Shoah Stories

One day, when my mother was 11, her father did not come home from work. He had been arrested and detained for being a Jew. ...

When my parents, Freya and Ludwig Maier, returned from their honeymoon in early February  1933, Hitler had been chancellor of Germany for just a few ...

While we knew nothing of my mother’s past when we were young, her experiences influenced her in ways I’m sure even she didn’t realize—in terms ...

The Dimentstein family resided in Florence for eight months while awaiting their U.S. visa. Chanka and Pinya were married in Venice in one of the ...

​​We believe that my father’s role as advisor on Jewish Affairs had a profound impact on his life. We know from his diary and book ...

My mother was able to fully appreciate and celebrate the many good things in her life: the birth of two sons; their marriages to exceptional ...

The few photos I have reveal a sharply dressed couple standing or sitting close together, my grandmother, Rosa, smiling warmly at the camera, and my ...

I am telling you about Frida on this Yom Kippur, a day primarily dedicated to seeking repentance and forgiveness. But it is also a day ...

My parents met for the first time in that DP camp. My father, who was just 13 when the war began, lost his parents in ...

I am overjoyed that for my sons, silence will be transcended by memory. Meeting these individuals was truly improbable and miraculous; the moments spent in ...

These pieces of the puzzle enabled me to patch together a reasonable narrative. As the truth slowly emerged, I couldn’t help but wonder why it ...

It is 1936; I am 5 years old. We live in Prague. I have just started collecting stamps and get great pleasure in knowing how ...

Poland is a beautiful country, but I will go there only once more—to visit with my family the same places that I visited with my ...

We had just about the same amount of space in Jerusalem as I had had in the ghetto. We lived through another war. But this ...

This is a story about me, my parents, and the family that rescued me, and the circumstances in Lithuania when I was a baby. It ...

he road my family took and managed to survive began in Eastern Europe. Before 1937, my father had made his way from Poland to what ...

Like snowflakes swirling past each other on a winter’s wind, my parents and my children never touched. Their descent into the Holocaust and their slow ...