Survivors' Chronicle, October 1998

o ??^ SURVIVORS' CHRONICLE ? Published by the Holocaust Survivors Group of Southern Nevada a program of The Jewish Community Center Volume 1, Issue 2 13909 S. Maryland Pkwy Las Vegas. NV 89119 | October 1998 ACTIVITIES OF OUR HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS GROUP We are 1. An advocacy group 2. An educational group 3. A social group 4. A support group Our educational services include 1. A speakers bureau 2. The updating of survivors on all pertinent information We work with 1. German Attorneys 2. Insurance Commissioners 3. Attorneys in Class Actions We are members of 1. American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors 2. World Jewish Congress 3. Wiesenthal Center 4. Holocaust Museum Washington D.C. 5. Museum of Tolerance 6. Holocaust Leadership Council of the West 7. Shoah Foundation (Spielberg Org.) 8. Child Survivors Group of California We receive updates from all of these organizations We have community outreach and joint ventures with the following organization 1. Jewish War Veterans 2. Holocaust Library 3. Adat Ari El 4. Nellis Air Force Base 5. Temple Beth Sholom 6. Temple Ner Tamid 7. Committee for Yom Hashoah We publish The Survivors Chronicle and periodic bulletins Henry and Anita Schuster 2 SEPTEMBER 1939 by Harold Blitzer The war started early in the morning. Father was arrested in the morning and sent to a concentration camp, Sachsenhausen. Mother was broken up and had not stopped crying. We were going to the Jewish center to see what could be done to get Papa released. It was really getting bad for Jews In Germany. We got special ration cards and could only go shopping one hour a day and very little at that. We arrived at 10 in the morning at the Jewish center, and hundreds of women with children screaming and crying were trying get a solution to get their fathers or husbands out of the camps. While we were going from office to office, a lady stopped my mother and told her that Denmark was taking 300 children from Germany. Mother went to the office and signed me up. We did not think anything would come of it, but we tried. Nothing happened that day and every day it was the same routine: Go to the center and go from office to office and find nothing. The weeks went by, it was getting cold and the war was over in Poland. England and France declared war against Germany and we were hoping the Allies were going to win. But it looked like a long war. Germany took Poland in 14 days and nothing happened on the western front. The Germans sent balloons over to the French and the Allies sent dance music back to the Germans. In early November I was notified that I had been accepted for travel to Denmark. The hard part was to get all the paperwork ready for Germany. Permission had to be gotten from the police, Gestapo, the State Department and all the permits the Germans could muster. In January 1940 Papa was released from camp but had to leave Germany in 30 days. One morning Lilli, my sister, came back from Poland. A German soldier had given Lilli and her girlfriend a lift from Krakow, Poland to Berlin after the girls told him a story about being stranded in Poland at the beginning of the war and having lost all their papers there. Thank God he believed their story. So all of us spent the last time together. My departure date was set for February 6,1940 and that day my family took me to the train. It was the last time I saw my mother and Lilli. We left Berlin's main station in the morning for my great adventure. We where both sad and happy. Deep down we felt it was the last time we would see our loved ones. We arrived in the late afternoon at Warnemuende, the German port on the Baltic. Customs and the German Border Police went very easy on us and the Danish ferry boat was waiting. Sandwiches and real coffee was served to us. The ship was lit up. Coming from a country that was dark because of the war, all we could see was light in the distance. It was Denmark and freedom. We arrived in Copenhagen later in the day, and were greeted by some dignitaries from the Jewish Community. We were put up in a pension on the main street called Westerbro Gade, and spent the next four days sightseeing and eating some of the best food Denmark had to offer, food we had never seen or tasted before. 3 The Last Davs of S.A Dora by Alfred Dube S.A Dora was the secret name for the underground, bombproof factory dug into the Hartz Mountains by prisoners from various European Nations, it was opened in 1944, with a new crematorium. Prior to the opening of Dora, the factory was located in Mittlewerk. It only existed for about 20 months before the Royal Air Force bombed the area killing some 700 people and damaging many buildings. During those 20 months, about 60,000 prisoners were interned there and, sentenced to hard labor and long hours. The prisoners not only had to dig the tunnel for the factory, but had to live in the tunnel. They only saw daylight once a week when they were marched out to be counted. There was no drinking water or water to wash. The result was dirt and body lice. Tuberculosis, pneumonia and dysentery were widespread. Luckily I came later, after the tunnels were completed, and they built living quarters, barracks. Inside the factory we were forced to work a double shift, 12 hours a