30th Anniversary Guardians Commemorative Book - Book - Page 164
HONORING THE
RESCUERS
My father witnessed
liberation, but passed
away two months later,
still in a concentration
camp. My mother survived 12 camps
before she was finally liberated and
reunited with me. A Catholic family
in the Netherlands hid my two
sisters until the husband denounced
them to the Nazis. They were just
six and eight when they were taken
to Auschwitz and killed. I had the
good fortune of being placed with a
Dutch Indonesian family when I was
nine months old and cared for by
the family’s nanny, Mima Saïna. She
spoke no Dutch, but she answered
the cry of a little Jewish baby.
The United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum honors the
memory of all those who lost their
lives in the Holocaust, including my
family members. Equally important, it
recognizes the heroes who stood up to
the Nazis, like the Dutch Indonesian
family who kept me throughout the
war years at great personal peril.
162 l UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM LEGACY OF LIGHT GUARDIANS
My foster father, Tolé Madna, said
that when you’re confronted by evil,
either you do the right thing or you
don’t. To him it wasn’t a choice. The
lesson is that people of all faiths,
backgrounds, cultures, races, and
ethnic groups can come together and
have an equal chance at being good—
at doing the right thing.
The other important function of
the Museum is to teach so that the
world can prevent such evil from
ever happening again. Right now,
we still have survivors; there are
still people with a direct memory
of the Holocaust and of World War
II. But who will tell their story
when they are gone? And more
importantly, who will continue to
teach the lessons? The memory may
fade, but it would be far worse if
the lessons of the Holocaust were to
fade with time. My hope is that this
endowment will help the Museum
face the challenge of remaining a
living and teaching institution for
many generations to come.”
