Little Holocaust Survivors

In the decade after the Second World War, 35,000 Jewish survivors of Nazi persecution and their dependants arrived in Canada. This was a watershed moment in Canadian Jewish history. The unprecedented scale of the relief effort required for the survivors, compounded by their unique social, psychological, and emotional needs challenged both the established Jewish community and resettlement agents alike. Adara Goldberg’s Holocaust Survivors in Canada highlights the immigration, resettlement, and integration experience from the perspective of Holocaust survivors and those charged with helping them. The book explores the relationships between the survivors, Jewish social service organizations, and local Jewish communities; it considers how those relationships—strained by disparities in experience, language, culture, and worldview—both facilitated and impeded the ability of survivors to adapt to a new country. Researched in basement archives and as well as at Holocaust survivors’ kitchen tables, Holocaust Survivors in Canada represents the first comprehensive analysis of the resettlement, integration, and acculturation experience of survivors in early postwar Canada. Goldberg reveals the challenges in responding to, and recovering from, genocide—not through the lens of lawmakers, but from the perspective of “new Canadians” themselves.

Until age seven, Olga Barsony Verrall lived an idyllic life in Szarvas, a small town in Hungary, surrounded by her doting, observant Jewish family. After the Nazi invasion in 1944, Olga found herself, along with most of her family, interned in the Auspitz labour camp. Eventually reunited after the war. A long journey of physical and mental healing, along with the support of her family, helped Olga piece her life back together. For Olga, writing her memoir was a catharsis. For her readers, it will be an inspiration.

Recounts the stories of the traumatized Jewish children who found refuge in Europe's Stoatley Rough School during World War II.

"The more we felt the Germans' heavy boots in our lives, the more I knew I had to leave . . . but I was scared. Where was I going to go? What would I live on?"

Remember Us is a look back at the lost world of the shtetl: a wise Zayde offering prophetic and profound words to his grandson, the rich experience of Shabbos, and the treasure of a loving family. All this is torn apart with the arrival of the Holocaust, beginning a crucible fraught with twists and turns so unpredictable and surprising that they defy any attempt to find reason within them. From work camps to the partisans of the Nowogródek forests, from the Mauthausen concentration camp to life as a displaced person in Italy, and from fighting the Egyptian army in a tiny Israeli kibbutz in 1948 to starting a new life in a new world in New York, this book encompasses the mythical “hero’s journey” in very real historical events. Through the eyes of ninety-one-year-old Holocaust survivor Martin Small, we learn that these priceless memories that are too painful to remember are also too painful to forget.

They hid wherever they could for as long as it took the Allies to win the war -- Jewish children, frightened, alone, often separated from their families. For months, even years, they faced the constant danger of discovery, fabricating new identities at a young age, sacrificing their childhoods to save their lives. These secret survivors have suppressed these painful memories for decades. Now, in The Hidden Children, twenty-three adult survivors share their moving wartime experiences -- some for the first time. There is Rosa, who hid in an impoverished one-room farmhouse with three others, sleeping on a clay pallet behind a stove; Renee, who posed as a Catholic and was kept in a convent by nuns who knew her secret; and Richard, who lived in a closet with his family for thirteen months. Their personal stories of belief and determination give a voice, at last, to the forgotten. Inspiring and life-affirming, The Hidden Children is an unparalleled document of witness, discovery, and the miracle of human courage.

In March 1939, seven-year-old Eva Weiss’s innocence was shattered by Germany’s invasion of her homeland, Slovakia. Over the next five years, as the Nazi persecution of Europe’s Jews gathered momentum, Eva’s parents were forced to send their children into hiding, but she and her sister Marta could not avoid capture. In this remarkable memoir, Eva recounts her experiences at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. There, she witnessed countless horrors and was herself subjected to torture, extreme deprivation, and medical experimentation at the hands of the notorious Dr Josef Mengele. When the Soviet army liberated the survivors of Auschwitz early in 1945, Eva and Marta faced a new challenge: crossing war-torn Europe to be reunited with their family. Narrated with the heartbreaking innocence of a young girl and the wisdom of a woman of eighty-three, Gazing at the Stars is a record of survival in the face of unimaginable evil. It is the culmination of Eva Slonim’s lifelong commitment to educating the world about the Holocaust, and to keeping alive the memory of the many who perished. Eva Slonim (née Weiss) was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, in 1931. A survivor of the Holocaust, Eva relocated with her family to Melbourne in 1948. She married Ben Slonim in 1953, and together they had five children, and many grandchildren and great- grandchildren, fulfilling Eva’s wish to rebuild what was lost in Europe. A gifted storyteller, and deeply passionate about the importance of education and community, Eva has for many years given public talks on her experiences during the war.

The majority of children who survived the Holocaust, whether in hiding or in labour and concentration camps, remained silent about their wartime experiences. Those who wanted to talk, were often silenced by well-meaning adults who advised them to forget the past and get on with their lives. The memories and traumas simmered for nearly forty years, each child growing into adulthood thinking they alone struggled with the problems of traumatic memory, identity confusion and other consequences. In the 1980's, there was a stirring of awareness amongst some child survivors about issues to be addressed. Small groups formed in the U.S.A. and Canada and gave birth to the child survivor movement, culminating in a large international gathering of "Hidden Children" in New York in 1991. This book comprises a compilation of talks offered to child Holocaust survivors, over a 25 year period - from the birth of self-awareness to present day awareness of the need to inform the next generations of their parent's experiences. Dasberg, Krell and Wiesel are themselves child survivors. Moskovitz founded the Los Angeles Child Survivor group following her pioneering study of child survivors. Gilbert has written and lectured extensively about children in the Holocaust. This book offers the child survivor an opportunity to reflect not only on survival but its effects. For the spouses and children it clarifies some of the dynamics unique to their families and for Mental Health professionals it provides insights into the effects of trauma as well as the remarkable resilience of traumatized children.