day assembling V-2 rockets. The shifts were from 8:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M., seven days per week. About 4,500 prisoners were involved assembling the rockets. Camouflaged trains which brought parts from all over Germany arrived in the valley, where the plant was located. The concentration camp itself was on top of a hill, just below the S.S. camp. A small coal train brought needed supplies up the hill daily. The prisoners were systematically starved to weaken them and to prevent any attempt to escape or possible rebellion. One Monday, we received an order to scrub the streets of the camp, and clean out the barracks for an inspection by the International Red Cross. When they arrived, they were shown only the things and areas that the S.S. wanted them to see. They did not see the crematorium that burned bodies day and night, nor were they allowed to talk to any prisoners without the presence of the S.S. We never found out what their report stated, but we knew they did not see the way we had to live. They did not see how the Germans entertained themselves by ordering one prisoner to stoop down with his head forward, while another prisoner was forced to take a turnip and throw it at the other prisoner's head. Those were large turnips used to feed cattle. Another way of entertainment was to take two prisoners to the latrine. One of them was forced to lower himself into the latrine and the other one forced, at gun point, to sit above the first and perform his duty on top of him. The S.S. would watch and nearly die of laughter. For their sexual entertainment, they had a whore house in the camp, using women prisoners as prostitutes. In the middle of the camp, there was a building assigned as a hospital. Anyone who became sick had to report there immediately. The danger was that if they needed prisoners for their gas chambers, or for a transport out of the camp, the first ones to go were the ones in the hospital. This of course, resulted in our fear to use the hospital facility. The only time we went to the hospital was when we were so sick that we were unable to take care of ourselves. 4 Our first work assignment was an unbelievable task. A transport of Hungarian Jews arrived in the camp. There were about 5,000 people crammed in the cattle cars. When they opened the doors, they realized that most of them had died during transport. They had been unable so survive the weather, the hunger, and the mistreatment on the way. Our assignment was to burn the bodies. We worked for four days and nights digging a large hole and then placing rows of bodies in layers of wood. This layering was continued until the trench was filled up and then set on fire. This procedure was repeated until all the bodies were burned. The air attacks were becoming more frequent. One day digging foxholes, I noticed something flying above us. It was very low and moved slowly. It almost looked like a bird. I turned to the German guard watching us and asked him what it was. He stated, "I don't know, but whatever it is I don't like it." The anti-aircraft guns started firing. Hundreds of small planes appeared in the sky throwing fire bombs on the city below us in the valley. It wasn't long before Nordhausen was in flames. Right after the small planes disappeared, bombers by the hundreds started laying a carpet of bombs over the whole area. Their goal was to flatten everything on the ground. With all that bombing and fires, I found myself feeling sorry for the German guard stationed in the little watch house between the camp and the city below. He started running down the hill. Realizing everything was on fire there, he turned and started back up the hill away from the camp. I never found out what happened to him. Most likely everybody who remained outside died in the bombing. At this point I ascertained that my safety was also in danger. I hid behind a wooden structure but that did not eliminate the danger. I realized that my only hope of survival might be the underground factory which was dug in stone. As I ran toward it, weakened and frightened, I collapsed just before reaching my goal. When I woke up, I was alive, inside the tunnel. Somebody had dragged me in. I never did find out who. Everything outside was flattened and everyone who remained there was dead. Early the following morning, before the sun was up, the Germans called a general roll call. When everybody was lined up in the square to be counted, the camp radio announced that all Jews, Russians and Gypsies were to realign separately because we would be leaving the camp. My roommate, Walter, and I decided that this did not sound too good, so we stripped off our yellow bands that designated us as Jews, and we decided we would line up behind the Czech prisoners. While we were standing there, our Capo walked by and recognized us as being from his group. Therefore we must be Jews and belong to the group that was being transported out of the camp. With his finger he beckoned us over and asked us what we were doing among the Czechs. We replied, "hiding." We thought this would be the end of our hiding, but instead, he stated, "You know what? If you two are so smart. I will tell you how to survive." He pointed to a line on the opposite side of the camp and informed us that there would be two thousand specialists