Family Histories
Knowing, and articulating, the details of our family stories is a central mission of our group. We encourage you to share your family history as well. Please do so by clicking to enter it below.
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3GNY Family History Archive
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Posted by Andrea Mark
Relatives Affected: http://Grandparentsonmother'sside
Family History:
My grandfather Simon threw himself into a hole of dead people when no one was looking. He lay on top ofcorpses for 2 days, still…before climbing out and escaping. Somehow, through the grace of God, the hole he was in was never covered up. When he escaped, liberation came shortly thereafter. He found my grandmother Helen and made her a promise that he would never leave her. Though Helen was beautiful, she was very slow. Slow in her thinking. No one to this day knows if she was like this before the war or if her terrible and horrible experiences created this. My grandfather had an energy and an unstoppable way about him and he found it hard to commit to a life with her. After making this promise to her, they slept somewhere…in a ditch…on the road, in someone’s basement…who knows. But the story goes that while my grandma slept…he snuck out to be on his own, to find his own way. When he was an hour away…guilt crept in and he returned to my grandmother.
She wanted to go to the US; he, to Israel. The papers for the US came up first and on to Brooklyn they went. My aunt was growing in my grandmother’s belly on the way to NY. Then my mother was born shortly after that. My grandfather’s story has been documented at Yad Vashem and at the Yale University library [Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies].
Posted by Carly Becher
Relatives Affected: http://Paternalgrandmotherandgrandfatheralongwiththeirfamilies
Family History:
My grandmother was in Auschwitz-Birkenau. She lost her sister and mother. Her brother was in the US Army and found her post-liberation on her birthday. My grandfather was in the Riga ghetto as well as a few small camps. He lost his mother and 2 brothers while in the Riga ghetto.
My grandparents are alive and well today, residing in West Palm Beach, Florida. They are in a retirement community with several of their friends who were with them in the concentration camps.
Posted by Elana Saperstein
Relatives Affected: http://Mygrandparentsonmymother'sside
Family History:
My grandmother (from Verson Vison, Romania) and grandfather (from Lodz, Poland.) are Holocaust survivors. My mother, Bella, along with her twin brother Moshe, were born in Bergen-Belsen just after liberation. She came to NYC on a boat when she was 2 years old.
My grandmother never really spoke much of her experiences in the Holocaust since she suffered from post-traumatic stress syndrome. She and my grandfather lost large families in the camps. When my mother was 12, she had a breakdown on a city bus and told my grandmother the Germans were coming to get them. Things were never the same after that. I think the fact that my grandmother spoke so little of her experience made me realize how horrible it must have been. I felt it was taboo to ask any questions. Even when I had seen her on the last day of her life, her skin so soft, she was fighting, but at the same time she looked into my eyes with such kindness. Sometimes I wondered how she even smiled and laughed. You felt on top of the world when she was at her best. Then moments later she would yell at me with a vengeance, she just didn’t know what to do with the pain. Neither did I, so I comforted her.
Her brother said if it was not for the camps she would have been a doctor. I know that she survived because she was of value to the Germans. I think she also survived so she could shape my life. Her only brother who survived lives in Israel and I kick myself that all this time has passed and I have not found out more about him and their family. I plan on doing that this summer. He lectures at local schools in Israel.
My grandfather was married prior to meeting my grandmother in a liberated camp after the war, but his first wife was killed. I wish I would have met him but he passed on before I was born.
Posted by Ellyn and Gayle Fisher
Relatives Affected: http://OurMaternalGrandfather
Family History:
Our grandfather was a young, strong and intelligent man living in Warsaw, Poland when the Holocaust began. His parents wanted him to become a doctor or a lawyer, but he had unique technical skills and a passion for applying them, which ended up saving his life in the concentration camps.
When Hitler invaded Poland, although our grandfather wasn’t very religious, and could have gone undetected, his non-Jewish friends turned him over to the Nazis. He spent the first few years in the Warsaw Ghetto where he had several opportunities to escape, but remained to help his family. He worked throughout the entire war and was transferred to nearly every concentration camp. He lost many loved ones, including his parents and cousins, and miraculously reunited with his siblings after the war. They had changed their names and lived in hiding during the Holocaust.
Our grandfather survived many horrific experiences in the war and was even forced to dig what was intended to be his own grave once. After he was liberated, he met our grandmother, a German Catholic schoolgirl at the time, in Mannheim, Germany. They fell in love and had our mother soon after. The young family came to the United States on a boat in 1951 (when our mom was 3) and started their life together in Brooklyn, New York.
In the years after the war, our grandfather rarely spoke of his Holocaust experiences, but as he grew older (in recent years) he began to share more and more with us, and with the Shoah Foundation. He and our grandmother spent sixty years together. Our grandpa recently passed away at the age of 87 and we have always admired the extraordinary strength, courage and love that he displayed throughout his entire life.
Posted by Jason Steinhauer
Relatives Affected: http://Bothgrandparentsonmymother'sside
Family History:
To this day I know very few details about my grandparents during the war years. I never got to ask my grandfather any questions, because he died before I was born. All the questions we asked my grandmother growing up were greeted with a terse response, something like, “It was so horrible and so long ago.” Then she’d wave her hand in front of her face and stare at the wall. Only finally in the past few years, as age has softened her, has she told us any details, only about pre-invasion Poland: how her father had a well-known lumber business in Gorzkow, how the family had a Shabbos goy to help with chores on Saturdays, how they moved to Lublin because they thought it was safer. After the war I know she met my grandfather, and though she didn’t love him she agreed to marry him. They traveled to Germany together, live in a Displaced Persons camp outside Ulm, and eventually my mother was born. Then they moved to Canada.
Whatever my grandparents saw scarred them for the rest of their lives. My grandfather used to wake up screaming in the middle of night, haunted by nightmares up until he succumbed to cancer. And though I didn’t know my grandmother before, I believe she once had the energy and optimism that beautiful women seem to have (she was beautiful in her youth, and we know her long, blonde hair helped her survive the war). From the way she recalls her post war life, the Holocaust not only destroyed her home, her family, and way of life, but also the core of who she was and all she dreamed of. When the numbers seem unmanageable, the over six million impersonal, I think of my grandma and multiply her suffering by as much as my mind can grasp. Then I wish I knew more details.