{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/2804x56m7f/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Martino, Erna Dziewinski"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/082/original/TheBreman_SecondaryMark_Horizontal_Blue_Black.png?1713640889","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2004-09-28 (captured)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Martino, Erna Dziewienski (Interviewee)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Audio"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum","Esther and Herbert Taylor Oral History Collection","Jewish Oral History Project of Atlanta"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eErna Dziewinski Martino gives an interview in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28, 2004.\u003c/p\u003e (general)","\u003cp\u003eErna Dziewinski Martino was born on July 29, 1946, in Wurmannsquick, Germany. She was the youngest child of Karl Dziewinski (1905–1985) and Cecilia Kozma Dziewinski (1905–1985), both Polish Holocaust survivors. Before World War II, her father was a horse trader in Krakow. Her parents had two older children, Leib Wolf Dziewinski (b. 1931) and Leiba Rifka Dziewinski (b. 1929), who were both killed in the Holocaust. \u003cbr\u003eDuring the war, Karl and Cecilia were separated but reunited in Krakow afterward. They each came from large families; only two of Karl’s brothers survived, and Cecilia had one surviving brother and one surviving sister. Karl, Cecilia, Karl’s brothers, and their wives soon left Poland and settled in the American-occupied zone of Germany. Karl and another brother started a horse-trading business and moved to Eggenfelden, Germany.\u003cbr\u003eAs a child, Erna and her cousin were the only Jewish children in their town and attended Catholic and Protestant schools. For high school, Erna was sent to a Jewish school in England. After graduating, she refused to return to Germany. In 1962, Erna immigrated to the United States with her parents, uncle, aunt, and cousin. They settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where Karl’s brother and Cecilia’s siblings were already living.\u003cbr\u003eIn the United States, Erna attended college and earned a degree in fine arts. She and her husband operate a real estate business in Atlanta and have two sons. She has long been an advocate for the Jewish community and Holocaust survivors, including serving as president of Eternal-Life Hemshech, the organization for Holocaust survivors, children of survivors, and future generations. For more than 40 years, she has lectured on the Holocaust, worked with Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, and supported teacher training and Holocaust education in Georgia. \u003c/p\u003e (bioghist)","\u003cp\u003eErna introduces her immediate family. She overviews her parents’ experiences during the Holocaust. Erna relays what happened after her parents were liberated. She explains why her parents settled in Germany, where she was born. Erna recalls her childhood in Germany and learning about her parents’ experiences. She relates why her parents remained in Germany after the war and what made them finally leave. Erna talks about the challenges she and her parents faced as they built new lives. She considers her motivation for Holocaust education. Erna recounts an encounter with antisemitism in the United States. She shares what she believes are the important lessons of the Holocaust.\u003c/p\u003e (scope content)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recorded by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written consent of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.\u003c/p\u003e"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eErna Dziewinski Martino gives an interview in Atlanta, Georgia on September 28, 2004.\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eErna Dziewinski Martino was born on July 29, 1946, in Wurmannsquick, Germany. She was the youngest child of Karl Dziewinski (1905\u0026ndash;1985) and Cecilia Kozma Dziewinski (1905\u0026ndash;1985), both Polish Holocaust survivors. Before World War II, her father was a horse trader in Krakow. Her parents had two older children, Leib Wolf Dziewinski (b. 1931) and Leiba Rifka Dziewinski (b. 1929), who were both killed in the Holocaust.\u0026nbsp;\u003cbr /\u003eDuring the war, Karl and Cecilia were separated but reunited in Krakow afterward. They each came from large families; only two of Karl\u0026rsquo;s brothers survived, and Cecilia had one surviving brother and one surviving sister. Karl, Cecilia, Karl\u0026rsquo;s brothers, and their wives soon left Poland and settled in the American-occupied zone of Germany. Karl and another brother started a horse-trading business and moved to Eggenfelden, Germany.\u003cbr /\u003eAs a child, Erna and her cousin were the only Jewish children in their town and attended Catholic and Protestant schools. For high school, Erna was sent to a Jewish school in England. After graduating, she refused to return to Germany. In 1962, Erna immigrated to the United States with her parents, uncle, aunt, and cousin. They settled in Atlanta, Georgia, where Karl\u0026rsquo;s brother and Cecilia\u0026rsquo;s siblings were already living.