Kurt Leuchter was born February 6, 1929 in Vienna, Austria. He grew up there in the 1930s and remembers well the dark days of the Anschluss, when the Nazis marched in. Restrictions began to set in, and then the real brutality was unleashed during Kristallnacht. Kurt recalls seeing the synagogue burned, and remembers his father […]
Edith Loeb was born December 31, 1927 in Bruchsal, Germany, not too far from the border with France. From her accounts and memories, Edith was living a good life; her father had a store, and she and her brother went to school and the family was doing well. As the 1930s and the Nazi ideology […]
George Pouder was born February 18, 1923 in New York City. He grew up in the Bronx during the difficult times of the Great Depression, a period that impacted his family and the neighborhood. George recalls that the quality of his schooling varied, but that he took full advantage of the city, exploring it with […]
Frank Cohn was born August 2, 1925 in Breslau, Germany. Born into a Jewish family, Frank began to understand the realities of Nazism when he was a young boy: an uncle was murdered by stormtroopers, and he saw violence in the streets outside his home. He also compellingly remembers the day his Grade 2 teacher […]
Peter Nesselroth was born in Berlin on March 1, 1935. When the situation for Jews worsened, his family moved to Belgium when he was almost 4 years old. After Kristallnacht, his parents just couldn’t reconcile staying in Germany any longer, so they moved to Brussels. During this time, Peter couldn’t go to school, so his […]
Gerry Grossmann was born May 8, 1925 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Gerry remembers his childhood in fond terms, as his parents created a home where he and his brother had so many opportunities. 1933 saw a dramatic change though; with the election of Hitler, things changed for the Grossmanns and for […]
Paul Heimann was born June 1, 1924 in Austria. When the Anschluss took place, Paul and his parents found themselves at the centre of Hitler’s ambitions, and they felt the full weight of Nazism with the Kristallnacht. Their synagogue was burned, and the stormtroopers prevented the fire department from taking action. Paul’s parents saw the […]
Rabbi Erwin Schild was born in Mulheim, Germany in 1920. His family, consisting of his parents and two siblings, owned a local store and considered themselves part of the larger community. Erwin went to public school until age 16, when he was forced out of the public system as Nazi restrictions began to increase. At […]
Edith Pagelson’s personal story of survival began in Germany. She and her family were victims of Hitler’s Nazi regime well before the war began, feeling the sting of the Nuremberg Laws and Kristallnacht all through the 1930s. She and her family were deported from Duisberg to the Terezin Ghetto, where Edith’s father died. After spending […]