The family unit

The Family Unit Maintaining and Building Families During the Holocaust

Yulanda Au Evelyn KesslerOsose ObohSarah Peters

Overview

Introduction

Marie’s story

Hidden children in non-Jewish families

Rita’s story

Retention of the family unit in the camps

Formation of families in the camps

Families in hiding

Marie’s Story

Background

Albi, France- Location of the village that hid her and her family, consequently saving their lives

Post-war life in the family unit

Going back to visit her rescuers or her second familyReflections

Jewish children who were hidden in non-Jewish families during the Holocaustwar

Hidden Children

Rescuers Irena Sendler

Rescued 2500 childrenSaved all the names in jars to

retain identitiesProtestant and Catholic churches’

involvementHid children with families, in

convents and orphanagesGave false baptismal

papers    Christian and Muslim families

throughout Europe individually hid families

Emotional and physical repercussions Separation anxietyPhysical and emotional abuse Identity Crises

ReligiousFamily

Families in the camps

Rita’s Story

“Mother, Father, Grandparents, Uncles, Aunts, Cousins, two sister and two brothers – Bertha, Berl, Ida, and Yankule – did not survive. I miss them and I cry everyday. They are always in my mind and in my heart.”

“The next morning we were transported back to Riga where I had left my twin sister. We were so happy to be reunited and from then on, we were always together.”

“I got very friendly with one girl and she told me her family name was Hirsch. One of our uncle’s name was Hirsch and was married to our aunt in Timisora, so to our surprise she and her sister were our uncle’s nieces. We were very happy to have found some relatives.”

“I can’t forget the Holocaust; to be captured into slavery, to see the Nazi’s around you with loaded rifles; to get pushed five in a row to march hungry, cold, and tired with no future, separated from parents, sisters, and brothers and the rest of the family…nightmares are still with me.”

"Eight words spoken

quietly, indifferently,

without emotion. Eight

short, simple words. Yet

that was the moment

when I parted from my

mother.”

– Elie Wiesel, Night

“As for me, I was not thinking about death, but I did not want to be separated from my father. We had already suffered so much, borne so much together; this was not the time to be separated.” – Elie Wiesel, Night

“Liesel remained true to her father. He

could not get out, as she explained,

because he knew too much. Therefore

she could not register for a work

transport, although they would have

been more likely to take her than me,

because she was a couple of years older.

She never even tried it; she wanted to

remain with him; she was gassed with

him. She had absolutely no illusion

about her impending death. I would not

have sacrificed myself for my mother.” –

Ruth Kluger, Still Alive

Retention and Loss of Families

“Perhaps I am simply jealous of her greater right to mourn him.” – Ruth Kluger, Still Alive

Formation of Families

Marriage Scene in Schindler’s List

Primo Levi and Lorenzo Perrone

Lorenzo Perrone

“..An Italian civilian worker brought me a piece of bread and the remainder of his ration every day for six months; he gave me a vest of his, full of patches; he wrote a postcard on my behalf to Italy and brought me the reply. For all this he neither asked nor accepted any reward, because he was good and simple and did not think that one did good for a reward.…I believe that it was really due to Lorenzo that I am alive today; and not so much for his material aid, as for his having constantly reminded me by his presence, by his natural and plain manner of being good, that there still existed a just world outside our own, something and someone still pure and whole, not corrupt, not savage, extraneous to hatred and terror; something difficult to define, a remote possibility of good, but for which it was worth surviving.…But Lorenzo was a man; his humanity was pure and uncontaminated, he was outside this world of negation. Thanks to Lorenzo, I managed not to forget that I myself was a man.”

Works Cited• Children. http://fcit.usf.edu/holocaust/People/children.htm .• Decoster, Charlotte (2006). Jewish Hidden Children in Belgium during the

Holocaust: A comparative study of their hiding places at Christian establishments, private families, and Jewish orphanages. Retrieved from UNT Digital Web site: http://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc5468/m1/.

• Hidden Children: Quest for Family. http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10006127.

• Kaufman, Marie., personal communication, January 13 & 20, 2010.• Kluger, Ruth. Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered. New York: Feminist

Press, 2001 (selections).• Levi, Primo. Survival in Auschwitz. Touchstone. New York. 1958 .• Life in the Shadows: Hidden Children and the Holocaust. Retrieved from

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hiddenchildren/insideX/.• Ofer, Dalia. 2005. Family during the Holocaust.

http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/family-during-holocaust.• Rita’s Memoir. (Holocaust survivor we interviewed provided us with a description of

her time during the war). • Schindler’s List. Steven Spielberg, 1993. • Spies, Marcia (Interviewee). Retrieved from USC Shoah Foundation Institute Web

site: http://college.usc.edu/vhi/otv/otv.php.• Wiesel, Elie. Night. Hill and Wang. New York. 2006.

Works Cited (cont’d)

Images (in order of the slides)

http://wps.ablongman.com/wps/media/objects/262/268312/art/figures/KISH579.jpg http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-3/SHOAH-jewish_family.GIF http://holocaust-children.tripod.com/2boys.gif http://www.tpmconstanta.ro/images/romania-europe-map.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/89/Selection_Birkenau_ramp.jpg http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/images/27/spielberg/schindlers_list.jpg http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/exhibitions/flickers_of_light/img_righteous/Perron

e_1.jpg