We were pushed through to the main gate, and once we entered there we thought we'd entered hell. By collecting and recording Holocaust survivor stories, we keep their memories and histories alive for future generations. “I think that a kapo must have known that this train of mothers and children—that were no use to them for work—would end up in the gas chambers,” said Hornick. I was in a very bad state, I was already among the dead, and then I looked up. 136 kilometers to the North was the Baltic Sea and the Polish port city of Gdansk. I couldn’t help but wonder. By hearing their stories, we hope you feel inspired to stand up to injustice in your own life. Nobody was beating me. I said to God, God, please forgive me for not keeping my promise. 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. I sat down at my computer every night after work, like a video it was all right before my eyes. They carried me outside. We were [in the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible sanitation conditions. My mother kept Kosher, and she made her challah that was an art piece, and I visualized that in Auschwitz, my mother doing the challah, and mak[ing] her noodles. I have another plan in its place. So when people tell me I overcame, no, I never overcame, and I never forgot. READ MORE: This Midwife at Auschwitz Delivered 3,000 Babies in Unfathomable Conditions. How many Nazis can I kill before I die, 10, 100, 1000? They made us strip completely naked, shaved our hair, gave us a prisoner’s suit to wear. Martin Kapel is a survivor of the Nazi Polenaktion in October 1938 (the “Poland Action”). READ MORE: The Jewish Men Forced to Help Run Auschwitz. It's a notorious thing that people in the camps survived in pairs, or some other people that were taking care of them. The day a Holocaust survivor got revenge on his tormentor By Martin Greenfield . One day the train arrived...they pushed into one cattle car as many people they possibly can—so that we were crushed like sardines. “You better do as this man says,” her mother said. 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. She was a dressmaker, but what I know about her talent today, she was more like a dress designer. These included injecting serum directly into children’s eyeballs to study eye color and injecting chloroform into the hearts of twins to determine if the siblings would die at the same time and in the same way. We lived side by side and in peace most of the time. We were suddenly told to pack our luggage and be ready to come to the station. I was the youngest survivor from a city of 25,000 Jews. There were bodies everywhere, and there were these watch towers with machine guns pointing at us...this terrible grey ash falling around us. A life that my mother would be proud of. Dunn, M. D. His businesses were confiscated, and honestly I don't know how our mother fed us. They were burning—burning between 12,000 and 13,000 people a day. He advised Hornick’s mother to let her two older girls go ahead, while she stayed behind with her younger two sons. 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. As the writer claims, he writes only ‘tales that are authentic and ever more documentary’: The Holocaust in the Works of Polish Artists When we arrived back to Buchenwald, they came to collect all the dead people from the cattle car to transport them to the crematorium. Listen to HISTORY This Week Podcast: Episode 4: January 27, 1945 Surviving Auschwitz. A doctor escorts a group of Auschwitz survivors from the camp in January 1945. 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. They marched us into shower rooms to be deloused. If you were just for the me, me, me, you never made it. We were freezing, we had very little food to eat. When I opened my eyes, I thought I was in a five-star hotel. I will raise a family, leave behind descendants so that there will be grandchildren for them to remember after I am gone. Media Essay Polish Victims: Individual Stories. I was tormented looking for an answer. As prisoners arrived, young children, the elderly and infirm were s… We lived for each other. 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. During the Holocaust, millions of Jews throughout Europe were robbed by the Nazis of every possession they ever had, such as jewelry and paintings, from their homes and businesses. “The 5 Million Forgotten Victims” Web Sites. I wanted to get some fresh air. 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. Jan. 27 marks both International Holocaust Remembrance Day and the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. 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. For young girls like ourselves, possibly even our mother [hadn't seen] us undressed. My father was taken away from us. [My father was injured in World War I] so my mother became the sole supporter of the family. That's what gave me the strength to want to survive—and also to tell the world what was happening. It was night, and by that time there was no room for us. Holocaust survivor Mano Orel, 95, was an hour and a half into telling his story when he broke down and began to cry. Photograph: Heritage Images/Getty Images. Wed, 05/15/2019 - 3:05pm . 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. I lived with my family in Grodno, Poland, a city of 65,000 inhabitants. I became very suicidal. In the springtime I used to work in a vineyard, cultivate the growth of the grapes, in the fall we used to harvest the grapes. 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. I was frozen. When we first glanced out, it looked like a twilight zone, big chimneys going to the sky, smoke was going all over. My name is Harold Gordon now! Max Glauben was 13 when his family’s apartment was destroyed in the historic battle of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Saul Dreier, a 95-year-old Holocaust survivor, decided to start a klezmer band with Ruby Sosnowicz, a fellow Polish-born survivor and accomplished professional musician Filip Muller’s testimony: Auschwitz Men and women were immediately separated. READ MORE: Horrors of Auschwitz: The Numbers Behind WWII's Deadliest Concentration Camp. [Comments have been edited for clarity.]. On May 8, 1945, when the war ended it was time to keep my promise. When I was liberated, I got up in the morning, and I realized that my parents are not coming home, and reality hit me. READ MORE: How the Nazis Tried to Cover Up Their Crimes at Auschwitz. Accessed 28 Feb. 2018. I just wanted to die. 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. [Polish survivors] (ID: 20811) View all names in this list Search names within this list. [The Nazis] must have used a gas, a small amount, because they didn't look normal. All Rights Reserved. The Holocaust was the scientifically designed, state-sponsored murder of the Jewish people by Nazi Germany and its allies. Five to six people have to share it, so we handed it [from] mouth to mouth, back and forth until the soup disappeared. Who will remember my mother, grandparents, brother, aunts and uncles after I am gone. The Holocaust History – A People's and Survivor History – Remember.org, Holocaust Survivor – Poland – Harold Gordon, Holocaust Picture Book – The Story of Granny Girl as a Child, Anne Frank: The Biography | 1998 Holocaust Book, Holocaust history and stories from Holocaust Photos, Survivors, Liberators, Books and Art. Remember.org - The Holocaust History - A People's and Survivors' History. All those years while I was imprisoned in Auschwitz, Dachau, and other extermination camps I kept praying to God. Then what? You’ll see them soon, he assured her in Yiddish. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Now they saw piles of rotting bodies, barking dogs, Nazis shouting in German, thick gray ash clotting the air. Synopsis The Last Sunrise by Harold Gordon My name is Harold Gordon now! You can't hate your enemies, as I said, because when you hate you're not living. The Poetschke family, who was not Jewish, hid Blanka from the German occupation forces during the Holocaust, the Gazeta Wyborcza paper reported. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, listen to the testimonies of 70 Holocaust survivors, drawn from the Visual History Archive at USC Shoah Foundation, as they recall their personal experiences in the Nazi extermination camp. We were taken to a ghetto first. If you'd like to share your story on Remember.org, let us know, all we ask is that you give permission to students and teachers to use the materials in a non-commercial setting. There [were] no windows on the cattle car. But 55 years ago I was a (10) year old boy whose name was Hirshel Grodzienski. An official scrambled into their car. HISTORY reviews and updates its content regularly to ensure it is complete and accurate. I lived with my family in Grodno, Poland, a city of 65,000 inhabitants. No, I haven't. When 11, her entire family was deported. 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