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From the invasions of Poland in 1939 till Germany surrendered in 1945 there was an on going war against the Jews. A total of 5 to 6 million-90% of them perished at the hands of Hitler and his men. | |
| For many of the holocaust survivors their stories remained buried due to abuse ,loss of love ones and the horror of the death camps .Most when finally freed were seriously ill and broken in spirit as well. | |
| Isak Borenstein, I had 3 brother, 3 sisters and 2 loving parents, till the Germans invaded Poland. I ran away to Russia and worked as a carpenter, served 14 months in the Russia army, later captured by the Germans. Years later when I was able to return to my home of Radom, my family was gone. I found my house which looked exactly the same only there were strangers living there, even using our furniture. Also, while visiting with one of my old neighbors, he gave me a letter from my brother Abe, who had survived the war and was in a sanatorium. I went to visit him and hardly recognized him. A neighbor told me how the Germans had mistaken a neighbor boy with a similar name for me. They took him and shot him and said, A Borenstein is a Borenstein. | |
| Elie Wiesel, today is a well known author of "Night" which tells of his experiences as a teenager when he was separated from his family forever at Auschwitz. The story tells of his struggles with brutality he suffered and witnessed in the camp. How he will never be able to forget the faces of the children he saw led to their deaths. | |
| Primo Levi, a 24 year old Italian chemist who survived two torturous years at Auschwitz, because of his superior scientific knowledge was needed by the Nazis'. | |
| Yehuda Nir, at the age of nine survived the invasion of Poland, hardships of the camps even the death of his father. Fortunately other family members survived by using false identity papers, tricking the Nazis into believing they were Polish Catholics. | |
| Gerda Weissman Klein, was one of 120 women to survive a three hundred-mile march from a labor camp in Germany to Czechoslovakia at the age of 15. | |
| There are preconditions to the type of tragedy brought against European Jews. First of which is prejudice, and can begin as innocently as an ethnic joke. | |
| We must never forget what these survivors, survived while the world did nothing to help. Ian Kershaw wrote: "The road to Auschwitz was built by hate, but paved with indifference." | |
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Andrew Kolbek Rossville Jr. High 7th Grade 2002 Holocaust Project |
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