\u003cbr /\u003eIn the United States, Erna attended college and earned a degree in fine arts. She and her husband operate a real estate business in Atlanta and have two sons. She has long been an advocate for the Jewish community and Holocaust survivors, including serving as president of Eternal-Life Hemshech, the organization for Holocaust survivors, children of survivors, and future generations. For more than 40 years, she has lectured on the Holocaust, worked with Steven Spielberg\u0026rsquo;s Shoah Foundation, and supported teacher training and Holocaust education in Georgia.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e","\u003cp\u003eErna introduces her immediate family. She overviews her parents\u0026rsquo; experiences during the Holocaust. Erna relays what happened after her parents were liberated. She explains why her parents settled in Germany, where she was born. Erna recalls her childhood in Germany and learning about her parents\u0026rsquo; experiences. She relates why her parents remained in Germany after the war and what made them finally leave. Erna talks about the challenges she and her parents faced as they built new lives. She considers her motivation for Holocaust education. Erna recounts an encounter with antisemitism in the United States. She shares what she believes are the important lessons of the Holocaust.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eAll rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, recorded by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written consent of the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/082/original/TheBreman_SecondaryMark_Horizontal_Blue_Black.png?1713640889","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Martino__Erna.mp3"]},"duration":3730.67755,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/public/images/audio-default.png","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-thebreman.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/311/944/original/Martino__Erna.mp3?1781020784","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":3730.67755,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/transcript/94449","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Martino, Erna Dziewinski [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/transcript/94449/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944#t=0.0,0.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/transcript/94449/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Martino: It's September 28th, 2004. I'm Erna Dziewinski Martino and I'm here to talk about my background. I'm a child of two Holocaust survivors. My parents' names were, in Yiddish, Tzila Kozma Dziewinski and my father's name was Kalman Dziewinski. They came from two small villages in Poland, near Krakow, one of them being Gniazdowice, and the other one, Proszowice. They both came from large families of nine and 10 children each. My mother was the oldest in her family and helped her mother raise the other children, because typically in large families that's what happened. My grandfather on my mother's side had a dairy. My mother, as I said, worked with her mother as she was growing up and raising the children, and met my father when she was 25 years old. My father also, as I've said, grew up in a large family of five brothers and five sisters. [They were] relatively poor. My grandfather had a little bit of land. He was a horse trader, and because they couldn't afford to send the children to school, my father started working at the age of 13 with his father, trading horses. At the age of 25, he was introduced to my mother, and they then got married. They moved from the small villages that they had grown up in to Krakow, which was a beautiful city at the time, very historic and physically very beautiful city, very cultural. There, they lived in a small apartment in the Jewish quarter and had two young children, my brother and sister, whom I never met, Leib Wolf and Leiba Rifka. When the war broke out, when the Germans entered Poland and came into Krakow, of course, my parents' lives changed never to be the same again. They were, in the beginning, sent to work as slave laborers, as were many people who were able-bodied in a certain age group. They were in their early 30s at the time. So, in the beginning, when they would go to work, the Germans, of course, had suspended school for the children. So, what they did was, what little money, what little savings they had, they gave to a Polish family and asked them to hide the children so that the Germans wouldn't find them because the first [people] that the German's began killing were the young children and the elderly. One day, when they came back to pick up the children, my brother and sister were no longer there. And the only way that we know how they were murdered is my father had a younger brother who was a butcher by profession, and he was put to work in Plaszow, the first slave labor camp that the Germans established in Poland, in Krakow. In fact, it's the same camp that was depicted in \"Schindler's List\". And barely the Germans would bring through groups of people, Jews, and take them to the woods behind the camp and execute them. My uncle was walking through the camp and saw the Germans bringing through