Witnesses and Survivors: The Story of the Holocaust 

 

Picture Gallery 

Student Holocaust Projects

Survivors: 


Alicia Appleman

 During the Holocaust, Alicia Appleman suffered many losses and devastation.  With the loss of her father, four brothers, and many friends, it is a miracle she and her mother survived the Holocaust.  Coming so close to death so many times herself, her life was filled with terror.  Hanging onto hope and courage helped her and her mother survive the horrifying events of the Holocaust.


Albert Beder

 Albert Beder was born on June 13, 1928 in Kaunas, Lithuania. He was sent to a ghetto and several concentration camps packed in barracks made for 72 with almost 3 times that many other people before he was liberated. 


Paul Beller

 Paul Beller was about seven years old during the Holocaust and yet he still had family members taken to concentration camps on the night of Kristallnacht. He went into hiding inside of a warehouse in Slovakia.  After the Holocaust he got married.


Jack Dygola

 Jack Dygola was born in a small town in Poland from a very religious family. He had one brother, and his mother. After their town was taken over by the Germans when he was 9, he went to a Ghetto. He and his family escaped. They made plans to meet together. After finding an aunt in Milwaukee, he found his mother and they were reunited.


Rena Finder

 "...And I was very lucky to get on Schindler's list because of Schindler's list, I survived, I survived with my mother, and he gave me a chance to grow up, to have children, to have grandchildren..." Is a snippet of what Mrs. Rena Finder shared during her description of the Holocaust.  She was born in Krakow, Poland and was sent to live in the Ghetto there until two years later she was sent to Plaszow concentration camp, and was saved by being on Schindler's list. 


Philip Freund
Part Two

 Phil Freund was taken on a ship to freedom called the MS St. Louis.  He did not experience any concentration camps for himself, but his father was killed by the Nazis.


Moe Gimlan

 Moe Gimlan was born March 3rd, 1920 in Poland. From a young age he and the majority of all other Jewish children he knew were trained to be frightened of the gentile children?  He was 19 years old when Poland was invaded, he and his companions in the concentration camps had little to no hope of surviving in their minds. Fortunately, Moshe did survive to share this important knowledge with us all.


Sam Gingold

 Sam Gingold was born January 15th during the year 1934.  Although his great sufferings while living through the Holocaust, he now spends his free time volunteering to help anyone and everyone in need. 


Henry Golde

 Henry Golde was born in Plock, Poland, a city west of Warsaw.  He was just 11 years old when his family was taken by the SS to a holding camp in the middle of the night. They were confiscated their possessions were taken away.  Henry spent five years in nine different concentration camps in Poland, Germany, and Czechoslovakia.  Of the 3,000 Jews that lived in his hometown, only 50 survived the Holocaust.  Golde lost his entire family.


Ilse Hecht

 Ilse Hecht was 4 1/2 years old when Hitler came into power.  She and her family were living in Mexico City 3 months after Hitler was in power.  But, she and her family were living in Nuremberg when the Nazis created the Nuremberg Laws.


Rudy Hecht
Part Two

 Rudy Hecht was born on April 16th of 1927 in Germany. A few years later in 1929 is younger brother Gabriel (who is mentally disabled) was born.  When his father was dismissed from his position as a researcher, to keep the family safe they relocated to Israel.  Rudy and his family survived by relocating as soon as possible and soon ended up in Southern Texas, of the U.S.  


Frida Herskovitz

 Frida Herskovitz was born in Czechoslovakia in 1926. She lived in a small town with her nine brothers and sisters and her parents. They lived peacefully until 1939 when the Hungarians took over everything. Frida was 17 years old when she was evacuated to her first concentration camp. During the Holocaust, she was in three concentration camps, Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, and Birkenau.


Luna Kaufman

 Luna Kaufman was 12 years old when the holocaust started. She only got to the sixth grade when they closed the schools in the beginning of the war. She survived several different concentration camps and had her mother there with her almost the whole time. Luna Kaufman experienced some really harsh situations and also lost her father and her sister.


Marion Lewin

 Marion Lewin was born October 1st of 1928 and had to leave her family at the age of 11.  Marion survived the Holocaust by denying her religion and acting as if she were Christian.  When she was discovered to be a Jew, she was forced to work in slave labor camps.  She later went on to have a happy, successful life.


Ruth Lubitz

Before the war, Ruth Lubitz lived in Chemnitz, in the Saxony region of Germany. In 1939, when she was only 11 years old, she was forced to leave her family home. As a young teenager, Ruth survived Kristallnacht.  At the age of 15, she was one of 10,000 children who cheated the Nazis by saying good-bye to her parents and escaping on the Kindertransport to England to live with strangers. She lost her mother and father in the Holocaust.

 


Sol Lurie

 Sol Lurie was born in Kovno, Lithuania (now known as Kaunas) to a Jewish family.  When he was taken by the Germans, Sol was only 11 years old.  Throughout his experiences in the Holocaust, he survived six concentration camps and one death march.  He was saved from certain death many times including almost being an experiment for the well known Dr. Joseph Mengele. 

 


George Levy Mueller

 George Levy Mueller was born in Lippstadt, Germany. He experienced Kristallnacht, His father and uncle died after being released from a concentration camp. After Kritallnacht, his mother sent him on the kinder transport to Holland where he later went into hiding after the Nazis seized control. He was later captured by the Nazis and sent to three concentration camps. 


Edith Pump

 Edith Pump was born in Ziedean Uzbekista. She and her family were brought to live in a DP camp, later on, during the Holocaust Edith and her family went though many different camps and horrors.


Irving Roth
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four

 Born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, Irving Roth was just a normal young boy. As he grew, he knew something was going on, but he couldn’t tell exactly what. At the age of 14, Irving entered Auschwitz. Alone. No one to fend for him but himself. Little did he know of what was to happen in his soon to be action packed life.


Renee Sachs

 Before the war, Renee Sachs lived in Paris, France.  After her mother was denounced by their neighbors for being Jewish, Renee was forced to leave her home and her parents when she was only four years old.  She survived the Holocaust by living in hiding with a false identity.  


Judith Sherman

 Judith Sherman was a hidden child during the Holocaust. Her parents hid her and her brother and sister in two different places before she was betrayed. Judith was then sent to a prison and then to Ravensbruck, a concentration camp. After the war Judith married and had 3 kids and later she became a grandmother. She also got degrees from a University and was a social worker for a time. She shares her story about twice a year to churches, schools, synagogues, and her old University. She loves her family above anything.


Nate Taffel

 Nate Taffel grew up in a time and place of great anti-Semitism and an even greater evil.  Forced to work like a slave, people dieing around him everyday, miraculously he survived camp after camp and so many treacherous things we never have to being thinking about happening to us today. He now spends the majority of his time going around telling his story to both young and old. The students at D.C. Everest Junior High School got the chance to sit in on one of his lectures.


Sarah Ticho

 Sarah Ticho was a hidden child in Holland during the Holocaust. She stayed with her older sister in the attic of a family of three adults and no children. They had not known the family previously, but they welcomed Sarah and her sister into their home. Sarah was in her early teen years during the war. She lived with the family for two and a half years, and was never allowed outside the house. Her mother was taken to Auschwitz, and her father had Tuberculosis, but was cured. The man in the family, Herman, was a schoolteacher, and that was how she got her education. Sarah and her sister communicated with Morse Code when they were hidden underneath the kitchen floor during raids. 

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