needed by the S.S. "So go and line up there and be prepared for questioning about your specialty." he said. "The questions will be mostly about your trade, education and background." With this advice, Walter and I marched towards the long line of so called experts. In the mean time all Jews, Russians and Gypsies marched out of the camp ready for transportation to an undisclosed area. The camp radio started out again. This time announcing that "everybody will be leaving; the camp is being evacuated." That left the two thousand specialists remaining in the camp. From the gate came an announcement that they needed two hundred more prisoners. A German soldier came and counted two hundred from the back of the line, which included Walter and me. We did not manage to remain in the camp where we had hoped to be liberated. This was the first time during the war and imprisonment that I tried to control my future, and it almost cost me my life. After the war, I learned that all eighteen hundred left in the camp, were forced to clean up the camp and dig their own graves. They were all shot and buried there. This was the German way of covering up all the horrors by not leaving any witnesses. Walter and I both survived Bergen Belsen from which we were liberated in 1945 and eventually immigrated to the United States. HOLOCAUST MY RECOLLECTIONS OF LIBERATfNG GUNTSKIRCHEN LAGER by Ted Grimm GERMANY --1945 - FINAL DAYS OF THE WAR -- PATTON'S 3rd ARMY -- DEATH STINKS!!!!! Horrible, gut wrenching, stomach retching, mind boggling, the stench of dead decaying bodies, was so overpowering, that as our battle-experienced LIBERATING WARRIORS, UNITED STATES 3RD ARMY, came into Guntskirchen Lager, they could not believe what their eyes were telling them. Many became nauseous, vomited, sick to their stomachs. Their anger and hatred of the MONSTERS that caused their blood to boil !!!! Raised their ANGER to gigantic uncontrollable levels KILL THOSE? After surviving the shelling, from the Nazi savages-the Dreaded 88's artillery, the mortars, the bombings, the rifle fire, the bullets, the rain, being Drenched, Wet, Tired, Sleepy. Now the soldiers are wide awake, their blood pressure at Mountain Peak Levels. The Nazi guards are escaping on horses!!! they are getting away !!! shoot them- shoot them? kill them. The horses are a bigger target. Shoot the horses, kill the horses. Machine guns tear into the horses-!!! The ((blankety blank)) Nazis fall off the horses, try to run !! they are machine gunned down what is happening?????? what is going on????? The starving Jews whom we are liberating are crawling on the dead and dying horses, tearing at the horse flesh, where the bullets tore into the horses, blood oozing out of the horses, who are defecating - The Jews are trying to eat the flesh ? they are tearing out pieces of meat of the horses!!!! Our medics are screaming ? don't let the Jews eat those 6 horses!! That'll kill 'em !!!!! for God's sake -- stop them - -stop them. Some of our Avenging Warriors, opened their canned "C" rations, and in their compassion were feeding the starving, skeletons, of the barely alive surviving concentration camp victims!! When our doctors-medics became aware of this, they panicked !! that will kill 'em Get the word out ? do not feed the-Jew!!!! And the eyes. You can not fathom, what it was like to look in their eyes! Who could do such horrible things???? The Rules of War. What happened to the (Treatment of Prisoners?) What kind of rotten animals would have thought up the idea, to create camps, where they would force people to work as slaves?? Then not feed them? ? Man, You would have to be crazy to not feed your slaves ... Could You imagine a Southern plantation owner, not feeding his slaves ? ? Even an idiot would realize that people who are starving, are weaker, than healthy people. A person would have to be crazy, to not feed their animals. How could horses pull a plow, if they were starving? What kind of satanic awful, cruel, evil, despicable, horrible person thought of this? And the living conditions ... (Filthy-Dirty) bunk beds, no carpets on floors, no window coverings, no heat-(air conditioning) unheard of!! Slop for food. Our hogs used to eat better! As a boy, growing up in central Illinois, in Depression times, in a small village, with a home on an acre, my father raised hogs, chickens. We had a cow for milk, goats, and a garden of all kinds of vegetables, fruit trees, and berries (to name a few). My mind went back to when we used to take the food we had left over from our meals from our garden, and animals we slaughtered, and threw all the left over food, into a barrel that became SLOP. Then we had to slop the hogs with this . I could not believe that our hogs ate better food than these victims!!! My mind was that I hoped no one thought I was German. My father came to the U.S. from Germany, when he was 9 Years old, an honorable, law abiding citizen. His primary skill was farming. Caught in depression times, he worked on the WPA getting food for his family from the government. We were on relief!! Yet this food was elegant compared to what these poor souls were existing on. It was impossible for us to understand how these Nazi savages could be so cruel, so bitter, so barbaric, so inhuman. What should we learn from this? That it is O.K. to gang up