a group of children and elderly people. Amongst them were my brother and sister. He quickly ran to his German superior and begged him to save the children. On occasion, a German who had a heart might do such a thing, but by the time my uncle came back out, the children had been taken into the woods and shot. And that's the only reason we know how my brother and sister were killed. Of course, as I'm sure you know, there were one and a half million young innocent children under the age of 14, 15 years old who were brutally murdered. So, this was the beginning. My parents' parents were elderly, and they were killed very early on, as were the children. After this happened, then my parents were both taken into Plaszow and separated from each other, but they still knew there was a men's quarters and women's quarters. You could, through the grapevine, find out if someone you knew … If a man wanted to know if a woman in the women's quarter was still there, you could find out if they were still around. And so, they still knew at that point one that the other one was alive. But subsequent to that, they were both shipped away from there. They were taken away from Plaszow. After that point, one did not know if the other was still alive. My father ended up in a number of camps. He was put to forced labor, laying railroad track, which was very hard labor. The tracks were very heavy. My father was a small man. He was only five foot three, but he was very strong. He got a hernia from lifting the railroad tracks, but he was smart enough not to say anything because if you said that there was something wrong with you, that you were sick, they would tell you that you were gonna go to the hospital, but most people that went to, quote, the hospital never came back. So, he lived with the pain of this hernia through the entire war without saying anything and of course, continued to work at hard labor the entire time. He was in Mauthausen and he managed to survive. By that, I mean that my parents made it abundantly clear to me that on any given day you could be killed for any number of reasons. You could die from starvation. You could look at a German and he could take his rifle and split your head open because you looked at him. You could be shot. You could … My mother was also sent to a number of camps. She ended up in Leipzig [Germany] working in an ammunition factory and had typhoid, did not have any medication. If it had not been for a young woman whom she befriended who lost her family, and they sort of took care of each other … She took care of this young woman and when my mother got sick, the young woman took care of her. So, she managed to survive through absolutely nightmarish experiences that can't really be even … I speak nine languages and I don't think that they have made the words yet to describe the kind of brutality and horror that occurred during the Holocaust. The cruelty and the evil, the depravity, the humiliation … There's just no end to it. My parents, as I said, both managed to survive. My father did things like rolling up leaves and making them into cigarettes because people who had a smoking habit would give up a piece of bread, which is all they got, one hard little piece of bread a day. They would be willing to give up their piece of bread for a cigarette, so he traded. And if you had two pieces of bread, needless to say, you had more energy and you lived another day. So, he was creative. He was a businessman. He figured out ways to get some potato peels from someone that was working in the kitchen and to figure out ways to survive another day. My mother told me that she couldn't eat a raw potato. She couldn't get herself to do it. At one point, there literally was nothing to eat. So, at the end of the war, she weighed … and she was a grown woman. She had had two children. She weighed about 70 pounds. She was basically a skeleton with skin covering it. Her hair had been chopped off, as was everyone else's that was taken into the camps. She was a shadow of her former self. She was a very beautiful young woman when she went into the camp. By the time they were liberated, clearly, they didn't know whether one or the other one was alive. The irony of that liberation is that basically, the camps were opened up by either the Russian armies or the American soldiers who happened upon those camps, and of course had no idea what to expect, and didn't really know what to do with what they found. My mother told me that many people who had survived throughout their ordeal in the camps died upon liberation because they were given food, and their bodies were so emaciated that they couldn't handle the food, and they just died at liberation. I also think that psychologically, many of them had kept themselves alive by just sheer willpower and hope, certainly not by nutrition or sleep. So, when the camps were opened up, they were just told to leave. Here they were, starved, with cotton uniforms on, in many cases, not even shoes on their feet, and no country, no home, no nationality, and no family. So, they both hopped on freight trains because that was the only thing going at the time and went back to Poland because they figured that was only way they were gonna find out who was left. Fortunately, they found each other. When