Survivor Accounts
Soloman Radasky
"How did I survive? When a person is in trouble he wants to live. He fights for his life...Some people say,
'Eh -- What will be, will be'. No! You have to fight for yourself day by day. Some people did not care. They said, "I do not want to live. What is the difference? I don't give a damn." I was thinking day by day. I want to live. A person has to hold on to his own will, hold on to that to the last minute."
'Eh -- What will be, will be'. No! You have to fight for yourself day by day. Some people did not care. They said, "I do not want to live. What is the difference? I don't give a damn." I was thinking day by day. I want to live. A person has to hold on to his own will, hold on to that to the last minute."
Isak Borenstein
"I went to see Schindler's List. I was physically broken. Schindler protected. Ninety-nine percent did not have protection. How can you see taking children and throwing them down from the top floor? I cannot imagine it. I have no answer to it. Yet, now you have professors who deny the Holocaust. I am asking you how can they deny what everybody knows is true?"
Joseph Sher
It is not so easy to do this interview. Last night I did not have a minute's sleep. When I sleep, I dream, I dream, I dream. We did not know who was going to be left alive. "Don't forget, tell the world" was the last thing our friends said before they were taken to their deaths. You cannot keep it inside."
Jeannine Burk
"I was a hidden child. I hid in this woman's house from ages three to five. I am grateful to her, but I do not know her name. I will never be able to thank her in a public way."
Shep Zitler
"There were 10 of us who stayed together for the entire 5 years and 7 months of our captivity. We had been through hell. There were 2 things we were not going to do: We were not going to get married and we were not going to have children. Why should our children suffer as Jews? Then we got married and had children. Life goes on. Now, our children are giving back to society."
Eva Galler
"The last thing my father told me as he pushed me from the train was ,'you run. I know you will stay alive, you have the Belzer Rebbe's blessing.' He was very religious and he believed this."
Rabbi Baruch G.
"I will never forget the first time I was beaten up and that really got to me, not so much the, not so much the, the pain from the beating, but the mental anguish. Instead of telling me how to put bricks together, had to be placed a certain way in order for them to be stacked up, he simply went over and beat me for it, without [my] knowing why. I couldn't even cry. When I came home, this is when I burst out crying. Animal! And I was, I was conscientious. I had to go to work. I knew one thing. I had to do the best I can - [it was] forced labor. But why? I mean, what right? What? It was incomprehensible to me."
Helen R.
"I wanted to live. I wanted to know what married life is. I mean, I was, really, we were philosophizing with my friend who is in Israel, who is a wonderful, wonderful woman, and my other friend, and we would sit in Auschwitz and talk and say 'God, we didn't live! We want to get married. We want to know the feeling what it is to make love to a man. We want to know what it is to have a child."