.
For a Rainy Day (Men Zol Nit Bedarfen)
I still hoped that Mother would show up in one of the forests that abounded in that area of Poland. It was autumn of 1942. At that time I believed that this nightmare was temporary, and that any day I would find Mama. Had I thought differently, I would have given up.
The Final Days
In April 1945, the demolition crew to which my father and I belonged was working near an SS facility when a line of military trucks moved slowly down the street, pushed—we hardly could believe our eyes—by a group of SS men. It was an exhilarating sight, pure unalloyed schadenfreude.
Sardines
“We have to eat the sardines,” my mother said. She always bought those canned in tomato sauce. I did not like the combination, I preferred oil.
One Snowy Winter Night
The snow had fallen, uninterrupted, since morning. Big, fluffy flakes fell on top of each other, covering the everyday grime with a pure white blanket. Our side street was devoid of any traffic, only here and there footprints made by men or animals were visible, breaking up the smooth surface.
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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.