my mother came back to Krakow, my father had already been there for a few weeks. All the Jewish people who came back were pretty much staying around each other because the Poles had been virulent antisemites even prior to the Germans' arrival. When my parents went back to the old apartment where they had lived and knocked on the door, there was a Polish family who had taken over all of their belongings and looked at them as though they were ghosts and said, \"What are you doing here? We thought the Germans killed all of you,\" and slammed the door in their faces. And then also, within the first few weeks and months of the Jews returning from the camps, the Poles were murdering Jews in the street. My father had a cousin who was 24 years old. He was a sole survivor of his entire family. The Poles shot him in the streets in 1945 when he came back from the concentration camps. So, when these incidents started happening, they said, \"We can't stay here. This is not safe.\" So, of course, they had come from the frying pan into the fire or vice versa. Now they had to figure out where to go with nothing because they literally had no identity, no papers, no belongings, no money. Ironically, the safest place to go at that time was Germany because the Allies were in Germany. They figured, \"There, there will be American soldiers. There will be Russian soldiers. Maybe they will help us.\" Two of my father's brothers who had survived had also come back, so there were three brothers left. All five of my father's sisters had gone to the gas chambers with all young children. Because they wouldn't relinquish their babies, they went to the gasses with their babies in arms. He had two brothers who were also murdered. My mother didn't really know who was left alive because nobody came back. She only had one sister who was … Well, she knew that one of her sisters was safe because she had gone to Palestine before the war. She was sort of a rebel, and she left home as a young woman. And it ended up saving her life. So, the three Dziewinski brothers and their wives hitched rides. [They] asked people to give them a ride, a truck, or whoever was going in the direction of Germany, and the rest of the way, they walked through the woods, through the forest until they got to Germany. They settled in this little town called Wurrmansquick in Bavaria, where there were American soldiers stationed. What the Americans were doing was making the Germans accommodate Jewish survivors. In other words, they would go to someone who had a house or an apartment and say, \"You have to give this couple a room.\" And they would provide some clothing. Then, there was the United Nations Relief [and Rehabilitation Administration], which would give them maybe a hundred marks [German dollars], something, so they would have a little money that they could begin to live with. My parents, unlike many survivors who went to … I can't think of the name right now. I'm having a mental block. The Americans established camps actually in the concentration camps, which was ironic.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944#t=0.0,1156.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/transcript/94449/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Unknown: The displaced persons camps?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944#t=1156.0,1156.0"},{"id":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944/transcript/94449/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Martino: The displaced person camps, right. My parents never went to a displaced person camp, where basically people were taken care of [with] their fundamental needs like food, and clothing, and whatever, and medical care. So, my parents just fended for themselves basically. Within a year—which they were liberated in 1945—in 1946, many of the young survivors had children, so that many of us … Like myself, I was born in August of 1946. My parents were liberated in the spring of 1945. In fact, my mother told me that when she was giving birth to me … And I was her third child. My parents were actually the oldest age group who survived the Holocaust. In fact, my mother had lied about her age saying she was younger because anybody over a certain age group, they would automatically kill. They basically just used people [that] could work until they worked them to death. So, my mother had me at the age of 43, which was quite unusual back then. Today, it's not such an unusual thing. Because she was so emaciated and her body was just sapped of everything when she got pregnant with me, she really had a hard time giving birth, but she often told me that she really couldn't imagine how she would have gone on living if she had not had me, that it gave her a reason to go on living, to have another child. In many ways, that really shaped much of my life—at least, many of my growing up years and much of my person—in that it was my responsibility … And I share that with many children of survivors, who were born after the war to replace what was lost. We had to be perfect children because we were replacing children who had died. So, we were living in this little town in Bavaria of 5,000 population and there were only a few Jewish families immediately after the war. But most survivors received