In these (like Drohobycz, Drohobycz or Refugees), Grynberg told stories of other survivors, which as he once said, have also become part of his story. My name is Harold Gordon now! My mom hugged me and said, ‘We don't know where we're going, we don't know what's going to happen, just remember no one can take away from you what you put here in your own mind.’. “The 5 Million Forgotten Victims” Web Sites. They carried me outside. It was not a long way from where we were to Auschwitz, but because of railway lines being bombed, [the train] was shunted forward and back...and suddenly we arrived at the place. No, I haven't. So when people tell me I overcame, no, I never overcame, and I never forgot. He saved my life. “I spelt it out for my mother,” Hornick recalled recently. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Retrieved February 28, 2018, from remember.org Remember.org shares art, discussion, photos, poems, and facts to preserve powerful memories, Remember.org - The Holocaust History - A People's and Survivors' History. Write CSS OR LESS and hit save. I was frozen. she and her sister were sent to an orphanage while her parents were sent to concentration camps. I was told at a very young age that I am a very talented gymnast. The Nazis established Auschwitz in 1940 in the Polish suburbs of Oswiecim, building a complex of camps that became central to Hitler’s pursuit of a “Final Solution to the Jewish question.” Nazis murdered between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, including more than one million Jews, but also Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, political dissidents and more. He didn’t listen to me. Remember.org - The Holocaust History - A People's and Survivors' History. For young girls like ourselves, possibly even our mother [hadn't seen] us undressed. Remember.org helps teachers and students find the best resources on the Internet, and connect them through a collaborative learning structure developed since 1994. And if anybody didn't look well, he would wave and they would have to step out of line, and we never saw those people again. Synopsis The Last Sunrise by Harold Gordon My name is Harold Gordon now! She is currently writing her second book The Gift and Twelve Lessons from Hell. [Once we were forced to wear Jewish stars] that was terrible, suddenly we were singled out. Judith and her mother were tortured for years at Auschwitz before being liberated by the British. Dunn, M. D. I was getting weaker and weaker, and the girls that I shared the bread with...formed a chair with their arms, and they carried me so I wouldn't die. holocaust survivor, 104, has 'emotional' birthday celebration at the western wall with 400 descendents Buchman and her sister remained in Lubeck for several weeks while they recuperated. First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist. Estimates suggest that Nazis murdered 85% of the people sent to Auschwitz. I became very suicidal. READ MORE: Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII's Deadliest Concentration Camp. All I could tell you [was] that it was quite dark, I saw just kind of darkness, and we didn't know who's alive and who's not alive. 136 kilometers to the North was the Baltic Sea and the Polish port city of Gdansk. I have another plan in its place. People [were] dying left and right from hunger. I think now it was a miracle that we weren't killed on that train, either by the British or the Germans, who tried to...kill us in the last moment. His businesses were confiscated, and honestly I don't know how our mother fed us. When we first glanced out, it looked like a twilight zone, big chimneys going to the sky, smoke was going all over. Every morning, four o'clock, they knocked on the door [for] roll call. Survivors of Auschwitz on the day of liberation. I remember a young boy. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. ‘Carry our stories forward’: Holocaust survivors share powerful testimonies at UN. I danced for Doctor Mengele and he gave me a piece of bread. I shared it with everyone. (95, April 25). By collecting and recording Holocaust survivor stories, we keep their memories and histories alive for future generations. I was the youngest survivor from a city of 25,000 Jews. I hear a gentleman speak with the French accent. [Comments have been edited for clarity.]. I don't believe that the world learned the lessons from the Holocaust. An official scrambled into their car. This is the Lydia’s incredible story. When she was nine years old, Posner and her aunt were allowed to … I will raise a family, leave behind descendants so that there will be grandchildren for them to remember after I am gone. How many Nazis can I kill before I die, 10, 100, 1000? Now they saw piles of rotting bodies, barking dogs, Nazis shouting in German, thick gray ash clotting the air. At 13, she survived the Holocaust with the help of a Polish family. I was age of 21. The day a Holocaust survivor got revenge on his tormentor By Martin Greenfield . 25,000 were of the Jewish faith and the majority were of Catholic persuasion . I was not the smartest nor the strongest. After the war, I met someone who told me that he saw my father going to the gas chamber. © Copyright 1995-2020 Remember.org. My father was taken away from us. Billy Harvey, 95, established a successful career as a celebrity cosmetologist before opening his own beauty salon, working with actresses including Judy Garland, Mary Martin and Zsa Zsa Gabor. And then I said to my trainer, ‘I'm not Jewish.’ I denied it, and that's when I realized that when you had a child, you had to go to the City Hall and register the child and put the religion next to it. I sat down at my computer every night after work, like a video it was all right before my eyes. We had a lovely home and an orchard and we had nice relations with our neighbors and our school friends, which were not always Jewish. And [Doctor Josef Mengele] asked, ‘Is this your mother or is this your sister?’ And I did not forgive myself [for] saying, ‘That's my mother.’ So Doctor Mengele points my mother to go this way, and my sister and I the other. We were [in the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible sanitation conditions. Edith Eger, 92, earned her doctorate in psychology at the University of Texas, El Paso, and works as a clinical psychologist, helping survivors of trauma, including veterans. Polish Victims: Individual Stories. He had been recounting his life as a … She works with the Holocaust Memorial Trust and the Anne Frank Trust. I don't know what was the purpose of it because nobody could escape—the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire, the barbed wire was connected to electricity and every morning in front of the barracks was piled up naked dead people. Have I ever found an explanation? Nobody was hollering at me. We had to sit there naked for men shaving our heads. A … I lived with my family in Grodno, Poland, a city of 65,000 inhabitants. She was the … FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. Description: Electronic data regarding Polish Holocaust survivors who came back to Poland after the war and registered themselves in local Jewish committees . Although Julian's Polish Catholic parents had immigrated to the United States before World War I, his mother had returned to Poland and Julian was born in a village not far from the large town of Tarnow in southern Poland. He advised Hornick’s mother to let her two older girls go ahead, while she stayed behind with her younger two sons. We had to sit all night on the stone floor. She was a dressmaker, but what I know about her talent today, she was more like a dress designer. “You better do as this man says,” her mother said. I followed my mum, and...the very person who annihilates my family grabs me, and there is an eye contact, and tells me, ‘You're gonna see your mother very soon, she's just gonna take a shower.’. Grodno is located at the most north Eastern corner of Poland, on the Niemen River bordering Lithuania. The following is a series of concentration camp photos taken by Josh C, Joseph Weismann – Remembering with After the Roundup, After the Roundup by Joseph Weismann – Part 1 of Chapter 3, Liberation of Auschwitz 75 years later – a poem, Forever Alert German Child Survivors in Action Before 1945 and Beyond by Philipp Sonntag, Holocaust Curriculum for Middle School and High School 7-12 (Part 2). Most of the children were bitterly crying, didn't want to be separated from their mother, so the young mothers went to the left, to the gas chamber. When the sliding doors slammed closed on us, the only light came through the wooden cracks. I graduated age of 18 from a gymnasium [an advanced secondary school]. Martin Kapel is a survivor of the Nazi Polenaktion in October 1938 (the “Poland Action”). The people on this list are or were survivors of Nazi Germany's attempt to exterminate the Jews in Europe before and during World War II.A state-enforced persecution of Jews in Nazi-controlled Europe lasted from the introduction of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 to Hitler's defeat in 1945. Culture and Education . I said to God, God, please forgive me for not keeping my promise. © 2020 A&E Television Networks, LLC. Our heads shaven and then we were going in to be tattooed with a number and, from then on, we had no name, that was it. I haven't. I began thinking. When we arrived back to Buchenwald, they came to collect all the dead people from the cattle car to transport them to the crematorium. He currently speaks regularly at the Museum of Tolerance and other venues to share his experiences. The town that I grew up in was part of Czechoslovakia until 1938, when it became part of Hungary. You’ll see them soon, he assured her in Yiddish. We were a family of inmates, we had to care for each other. We encourage all survivors to share their unique experiences to ensure their preservation for future generations. Why was I chosen to live. I spent a lot of time with my mom because my father played billiards, and so she took me to the opera and she introduced me to Gone with the Wind. Holocaust survivor Sidney Zoltak shares his story and reunites with the Polish family that saved him from the Nazis. When the children were separated at the border, I had very, very, very many nightmares, and I still do. They divided them up one potato per person per day. We passed by where the [women were]...my mother, my aunt, my cousins and their children all were naked as we glanced in, and they looked like they were in a trance. In Auschwitz you couldn't fight, because if you touched the guard you were shot—right in front of me I saw that. Children, especially twins, could be selected at any time for barbaric medical experiments conducted without anesthesia by Nazi Josef Mengele. They were burning—burning between 12,000 and 13,000 people a day. Behind Every Name a Story consists of essays describing survivors’ experiences during the Holocaust, written by survivors or their families. Remember.org shares art, discussion, photos, poems, and facts to preserve powerful memories. We were all shmooshed up, you know, very small, little place, in the cattle car, on the floor, sitting