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Tomasz (Toivi) Blatt describes the Sobibor uprising

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We heard a shot and the plan was disregard to march out to the front gate because probably the, the guard would know what's happened and we could go too close, very close to them ourselves. But I heard a shot, Sasha [Aleksandr Pechersky] jumping on the table, and he start to talk.

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MANNY MANDEL:
Here I am, just like all the adults. They had yellow stars, and I have a yellow star. That was made me kind of a big kid in a small pond. I didn't know that this was demeaning. I did not know what this meant.

NARRATOR:
Over 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

This podcast series presents excerpts of interviews with Holocaust survivors from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's public program First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors.

In today's episode, Manny Mandel talks with guest host Dr. Will Meinecke about wearing the yellow star as a young boy in Budapest. Hungary fell increasingly under the influence of Germany in the 1930s, and joined the Axis alliance in 1940. During this time, Jews in Hungary were increasingly subjected to discriminatory anti-Jewish laws modeled on those in Germany.

MANNY MANDEL:
At that point in time, the certain Numerus Clausus, which were the Hungarian laws that were passed, insisted every Jew wear a yellow star. You see yellow stars like that in this Museum at various displays. Unfortunately, I saved the yellow star after the war, but it got lost in transit and I'm sad for it, but I wore a yellow star. To me, that was terrific. Here I am, just like all the adults. They had yellow stars, and I have a yellow star. That was made me kind of a big kid in a small pond. I didn't know that this was demeaning. I did not know what this meant.

What I also didn't know is in certain days, maybe every day at certain times, somebody would follow me to school to make sure I made that four block walk. I didn't know. Somebody from our side, as it were, maybe somebody from the underground areas or somebody from the family, or somebody, because it would not be uncommon for a kid with the yellow star to be hit in the head, dumped in a gutter, and left alone for no reason at all.

Secondly, one of the things I wanted as a child was a bicycle. Not such an enormous...You know, I wanted it without a motor, and I didn't want it to have air conditioning, but I just wanted a bicycle. And my father could have well afforded a bicycle, but he says, "I'm not gonna buy you one." And he gave me some explanation which was not particularly cogent at the time. Bottom line to me, no bicycle.

What he said to me really is that you can't ride in the park, dada, dada, dada, so forth and so on. The bottom line on that issue from his side is that if you ride a bicycle, you ride it in a park. You don't ride in an apartment. You take it on the elevator from the fifth floor, and if the elevator doesn't work you truck it down physically.

The elevator often didn't work, because of parts that went bad, and this was a 50-year-old elevator. And the machinists and the factories were not manufacturing elevator parts. They were manufacturing guns and cannons.

But my father said that we have to go the park to ride the bike. And to ride the bike in the park with a yellow star was very dangerous, because the same folks who might have hit me on the way to school for no reason might hit me on the head on the way riding a bike, and take the bike, leave me there. He wasn't gonna take that risk.

Now, the understanding of what that meant and the kind of symbolic measure that the star gave, I didn't understand until sometime later, probably when I was eight or so. And from that time on, of course, I've learned more and more about it. But at the time that it happened, I had no understanding of what that really means.

WILL MEINECKE:
So you thought it was curious. That it was something peculiar to your parents. They were really keeping a very close watch?

MANNY MANDEL:
Well, having been a parent since, I know that we do that sometimes. And I thought it was just kind of a little overzealousness, but nothing, it had no political overtones. I mean, I wish I'd understood, but I didn't.

WILL MEINECKE:
Did you have friends who weren't Jewish?

MANNY MANDEL:
Sure. Sure.

WILL MEINECKE:
And how did they treat you once you started wearing the yellow star?

MANNY MANDEL:
Well, first of all, they were my friends, and they had no concern about the yellow star. There were two kids right next door to our apartment, I mean if you look at the picture you saw before, the apartment building ends to the right. To the left is another apartment and those two kids were my friends, but in the house you don't wear a star. You wear a star on the street. And it's strangers that you're concerned about.

I had a friend who lived around the corner, a boy who later on was with me in a concentration camp, later on, and later on-he has passed away since-was a professor at Michigan State University, but I visited with him and some others. Outside the star was an issue, but then again I was never alone. I went ice skating, because I was an ice skater when I was about four, with my father, and later on I went with a yellow star. But he was there, and that made it safe.

NARRATOR:
You have been listening to First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors, a podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. from March through August, Holocaust survivors share their stories during First Person programs held at the Museum in Washington, DC. We would appreciate your feedback on this series. [Please take our First Person podcast survey (external link) and let us know what you think.]

[On] our website you can also learn more about the Museum's survivors, listen to the complete recordings of their conversations, and listen to the Museum podcasts Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention.

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Emanuel (Manny) Mandel: Wearing the Yellow Star as a Child in Hungary

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MANNY MANDEL: Here I am, just like all the adults. They had yellow stars, and I have a yellow star. That was made me kind of a big kid in a small pond. I didn't know that this was demeaning. I did not know what this meant.

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ESTELLE LAUGHLIN:
I tried to turn my face away not to see it. I couldn't understand what death meant. All I hoped for is that I meet it with my mother, and sister, and my father.

NARRATOR:
Over 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world. The life stories of Holocaust survivors transcend the decades and remind us of the constant need to be vigilant citizens and to stop injustice, prejudice, and hatred wherever and whenever they occur.