visas to leave Germany in the early 1940s. I'm sorry, in the late 1940s. By 1949, 1950, most everyone was gone. And my father's younger brother, who was the butcher in the camp, decided that … He received papers to come to Atlanta, Georgia. So, he left in 1949 with his wife and a daughter they also had, whose first name happens to be the same as mine because we were both named after our grandmother who died during the Holocaust. So, that what was left was my father, and my father's brother, and my mother, and my aunt. My uncle and aunt had a son also in 1946. We ended up living together in the same house because we were only two Jewish families in this German town in Bavaria, which was quite unusual. The way I learned about who my parents were and what happened to them was at quite an early age because, since they did not have the opportunity to go to psychologists or psychiatrists and talk about their traumas, when the men used to play cards, they would talk about their experiences during the Holocaust, just like men talk about war stories, soldiers talk about wars stories. We had radiators in this house that we lived in. And in my bedroom, the radiators carried the conversation. So, unbeknownst to them, I would overhear their stories as a young girl. And it's not exactly the ideal bedtime stories for a child. Also, every morning when my mother would cook me breakfast, she would be crying. I would ask her why she was crying. She would say, \"You cannot lose your parents, and your siblings, and your children, and not cry because it's not natural.\" So, my eggs would be salted with tears every morning and she would cry until the day she died. Now, what is remarkable about my parents and about most Holocaust survivors that I've met, is that they experienced extraordinary cruelty and evil, and that they came out of this traumatic horrendous experience with these enormous losses, and they did not become lunatics. They did not become alcoholics. They did not turn into monsters like the human beings who did what they did to them. But they managed to have hope, because in order to have children, you have to have hope. They managed to maintain their faith, to continue to believe in G-d. And many times, when I got older, I would ask my mother, \"How can you still believe in G-d after what happened to you?\" And she would say, \"G-d didn't do this to us; other people did.\" Of course, what became increasingly difficult for me to understand is that those other people who did that to them, those Germans, grew up in a country where there was education, and culture, and music, and natural beauty, but above all, there was religion. And yet, they turned into monsters. I used to think that they turned into animals, but animals only kill to survive. These people killed, in some cases, for pleasure and out of extreme cruelty and meanness. I have yet to understand how they could have been raised with religion and say that they believed in G-d and been so evil to other human beings. I suppose I never will understand that. So, I grew up in a very strange environment because being a little Jewish girl in Bavaria, in post-Holocaust Bavaria, where Nazism really grew, in the bosom of, in the heart of the rise of Nazism, where there were only Catholic and Protestant schools … So, that we chose, or the schools chose, so that my cousin ended up going to a Protestant school, I ended up to going to Catholic school, and where I learned my catechism and everything there is to know about the Catholic religion. Then later on, in junior high school, I went to a Protestant school. So, I learned what there was to know, or what they wanted you to know, about the Protestant religion. Of course, they didn't teach us what a virulent antisemite Martin Luther was, but I found that out later on myself in studying as much as I could. And subsequently, because my parents wanted me to be amongst Jewish people, they sent me to England to an ultra-Orthodox Jewish school, which was quite strange for me, having grown up in Germany, because I really never had lived in a Jewish community before. Although we did go for holidays to Munich [Germany], where there was a Jewish community after the war, a small Jewish community of Holocaust survivors. The reason we stayed in Germany as long as we did, and we stayed there until 1962, is because, as I mentioned, my parents were already 43 years old at the end of the war. The younger people who survived went to all different countries all over the globe [like] Australia, Israel, South America, America, Canada. My father was a horse trader. To come to Atlanta, Georgia and trade horses was not a possibility. And he was always independent. He couldn't imagine working for someone else in a country where he didn't speak the language. He was fiercely independent. So, he decided that they would stay there, and he and his brother worked together at what they did. He was quite successful at what he did. Even though people find it difficult to understand how we could live there, and that's fodder for a book I'm trying to write … But it was an interesting experience to say the least. The Germans at that time did not exhibit any overt antisemitism, because there was an American presence. There were American soldiers stationed where