on others who practice a different religion? Force our beliefs on others? Discriminate against others, who have a different political view? Or they are of a different nationality? Or their color is different? It is most clear from history, that when people start discriminating, or violate the human rights of others the ultimate spin out is a Hitler!! Or a Saddam Hussein,? when a Dictator gets the power to unleash and deliver an Atomic Bomb on their perceived enemy, would they send an atomic bomb to Israel, Las Vegas, Pakistan? The lessons to be learned from the Holocaust speak loudly. Be tolerant, of others beliefs, especially in our United States. Protect the weak, help the poor, do not take unfair advantage. Respect the human rights of other people. Be a good citizen, vote, write your elected representatives to support human rights. To use all your power to help others have Life, Liberty and be able to pursue Happiness in a Free Society. Promote education, Yes even talk about the past? of such an abhorrent period of time, when a dictator abused his power, and inflicted unbelievable, pain suffering, and murdered millions of people because of their religion. 7 Millions died, and many died to bring it to a stop! We must remember the HOLOCAUST to make sure it never happens again !!! AN ACCOUNT ABOUT JEWISH GOLD WHICH ARRIVED IN AUSCHWITZ BUT DID NOT FALL INTO THE NAZI MURDERERS' HANDS by Jozef Krauze, MD It was November 2, 1945. The train from Vienna arrived on time. The sign on the platform ofthe railroad read "AUSCHWITZ." The door of one of the standard German prisoner cars opened, and down upon the platform stepped I, along with five more prisoners: three young Austrian Jews, one middle-aged Czechoslovakian, and an older man also from Austria. Waiting on the platform was an SS man with a German shepherd dog, and a rifle. He signed some documents handed to him by the chief of the prisoners' car, and then the train moved slowly out of the station. The SS man politely ordered us to form a group and move along with him. On the way he made some conversation with the Austrian prisoners. To me the whole thing looked foreboding and very bad. After marching for about two miles, we stopped in front of a big iron gate with a sign above it reading "ARBEIT MACHT FREI." At that moment my spirit was really at its lowest. I considered how during the past four years of the war, I had been confined to a ghetto, had done hard labor, had endured prisons and Gestapo persecution, lived with false identity papers, and endured starvation and US air bombardments, just to avoid ending up in Auschwitz. Yet, here I was. Fate is fate. 1 had landed in Auschwitz. The SS man said something to the sentry by the gate. It opened, and we were inside. We were behind a double high power electrical fence. At the moment, the camp did not make such a bad impression on me. There were wide streets, with clean two-story masonry blocks along them. I did not realize that I was only at the Auschwitz camp section which contained mostly political and protected prisoners. I was not in Birkenau, the death camp, with its gas chambers, and crematoria. We continued to follow the SS man to a building identified as "Effekten Kammer. (On a postwar visit later I discovered that this building now houses a Jewish Exposition). Inside we met a prisoner in his early thirties who showed us a place to sleep. By now it was 2:00 a.m. Before leaving the room, the prisoner asked, "Is there anybody here from Poland?" I answered him in Polish, "Yes, I am from there." So he asked me to come to his room, and to call him Mr. Emil. We conversed until dawn. He was Polish, but because he came from Silesia, the Germans considered him a German. Yet he regarded himself as a Pole. In the course of the conversation I confided to him that I had some gold on me - a small amount of family gold. Perhaps it is surprising to the reader that a Jew arriving in Auschwitz could have had gold with him. Indeed, that requires some explanation. During our evacuation from the Kielce ghetto, my mother gave each of us children a small amount of family gold. When I was arrested in Munich the Gestapo confiscated my gold and my money. Then, before putting me on the transport for Auschwitz, the Munich police told me they could not return my money or my gold to me because I was headed for Auschwitz. Instead they would send it along with a police escort. However, in Vienna the Nazi police must have been given different orders. They 8 did not return my money, but they did give me back my gold. They ordered me to hand it over to the camp commander in Auschwitz for safekeeping as soon as I arrived there. I am certain that all of you reading this realize that I wanted to exert every effort not to obey that order. Mr. Emil agreed with me that it would be dreadful to give my gold away to this Nazi murderer. In addition, he told me that I might be surprised to learn that this gold could be very useful to me here in Auschwitz. We both decided that I must do everything possible, (dangerous and difficult though it may be) to smuggle this gold through the shower and admission process. We made a plan. In the morning, while walking toward the shower room, I would find a Polish boy (Edward Nowak) standing in the corridor. He would be counting the prisoners, and I must