In the Words of Survivors
"Our struggle to survive was not just from day to day, but from hour to hour, minute to minute."
Helen Farkas
"I am often asked, sometimes with barely disguised suspicion, ‘If you and your Jewish mother lived in Germany during the Nazi time, how come you survived?’ We survived because at critical moments there always appeared in our lives people who were willing to take great personal risks on our behalf."
Marianne Gerhart
"I smile but I do not laugh. My son was raised in a home where laughing was a crime. There are days when I wonder what I am doing here."
Clara Hilt
"I don’t know what kept me going. The past was gone. There was no future. I wanted to live so badly and be able to go back and tell my story."
William Lowenberg
"Our doorbell rang, and there stood my best friend’s brother in full Nazi uniform. The Boy Scout troop in which he had been active was a disguised Nazi den. It was the first of many disappointments in people I had thought I knew."
Erika Meier
"In my portrait I am wearing the jacket I wore in Auschwitz. It was my shield. I put a cement bag under the coat so the water would not seep through. When we were liberated, I kept the coat."
Sam Reselbach
"Most of my relatives and friends perished in death camps. I survived but lost my previous capacity for love and happiness."
John Steiner
"In reality, I was born twice. The first time was November 25, 1918, in Lyda Lithuania... On May 11, 1945, I was born for the second time."
Henry Bulawko
"On April 1, 1940, at age fourteen, I ended up all alone in a ghetto that was closed off and totally isolated from the exterior world."
Jenny Sztanke
"I waited and waited but no one came back. I never had any news. I don’t know how my father, my grandfather, my aunts, cousins, uncles died, in what conditions they died, where they died or when they died. I never found out."
Marcel Jabelot
"I remain an eyewitness to a tragic era. Things are always veiled in a shadow that never left me. It is unforgettable, haunting… I am and remain uprooted, bruised."
Paul Schaffer