we lived for quite some time after the war. And I think they were also afraid after the war to show who they were. Ironically, though, the house that we lived in when my mother was pregnant with me … The German lady in whose house we lived, offered to give my mother some clothing for me when I was born. And so, she took her upstairs where she had an old armoire and she opened it up to take the clothing out because people used to have nice handmade things for their babies. And in that armoire was hanging her husband's SS uniform, which if you can imagine that now my mother who had just, my parents, who had just come out of the camps, realized that they were in the home of a former SS officer. And the irony of it being that here was someone who clearly was a criminal, and under normal circumstances would have been put into prison for murdering innocent human beings. All he had to do at the end of the war was take off his uniform, and go back home, and become a regular, quote, normal German citizen again. Whereas my parents, who were innocent victims, had everything taken away from them, and would have nightmares and trauma for the rest of their lives as a result of what people like him did. But everything in our lives always had this tinge of bitterness and irony to it that you just simply … You can't get rid of it. It occurs on a daily basis. It stays with you always, so that … We lived there until 1962. We subsequently moved to a town near us called Eggenfelden, which was just a little bit bigger than the small town we lived in when my parents first came to Germany. Then, when I finished … I actually finished high school in London at 15. I told my parents I didn't want to go back to live in Germany. I had become quite religious and observant. I told them that Germany was not a place for Jews and that I wanted to move to the States. So, my parents and my cousin's parents decided that they would move to the United States. And the logical place for us to come was Atlanta because subsequent to my uncles, my father's brother's moving here, my mother had a brother who survived, who was living in Paris [France]. Things were pretty hard there. [He] moved to Atlanta. And she had a sister, the sister who had survived, her only sister who survived was the one who had gone to Palestine. She married an Englishman there, who was stationed there, and moved back to England. And things were pretty tough in England after the war because they had really suffered from fighting the war against the Germans as well. So, they moved to Atlanta as well. So, we had the only family really that we had who survived was here in Atlanta, and that's how we ended up moving to Atlanta in 1962. It was difficult for my parents to adapt. They didn't come here as other survivors did, as young people, pick up the language, go to work, have children, have families. They were already in their 60s and so, it was a difficult adjustment for them. Again, after having made the adjustment of living in Germany after being uprooted from Poland, they were uprooted once again in a totally different society where they didn't speak the language, where my father never drove a car. His brother used to drive him. My mother used to have a chauffeur. And so, it was a whole new adjustment being here. As far as growing up as a child of survivors, I can say that although most people love and cherish their children. Those of us who were born after the Holocaust were minor miracles to our parents. So, they tried to give us absolutely everything. They loved us. They spoiled us. They wanted us to have everything that they didn't have, that their children who were murdered couldn't have. And so, we had a double-edged sword because we were enormously loved, and at the same time, we absorbed all this pain that transcended from them to us that couldn't be wiped out. I would wake up on a regular basis during the night because I would hear my father screaming in his sleep, having nightmares of being chased, and being horrified, and being tormented, and being beaten, and whatever other incidents that had occurred. I would run into my parents' bedroom and there he would be, bathed in sweat and reliving his experiences on a daily basis. So, none of us really had what you would call normal childhoods because it's just not normal for children to be aware of the suffering, and the cruelty, and the evil, and the losses that we knew had occurred. Even though they didn't happen to us, so to speak, they affected us. I never knew my grandparents. I never had numerous aunts and uncles that I would have had. When we had holidays, the table was small. Under normal circumstances, we probably would have run out of chairs and tables. And that's something you're always acutely aware of. No matter what you had, you were always aware of what was missing. And that something that also never goes away. Clearly, it never went away for my parents, but it's also there for us because when you look around, you see … Although you appreciate everything you have, you're always acutely aware of the losses. And the same, in some sense, will be true even for our children, because my parents passed away when my children were still young. And so, they didn't get to have grandparents to a ripe old age, although my parents