Holocaust Survivors

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  Susan Berman

  Born in Brooklyn in 1948, Susan Berman is the daughter of German Holocaust survivors. Her mother Ruth took the Kindertransport to England in 1939, a few months before other members of her family boarded the ill-fated ship, the St. Louis. Berman's father Manfred was arrested on Kristallnacht, but after his release he fled Germany and immigrated to the United States, where he served in the U.S. Army.

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  Topics: Second Generation, St. Louis, Immigration, After the War, USO, Pre-war Jewish Life, Propaganda, Rise of Antisemitism, Rise of Nazism, Kristallnacht
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  Edward Francell

  Edward Francell was born into a secular Jewish family in Paris, France, in 1934. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Francell and his family immigrated to the United States and settled in Los Angeles. At school Francell participated in fundraisers for refugees fleeing Europe. Francell graduated from Columbia University in 1956. 
  
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  Topics: Pre-War Jewish Life, Kristallnacht, The Camps, Holocaust Resistance, Remembering the Holocaust 
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  Norbert Friedman

  Born in Poland in 1922, Norbert Friedman was forced into the Mielec concentration camp after the German invasion. He would survive eleven camps throughout the war building airplane engines for the German air force. After liberation Friedman completed his college education in Germany and immigrated to the United States in 1950. 
  
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  Topics: Start of War, The Camps, Holocaust Resistance, Liberation
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  Hershel Greenblat

  Born in Ukraine in 1941, Hershel Greenblat spent the first two years of his life hiding in underground caves. His parents were resistance fighters who left him in the care of friends when they carried out attacks on the Nazis. After the war Greenblat’s family lived in a succession of displaced person camps before immigrating to the United States. 
  
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  Topics: Holocaust Resistance, After the War
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  David Jacobi

  Born in 1962, David Jacobi is a lifelong resident of Atlanta. His father's family survived the Holocaust in Germany, and his mother's family survived the Blitz in England. After the death of his grandparents, Jacobi began researching his family's wartime experience and cataloging the artifacts they left behind.
  
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  Topics: Pre-War Jewish Life, Rise of Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Resistance, War in Europe, Surviving the Blitz,  After the War, Postwar America, Second Generation
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  Andre Kessler

  Born in Bucharest, Romania, in 1940, Andre Kessler attributes his survival during the Second World War to the landlord of his building who enabled his family to go into hiding for sixteen months. After the war Kessler escaped from behind the Iron Curtain to Austria and immigrated to the United States in 1951. 
  
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  Topics: Rise of Anti-Semitism, The Camps, Holocaust Resistance, After the War,Remembering the Holocaust
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  Herbert Kohn

  When the Nazis came to power in 1933, six-year-old Herbert Kohn was forced to leave public school in Frankfurt, Germany. The Nazis imprisoned Kohn’s father after Kristallnacht but released him a few weeks later because of his service in World War I. Kohn and his family immigrated to the United States in 1940.
  
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  Topics: Pre-War Jewish Life, Rise of Anti-Semitism, Kristallnacht, Holocaust Resistance
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  Rochelle Lawrence

  Born in Poland in 1929, Rochelle Lawrence immigrated to Palestine with her family in 1936. After two years of bombings and food shortages in Tel Aviv, Lawrence’s family moved to the United States with the support of relatives. In 1949, Lawrence married a veteran of World War II and eventually had three children. She made her home on Long Island before retiring to Georgia to be closer to her daughter.
  

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  Topics: Pre-War Jewish Life, Rise of Anti-Semitism, Remembering the Holocaust
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  Murray Lynn

  Murray Lynn was born in Hungary in 1930. As a teenager he was deported to Auschwitz and forced to work as a slave laborer for more than a year. After liberation Lynn returned to his hometown and found few survivors of the Jewish community. He immigrated to the United States in 1948.
  
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  Topics: Rise of Anti-Semitism, The Camps, After the War, Remembering the Holocaust
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  Sarah Popowski

  Born in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1952, Sarah Popowski is the daughter of Holocaust survivors Paula Kornblum Popowski and Henry Popowski of Kaluszcyn, Poland. Having avoided deportation by volunteering for hard labor in 1942, Paula escaped from the labor camp with aid from a righteous gentile and hid with her sister in southern Poland under a false identity. After marrying in a DP camp, Paula and Henry emigrated to the United States in 1949. Sarah Popowski lives in Atlanta and recorded her oral history interview at Kennesaw State University in August 2022.

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  Topics: Second Generation, War in Europe, The Camps, Holocaust Resistance, Holocaust Memory, Liberation, After the War
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  Tosia Schneider

  Tosia Schneider was born in Poland in 1928. During the Second World War, her family was forced into the Tluste ghetto, where her mother held a secret school for Jewish children in defiance of the Nazis. Schneider was eventually deported to a labor camp. The only survivor in her family, Schneider immigrated to the United States in 1950. 
  
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  Topics: Rise of Anti-Semitism, Start of War, The Ghettos, The Camps, Holocaust Resistance, After the War
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  Gitte Toben

  Born in Denmark in 1952, Gitte Toben immigrated to the United States in 1979. She volunteers at the Museum of History and Holocaust Education because her father, Kjeld Johansen, was a member of the Danish resistance during World War II. He was injured during an attack on the Nazis and went underground to avoid capture.
  
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  Topics: Start of War, Holocaust Resistance, After the War, Remembering the Holocaust
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  Sheva Vapne

  Born in Latvia in 1928, Sheva Vapne grew up speaking Latvian, Russian, and Yiddish. When the Germans invaded in 1941, Vapne escaped to Russia where she worked on a collective farm until winter forced her south to Uzbekistan. After the war Vapne returned to Latvia, then part of the Soviet Union. She immigrated to the United States in the 1970s.
  
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  Topics: Pre-War Jewish Life, Start of War, War in Europe, Holocaust Resistance, After the War