This podcast series presents excerpts of interviews with Holocaust survivors from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum's public program First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors

In today's episode, Estelle Laughlin talks with host Bill Benson about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. German forces intended to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, but were stunned when faced with an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family were hidden in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.

ESTELLE LAUGHLIN:
The Jewish people began to organize themselves into an armed resistance. They started to build bunkers. As I pointed out the buildings were practically vacant, so whoever, most of the people moved to the ground floor. The resistance fighters started to build bunkers in the basements. My father was a member of the underground and we had a bunker too.

The floor in our powder room, the whole floor lifted, commode and all, and then you'd step down in, down a flimsy little ladder and you were out of sight. Well, the resistance fighters built a network of bunkers and they dug tunnels so that they can move from bunker to bunker and tunnels underneath the wall to get to the other side, to the Christian side, and hopefully obtain ammunition and arms from the Christian underground.

The real fighting began when the armored cars, tanks, brigades of soldiers, bomber planes, trucks with loudspeakers, announcing, "You better all report or else we'll kill you." And of course we did not obey, we bolted into our bunker. And you can imagine when we pulled the trap door closed and we stepped into this damp darkness, the ceiling closed in on us. The walls pressed me and the few people who were with me in the bunker were my whole nation. The flickering of the carbide light was the substitute for the sun. The ticking of the clock was our only connection with the universe outside, that's how we knew when morning was rising, when the sun was setting. How abandoned I felt. How I craved for the open horizons, for the crispness, blue crispness of day.

And while we were in this bunker, the freedom fighters confronted a twentieth century army. Just a small group of poorly clad, poorly fed, poorly armed freedom fighters climbing up on rooftops, meeting the tanks on street corners, standing in front of open windows and lobbing Molotov cocktails and whatever explosives they could find. They fought so bravely, they fought for four weeks, even after the ghetto was declared cleansed of Jews the Jewish fighters were still fighting. It is really noteworthy that the Jewish resistance fighters in the Warsaw ghetto fought longer than it took for France or for Poland to capitulate. I think that is remarkable.

Well, "Boom!" there was this horrendous explosion. I thought that my head was blown off. Dust was flying, splinters were flying around me. In one instant our hiding place was invaded by a bunch of barbarians and they chased us out of the bunker. At that point there was not even a corner that we could hide in. We could not even, we didn't even have the freedom to fall to our knees and form fists and smash the earth. We were marched through the streets. The ground beneath us trembled. The air thundered with detonations. The buildings crumbled to our feet. The flames, the flames were enormous, enormous tongues of flames licked the sky and painted it in otherworldly colors of iridescence. The smoke, towers of smoke. People lying in congealed blood. I tried to turn my face away not to see it. I couldn't understand what death meant. All I hoped for is that I meet it with my mother, and sister, and my father. But I couldn't turn my face away from the people who I cannot forget, and they marched us onto Umschlagplatz onto freight trains, crowded like sardines.

NARRATOR:
You have been listening to First Person: Conversations with Holocaust Survivors, a podcast series of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Every Wednesday at 1 p.m. from March through August, Holocaust survivors share their stories during First Person programs held at the Museum in Washington, DC. We would appreciate your feedback on this series. [Please take our First Person podcast survey and let us know what you think.]

[On] our website you can also learn more about the Museum's survivors, listen to the complete recordings of their conversations, and listen to the Museum podcasts Voices on Antisemitism and Voices on Genocide Prevention.

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Estelle Laughlin: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising

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ESTELLE LAUGHLIN: I tried to turn my face away not to see it. I couldn't understand what death meant. All I hoped for is that I meet it with my mother, and sister, and my father. NARRATOR: Over 60 years after the Holocaust, hatred, antisemitism, and genocide still threaten our world.

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Duration 38 minutes

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Adjust yours to meet Best Practices for PowerPoints

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Best Practices

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Virtual Tour - Holocaust Museum & Learning Center

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Want to visit the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center, but can't make it in? Go on a virtual tour! Click the arrows to travel through each exhibit.

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Instructions

Define Holocaust. You should include the context of your topic like what was going on at the time, rules, people, government etc. Make sure that any statistics should be discussed as people. Example 100 people which was 20% of the people. etc. Assume your classmates no nothing about your topic and give a good overview of your topic. What was it? Who did it effect? What was the outcome? How did it effect others? Did it effect the war effort? etc. Your PowerPoint should be more than 10 slides. There is not a rule on how many you should have other than it must have at least 10 slides. Make sure to use best practices for it. You will be presenting to your classmates. Write down what you plan to say, practice, do not read your script. Know what you want to say.

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Define Holocaust. You should include the context of your topic like what was going on at the time, rules, people, government etc. Make sure that any statistics should be discussed as people. Example 100 people which was 20% of the people. etc. Assume your classmates no nothing about your topic and give a good overview of your topic.

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Judith Meisel describes smuggling food as a child into the Kovno ghetto

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And then we came to a place with barbed wire and it became the ghetto, which was known under several--the Kovno ghetto and--but we really knew it as Slobodka ghetto, the ghetto of Slobodka. And there we stayed and food became very, very scarce and...uh...uh...there was a...um...man by the name of Motke.

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Thomas Buergenthal describes the significance of the Nuremberg trials to him both perso...

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I will answer the question about what I find interesting about Nuremberg not as international judge or international lawyer, but from a personal point of view. To me it showed that it was possible, that things we did not think possible in the camps -- at least many of us didn't, that one day, these people would pay for what they had done -- proved possible, when they were in the dock.