lived to be 80 years old because they had me so late in life. In a sense, my children also were robbed of their grandparents. There aren't aunts and uncles and extended family around. But what I want to convey, and of course there is much to say, but the reason why I do what I do … I grew up, I pursued a degree in fine arts, went to college, got a degree in fine arts. I have done many things with that. I have painted and done sculpture, I've done interior design, I've been in business. We're in the real estate business. I was fortunate enough to meet a wonderful man, to get married. I have two sons who are now 26 and 31 years old. So, I have been very fortunate. I have devoted a good bit of my time to teaching the Holocaust. I've always been involved with survivors' organizations. I'm currently the president of the Survivors and Children of Survivors Organization in Atlanta. We have a monument here in Atlanta that we maintain and that we have a yearly memorial service at. That was one of the first monuments built in the United States. I feel that what I do with Holocaust education and talking to young people, besides my family, is probably the most important thing I do in life. It's certainly one of the most rewarding things I do with my time. And the reason I do is also a two-edged sword in that, on the one hand, there is a duty and an obligation to remember. Memory to the Jew is what air is to other human beings. Without it, we cannot survive. Many survivors attest to that. If they did not have, at a time where they had literally nothing else, if they couldn't remember their families, and their holidays, and their prayers, they couldn't have survived because that is what sustained them. By the same token, I believe that it is incumbent upon us—and that is with the disappearance of the survivors who are quite quickly passing away and will no longer be here as witnesses and testimonial to what happened—those of us who are the second and third generation, and I personally feel those of us who are not even Jewish, who are survivors or children of survivors have an obligation to remember what happened. I think that there are very profound lessons to be learned from what happened and that our young people have an opportunity if they learn those lessons of the danger of bigotry, and hatred, and racism, and antisemitism, the danger of apathy, of not doing anything in the face of evil, the importance of personal responsibility. In Jewish law, we believe that we are each one. That is, each human being is responsible for one another and that if any one of us is suffering, it is incumbent upon each and every one of us to see to it that we help in any way possible, an individual who is suffering. Unfortunately, when we, the Jews, were suffering during the Holocaust, except for a handful of what we call Righteous Gentiles, people who risked their own lives to rescue and to save other human beings because they didn't look at them as Jews, they saw them just as another human being, and something had happened in there so that they understood and didn't really have to think about making the right choice … I think what our young people need to understand is my mother always said to me: \"In life, there's only one thing you cannot choose and that's when you die.\" We all have to die at one point or another. Unfortunately, in their lives, that wasn't always true, they didn't get to choose, but most of us are fortunate enough that we make choices on a daily basis. I think what I want to convey to young people is that we do have the power to make the right choices. The choices that we make in life, we live with all our lives. I feel confident that if we educate our young people to understand the value of diversity, that it is a great thing that we're not all the same, it's a great that we don't all look alike, like a bunch of eggs in a box … I think we have to appreciate our differences. We have to not only appreciate, but we have to respect our differences. And I think when we do, we can learn from each other and we in turn become better human beings. I really believe in the future and in young people, because I believe that if they understand the lessons of the Holocaust, they can create a world where there will be room for all children, unlike the world that did not have room for my brother, and sister, and for the other one and a half million Jewish children. So, as I said, we moved to Atlanta and we made a life here. And one of the most difficult things for me in coming to America was not necessarily being a teenager and trying to fit in, or trying to adapt to a new and different society, or trying learn the language—because I was good at the languages and I had lived in London—what was really difficult for me was that what I had read and heard about America was that it was a golden place, that it was a perfect country, that there was a democracy, and there was freedom and justice. And when we moved here, we moved directly to the South and I discovered segregation. We moved onto a street off of La Vista Road in Atlanta, near a new synagogue that we belonged to. Apparently, there had not been Jews living in that area, La Vista and Briarcliff [Roads], prior to the 1960s. We bought a brand-new house and one of the first nights