down, and I am crawling to him and asking him to shave. I begged my father to look presentable, to look younger. Filip Muller’s testimony: Auschwitz Life was good. Holocaust survivor Mano Orel, 95, was an hour and a half into telling his story when he broke down and began to cry. The Holocaust should never be forgotten and should never happen again.” ― Rena Finder, My Survival: A Girl on Schindler's List He told Mindu and her sister to lie about their age and skills. We were stripped from every inch of human dignity. [As the Allies approached, the Nazis evacuated Harvey and other prisoners to Buchenwald by cattle car.] My city was called Berehove, population was approximately 26,000. You couldn't flee because if you touched the barbed wires, you were electrocuted. Eva Kuper was 2 when her mother’s cousin rescued her from a train in the frantic moments before it headed to the Treblinka death camp. There [were] no windows on the cattle car. Holocaust survivors tell their stories on location at concentration camps for 360-degree videos. 25,000 were of the Jewish faith and the majority were of Catholic persuasion […] When I wake up in the morning, I says, “You're not gonna let me down, I have to get up, I have to proceed with my lecture because I help people.” There is nothing greater and there's nothing bigger. I was tormented looking for an answer. 95AD, remember.org. Suddenly the Germans got very, very impatient and they collected us all and put us on a train, and it was the first time we went on a passenger train and [at] either end of the train there were machine guns. Holocaust holograms: how survivors' stories live on through new technology The process starts on a Monday morning and goes straight through until Friday afternoon. The British saw a train moving with machine guns on either side, thinking they've got some valuable cargo, they shot our train up. Mindu Hornick, 13, peered through a crack in the door of her stopped cattle car and read a name: Auschwitz. When author, educator and Holocaust survivor Max Eisen talks about his experience in Nazi-occupied Europe, he starts by remembering life before World War II. I could not stand up well on my feet. Whenever there was a hanging, we were all called out to watch it, and I remember us shouting, ‘For God's sake, where is God?’ A young boy hung because he picked some bit of food up. I woke up in the barrack. [Polish survivors] (ID: 20811) View all names in this list Search names within this list. The Poetschke family, who was not Jewish, hid Blanka from the German occupation forces during the Holocaust, the Gazeta Wyborcza paper reported. [Later, during one of several death marches] when you stopped you were shot right away, and I was about to stop. I was told by my trainer that ‘I have to train someone else who is not Jewish,’ and that was to me the biggest shock of my life because I spent at least five hours a day training, training, training. UN Photo/Manuel Elias. “Like many other survivors, I feel an obligation to tell my story again and again. The Nazis established Auschwitz in 1940 in the Polish suburbs of Oswiecim, building a complex of camps that became central to Hitler’s pursuit of a “Final Solutionto the Jewish question.” Nazis murdered between 1.1 million and 1.5 million people at Auschwitz, including more than one million Jews, but also Roma (gypsies), homosexuals, political dissidents and more. My aunt, my mother's sister...heard that our transport came in, so she came to find us, Auntie Berthe. “We looked back and we saw our mother with her spotted scarf, and we waved to her and we went ahead,” Mindu said. I weighed 72 pounds. “You are a seamstress,” he told them. As the writer claims, he writes only ‘tales that are authentic and ever more documentary’: The Holocaust in the Works of Polish Artists Often, when the pain became too much to bear I would say, God if you let me live I promise to take revenge and kill every Nazi that crosses my path. We didn't know where the smoke was coming from, but we found out soon enough—the smoke was coming from the crematorium. “She says, ‘I don't know where it is, I've never heard of the place.’ And then suddenly all this clatter of the doors opening, and when the doors opened I mean there was, just, all hell let loose.”. Joseph Alexander, 96, a slight man with a Polish accent, wearing a Hawaiian shirt, spoke on a sunny Sunday to a rapt crowd of about 30 at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. A doctor escorts a group of Auschwitz survivors from the camp in January 1945. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images. I lived with my family in Grodno, Poland, a city of 65,000 inhabitants. And that was the most important thing for me: to belong again. We were still crying for our mother. I never saw my father again. Men and women were immediately separated. We were pushed through to the main gate, and once we entered there we thought we'd entered hell. I grew up in this shtetl in the Carpathian Mountains. I just wanted to die. Was there something else that God had in mind for me to fulfill? The Holocaust in Poland was part of the European-wide Holocaust and took place within the September 1, 1939, boundaries of Poland, which ceased to exist as a territorial entity after the German and Soviet invasion of Poland. As prisoners arrived, young children, the elderly and infirm were separated and immediately sent to take “showers,” which pumped deadly Zyklon-B poison gas into the chambers. But 55 years ago I was a (10) year old boy whose name was Hirshel Grodzienski. 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