First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors

As a young Jewish child, Joan Da Silva had to move from family to family to stay safe from the Nazis in German-occupied Poland, usually without her parents. She also had to pretend to be Catholic, as recorded on her false identity papers. To pull off this ruse, a rescuer taught Christian prayers to five-year-old Joan in the middle of the night. 

In her first appearance on First Person, Joan will share her experiences. “I knew something terrible was happening. I knew that I must never tell anybody that I was Jewish. … Whatever was happening was something that was not going to happen to me … I was going to survive.”

Marking 25 years, First Person is a monthly, hour-long live or recorded interview between journalist Bill Benson and a Holocaust survivor on the Museum’s YouTube page, and it includes questions from the audience. This program is made possible through generous support from the Louis Franklin Smith Foundation.