30th Anniversary Guardians Commemorative Book - Book - Page 193
RETELLING THE
STORIES
I was born in 1947 in
a displaced persons
camp in Germany.
My parents survived,
but I lost my grandparents and other
family except for two aunts. When
the Germans came in, my mother was
six years old. At 11, she and her three
brothers were in the ghetto with my
grandmother when the Nazis began
the liquidation. My grandmother
sent my mother into the woods by
herself in the hope she would survive.
She eventually found her way to the
house of a Ukrainian farmer who was
looking for a maid, and that’s how she
stayed alive. When the war ended,
she returned to her hometown and
married my father. When I was two,
we came to New York as refugees.
I grew up surrounded by survivors.
My parents did not talk about
their experiences, but when other
survivors visited the house they
would all talk. My first language was
Yiddish, so I heard all the stories.
Totally blank-faced, they would
discuss how this one was killed, and
this one was buried alive, and this
one survived, and that one was raped.
It was such a struggle for them. They
just had to block it all out.
The first time I went to the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum,
I was amazed. I had heard the stories
but I had never seen the boxcar, the
shoes, the glasses. The presentation is
so detailed, so well done, it makes the
experience more real. At that point,
I realized how important this one-ofa-kind institution was and pledged
to help it one day. And I have, but
the support for education has to be
ongoing. We have to teach that it
happened and what we have to do
to stop it from happening again. The
world must know and never forget.
That is why I have made this legacy
gift. I want to make sure this doesn’t
happen to my nieces and nephews,
or to their children.”
SAFEGUARDING TRUTH FOR FUTURE GENERATIONS l 191