be the last in line. As I passed him, he would quickly lower his hand, and I would lower my hand holding the gold. He would strike my hand, and I would transfer the package to him. However, if he did not strike my hand, it meant that it was not safe. I must then continue walking and surrender the gold to the admission office. All went according to the plan. In about one and a half hours, after my shower, clothes dispensing, tattooing and being officially admitted, I met with Edward on the camp street. He handed the gold over to me, and now it was safe in my pocket again. Because of two honorable, patriotic and courageous Poles, and because of my own incurable penchant for risk taking, I had cheated the Nazis. The family gold was in my pocket, and not in that of the Nazi murderers. I am sure everyone realizes what would have happened, had we been caught. And of course I would not be alive today to relate this "golden" operation to you. REMEMBERING by Tibor Kertesz I would like to bring back vignettes and memories from my early childhood, and the interesting Eastern European life being lived there, especially in my home town, Sighet. It was situated in the Carpathian Mountains in Northern Romania. Among its 30,000 inhabitants, half were Jewish, and the other half, Gentile, all living in relatively peaceful coexistence. The majority of the Jewish population lived in poverty, and their primary language was Yiddish. All the kids played soccer together in the dusty streets, and strangely enough, many of the mostly Hungarian (the rest Romanian) gentiles had learned to speak a perfect Yiddish. Another peculiarity of our town were the Jewish beggars. By the hundreds they would go from house to house to ask for handouts. We had a fairly large house. My father was a doctor, and his office was in the front. So the beggars would come to the back porch where we would hand them a few pennies. Most of them were older, religious people. One of them made a lasting impression on me. He was an older man with a long beard. He came from London and his name was Jacobson (I never learned his first name.) I must have been around ten years old then, and already had much interest in languages. I spoke Hungarian, which was my mother tongue, Romanian, my school tongue, and German, which I learned from our nannies who came from a nearby ethnic German village. From a book, "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde, I learned a bit of English. Also I read the subtitles in the movies, listened carefully to the dialogue, and tried to match them up. (It's surprising how 9 much one can learn in this way.) Thus, when the old Jew from England came to our door, I greeted him in broken English. As I gave him a handout, I said, "Hello, Mr. Jacobson, how are you? Any news?" "No news," he answered in a powerful deep voice. I kept talking to him every time he came. He was gentle, and he had a good sense of humor. He never told me what circumstances had brought him to our part of the world. With these anecdotes I just wanted to illustrate my first encounter with the English language, and to depict some facets of Jewish life in a small town of that time. Needless to say, when I returned to Sighet in February, 1945 after being liberated from camp, I found just a handful of Jews who had survived the Holocaust, and had come back from the camps. There were no more Jewish kids playing on the streets, nor were there any traces of beggars whatsoever. AIR RAID by Tibor Kertesz This following incident happened during my stay at a forced labor camp on the island of Csepel. The island was on the Danube River close to Budapest, Hungary, We were located just outside a manufacturing complex, which had been converted into the largest war factory in the country. Formerly a Jewish Hungarian manufacturing plant called Weiss Manfred, it had been renamed Goering Werke after the notorious Nazi field marshal, Herman Goering, who by now claimed ownership to every major industry, once the property of Jews. We were commandeered to work in that factory every morning, and I would like to relate one episode which happened during my stay at that work camp toward the end of summer, 1944. 1 was working in a transformer plant which manufactured huge power transformers. Upon arrival I would hang my jacket on a nail on one of the brick columns which supported the building. On this day around noon, the sirens started howling to announce an impending air raid. I should mention here that forced labor workers were not permitted inside the bomb proof concrete shelters. This air raid would be the first major raid on our factory, and we workers could only run to a nearby so called basement shelter, one which was safe only if there was no direct hit. Out of sheer curiosity we opened the door a crack, so that we could see what was going on. We saw a huge number of bombers (super fortresses) approaching the factory. A lead plane was in front of the squadron. When they came close, the lead plane wiggled its wings, and all hell broke loose. The first bomb's air pressure banged our door shut, and the explosions became deafening. I can't remember how long it lasted; it must have been less than a minute. We were really lucky not to take a direct hit. When we came out after the air raid, there were fires burning, and much