that we spent in the house, I heard a motorcycle going down the street in the middle of the night. The next morning, there was swastikas painted on the mailboxes and the really … I mentioned to you earlier how irony runs through our lives. The ironic thing about it was that I had grown up in Germany and my very first antisemitic incident occurred in Atlanta, Georgia on a quiet suburban street while I was in my bed. I thought I was safe and protected in the home … What is it called? The land of the free and the home of the brave, or vice versa. So, that was a very rude awakening to think that we had come here and that the same seeds of hatred were here as well, and that it seemed that you couldn't get away from it no matter how far you went. That was very disturbing and remains very disturbing. I think for all of us, it's easy to take our finger and point it at someone else and say, \"Oh, it's the Nazis. It's the communists. It's the so-and-so's that are not good people.\" Of course, here it was the KKK. But I really believe very strongly that … I always tell the kids when I lecture about the bully in the playground and that no matter where you go, there seems to always be a bully in every playground. It doesn't matter how far you travel, and I've traveled pretty far in my life. I think the key to the bully in the playground is that, first of all, the bully is not a happy camper to begin with, because why else would he want to be a bully and go around knocking other people on their head, you know, punching and pushing other people? But I think that the bully cannot be a bully without other people standing by and allowing him to be a bully. That's what I try to make the young people that I speak to understand, that I'm a little person, I'm only five foot three now, and I was a very little girl, when I was young, but nobody ever bullied me and I never allowed anyone to bully anyone while I was around because I knew what it was to be a victim, because I saw how horribly my parents suffered, and I determined very early on that I was not going to be victim. I was going to never stand by and watch anyone else be victimized. And I have done this. I always urge my kids, the kids I speak to, to do this. When you poke the bully in the chest and you tell the bully to stop, the bully evaporates because the bully is empowered by the acquiescence of the bystanders. So, we each have it in our own power, which is pretty amazing, to affect what happens in society. And I think that is the greatness of America, as far as I'm concerned, that it is a society where wrong things have happened throughout the short history of America, but those things are then recognized as being wrong, and they get corrected. And then they're not supposed to occur again. Now, we're not perfect. Human beings are not perfect, and so things will happen that are not supposed to happen. But I think that this is still the best country on earth. And I think all of us who live here are very fortunate. I know that survivors … Most of the survivors I know are some of the greatest American patriots you will ever find because they were given a home and another opportunity in this country and they believe in democracy, they cherish it. I think our young people have to understand that you can't ever take it for granted, that it's something that you have to work at every day. Because really, the country where all this started, where the Holocaust was conceived, where the Final Solution was conceived … Germany was a very sophisticated country with culture, and education, and government, and all the institutions that we cherish in this country, but something went haywire. And that's possible anywhere and anytime. I really believe, even in this country, if we don't all be very vigilant every day about guarding the freedoms that we cherish … And so, really what I have taught my children is you have to know history. History has very valuable lessons for all of us. Some young people don't want to be bothered with history because they think it's ancient history and it has nothing to do with them and of course, that's not true because we are all part of a continuum. We are part of … We all come from something, and we are all the beginning of something else. Unless we learn those lessons that history has to teach us … We all know that old saying about 'history has a way of repeating itself,' and that's a very dangerous thing. So, I taught my children to know the truth, even though it's painful, never to shirk knowing the truth. It took many years for people to begin to speak about the Holocaust—those who experienced it, and those who witnessed it, and those who had nothing to do with it at all—because it's a very difficult, painful subject. We all would much prefer to eat something sweet than to eat something bitter. But if there were not the bitter, we wouldn't know what sweet is. And so, what I think is just the most amazing lesson is that—I think I said this earlier—it is possible to experience such extraordinary suffering and such extraordinary evil, and still to hope, and to believe, and to love. Thank you.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://thebreman.aviaryplatform.com/collections/994/collection_resources/172987/file/311944#t=1156.0,3730.67755"}]}]}]}