More than 70 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.
This podcast series features excerpts from 48 interviews with Holocaust survivors conducted at the Museum as part of our First Person public program. Listen to these interview excerpts below. You can also watch video recordings of interviews from our First Person seasons here.
First Person is made possible by generous support from the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation with additional funding from the Arlene and Daniel Fisher Foundation.
In today’s episode, Holocaust survivors share their thoughts on the importance of speaking about their experiences. It is our tradition at First Person that each guest speaker ends the program with their "final words." In our final podcast of the series, we close with those thoughts, reflections, and hopes for the future.
Estelle Laughlin discusses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when German forces, intending to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, were stunned by an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family hid in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.
Theodora (Dora) Klayman discusses surviving the war in hiding with her brother in Ludbreg, Yugoslavia. After her parents were deported in 1941, she spent the war first with her maternal aunt and then, after her aunt was denounced and deported, with non-Jewish neighbors.
Steven Fenves discusses being forced into a ghetto immediately following the German occupation of his hometown of Subotica, Yugoslavia, in March 1944. As his family was forced out of their home, they encountered a range of responses from their non-Jewish neighbors.
Josiane (Josy) Traum discusses her memories of life in hiding at a Carmelite convent in Brugge, Belgium. In 1942, as conditions grew increasingly more dangerous for Jews living in German-occupied Belgium, her mother, Fanny, arranged to have Belgian nuns hide her three-year-old daughter in the convent.
Henry Greenbaum discusses his attempt to escape from a slave labor camp near Starahowice, Poland, with his sister Faige and a Jewish policeman in July 1944.
Haim Solomon discusses hiding during the pogrom that Romanian authorities staged against the Jewish population in Iasi, Romania, within days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941. Haim and his family hid in various different locations across the city. At least 4,000 Jews were murdered in Iasi during the pogrom.
Margit Meissner discusses her flight from Paris just before the city fell to the Germans in June 1940. Margit and her mother were Austrian citizens living in Paris, which meant they were considered “enemy aliens” because Austria was annexed by Germany in 1938. They were ultimately separated and Margit was left with the responsibility of getting safely out of Paris on her own.
Gerald Schwab discusses his experience being drafted into the US Army in 1944 after fleeing Nazi Germany just four years earlier. After the war, he assisted with the trials of leading German officials before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
Helen Goldkind discusses the humiliation she and her family experienced as they were forced by the Germans to move from their hometown of Volosyanka to the Uzhgorod ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.