destruction all over the factory. Raids like that one were called "carpet bombing." I walked back toward the transformer plant, and I saw that it had been totally destroyed. Only a single brick column was still standing, and my jacket was hanging from it. JOURNEY TO HELL AND BACK MY STORY by RUDY HORST I lived 15 of my 16 years in Kolojvar, a very nice city in Hungary with a large Jewish population. Hungary allied itself with Germany and in February 1944, the Germans arrived in Kolojvar. In 1943, the Hungarian Army picked me up and put me in a forced labor camp until 1944 when the S.S. Elite unit of the German Army hauled me back to Kolojvar and threw me into the ghetto that was established in the brickyard factory. My whole family was displaced from our home by the Hungarian civilians who became stooges for the Germans, some of them were friends of my family and more than happy to help the Germans take our house and possessions. From the ghetto, we were all transported in jammed to over capacity box cars intended for cattle, and were taken to Auschwitz, a camp in southwestern Poland and notorious for its extermination center, where the fate of our lives as to who would live or die was decided. I was assigned to a transit barracks where I worked with a group of other people who were called the Canada Commando, a name I never understood. All we ever did was separate the belongings that remained in the box cars; gold in one bin, clothing in another bin, shoes in another and all currencies in another. Some in the group who were working in the Commando were called heroes, because they were sabotaging the Germans by putting the gold on the railroad tracks so the trains running on the tracks would bury the gold in the gravel. The gold was needed by the Germans to support the war effort. They also bumed the dollars and other currencies while boiling water for tea. After working for a week in this Commando, I was transported to Warsaw, Poland to the ghetto where the Polish Jews bravely fought the German Army in an uprising. In July of 1944, the Russians were very close to Warsaw and so the first Death March began July 27, 1944, when the camp on Gesia Street in Warsaw was evacuated. The camp was in the ruins of the Warsaw part of the Majdanek Camp. The camp held approximately 4,500 Jews. Most of the Jews were from Hungary and Greece, and also some German and Polish Jews. I don't know exactly how many of us began the march, because there were a few hundred left in the barracks who were too sick to march, and they were left in the camp. Later we heard that they were all killed. We started marching without any food or water in the direction of a town called Kutno, approximately 135 kilometers or 85 miles away. Anyone whose strength gave way was shot on the spot. One night we stopped in a field, and remembering working on a farm in my earlier days in life, I decided to use my spoon and start digging a hole in the ground. After half an hour or so and digging down about 20" deep, I hit water. It was dirty, however, it tasted like sweet honey for I was so thirsty. We immediately starting spreading the news and by morning the whole field was full of water holes. Over a thousand were killed by the time we arrived in Kutno. They loaded us into box cars and the 11 train started for Dachau near Munich, Germany. We arrived at Dachau early in August of 1944.1 cannot remember the exact date. There were fewer than 2,000 who survived this march. On August 15, 1 was transported to Muldorf, another camp outside of Munich. The work was very hard. We had to carry 50 kilograms ( 100 lbs.) cement bags up steps made out of wood that ran uphill. There, the cement was mixed with water and poured through wire mesh at the top of the hill to camouflage the hangars built into the hill where the Germans were trying to hide their planes from the American Air Force. I was in this camp at Muldorf until the war was over and the American Army liberated us. During the liberation, we were herded into trains as the Germans were trying to transport us to the Bavarian Alps for liquidation. Fortunately, we were liberated before the trains left the station. I came to the USA in 1948, married an American and have two children and two grandchildren. At the present I am searching for survivors of the Death March from Warsaw to Dachau. So far I have located two survivors in Los Angeles. I presently live in Las Vegas, Nevada, and I am still searching for survivors of the Death March. We, the survivors, have an organization called the Holocaust Survivors' Group. Some of the survivors are invited to speak in colleges, high schools and elementary schools to tell young people about the Holocaust that happened before they were born. All of the survivors will never forget the horror of this great tragedy. We live in pain and have emotional scars. Even after all these years, we cannot understand how something like the Holocaust could have happened, in a country whose people were admired by the other countries of the world for their intelligence, music and technology. I came to the United States in 1948, sponsored by an uncle who lived in Ohio. I'm proud to be an American citizen, where everyone has the protection of the Constitution, liberty and the opportunity for the pursuit of happiness, and justice for all. Danke S