Read reflections and testimonies written by Holocaust survivors in their own words.
My sister Bertl was always present in my life. Bertl was the person who guided our siblings and me to become a strong, cohesive family. She was opinionated and had a clear vision of what was right and wrong. Maybe it was her German birth. But she is gone now, as are my other three siblings. So, I ask myself, what are my obligations to keep the family strong and resilient?
I arrived in the United States on November 11, 1947. I was an unhappy child torn from my second home to come to a new land with family I hardly knew. My sister and I were met in New York by two uncles—one my sister knew from Germany and one an unknown American uncle. I knew neither. So I began my journey to becoming an American and eventually a Holocaust survivor.
For most of my life I was not very interested in learning more about our family in Germany. It was my past and it didn’t seem to matter to me. However, as I grew older, I would sometimes be at an event that brought to my mind something connected to my family or to the Holocaust—something as simple as people talking about their mother’s favorite recipe made me feel a need to return to Adelsheim to see where I was born, to know it was a real place. Fred and I visited there in the late 1980s, but I still felt no connection to the place. When we had extended family gatherings there were a few basic stories of life in Germany, before the Holocaust, that were repeated each time. But they seemed like legends.
The last letter my parents sent from the camps in France arrived in May 1942. My sister, Bertl, held on to this letter and the others from our parents for 68 years. When she came to live in Washington, DC, in 1947, the letters traveled with her. Bertl has held on to the letters through all her moves in the DC area.
Yet again I had to go to the post office to retrieve the package from our Aunt Hannah. How embarrassing! The package was none the better after its trip from London to Washington, DC. I had to take the bus with my high school classmates to reach home. Hanging out from the package were arms and legs—yes, several—of woolen underwear. What was Aunt Hannah thinking? No one wore such items in America. How could she think my sisters and I would need them?
For many baby boomers out there, the movie was a defining moment of adolescence. This new musical version is funny, wistful, and entertaining from start to end. I hope you’ll join us to relive your youth, or to experience for the first time this portrait of a young man growing up just a bit too fast.
I know my father, Adolf Rosenfeld, was born in 1898 in Korb, Germany. Korb is a very small place. He apprenticed as a baker when he was a young teenager. During World War I he was in the army. During his service in the war he lost a leg. Consequently, when he returned to Korb after the war, he could not work as a baker.
The letter had been sent to Bertl, my sister, by Reinhart Lochmann in September 2000. In his letter he described the special program he was planning to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the deportation of the Jews from Adelsheim and Sennfeld, Germany, to camps in southern France.
Jon, our grandson, was studying biographies when he was in second grade. Jon loved to read and was familiar with this type of literature. I had told him a little bit about living in England and of course he knew Alan, my foster brother. So he was aware that my life had been a little out of the ordinary.
When you handed me over did you hug me, kiss me, give directions to my caretaker, was it someone you or I knew? Could you picture me as an adult? The years have passed, and I am now many years older than the age you were when you died.
Listen to or read Holocaust survivors’ experiences, told in their own words through oral histories, written testimony, and public programs.