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"Chana had to go through one of the worst wars in history. Chana luckily survived it-- but her family did not."

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The genocide of European Jews was catastrophic event. The world can hope that an event like this will not happen again but, the Holocaust shows it is possible. The value of human life must be honored, whether you are Jewish, Black, poor, or whatever. It does not matter; the value of human life is the same.

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In 1945, she was liberated from the camp. 50 years after her liberation, she found a power she held inside her: forgiveness

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"Hate is the precursor to violence and as Lucille learned, if we are able to release the hate before it takes the next step, the cycle can be stopped for good."

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Those who do not learn from the past are bound to repeat it.

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Many of these survivors have already past, and the ones who haven’t don’t have much time left. Who will be able to tell their story’s if they can’t?

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“But what is my forgiveness? …It is an act of self-healing, self-liberation, self-empowerment. All victims all hurt, feel hopeless, feel helpless, feel powerless. I want everybody to remember that we cannot change what happened. That is the tragic part. But we can change how we relate to it.”

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“And yet we are duty-bound to try and not to bury our memories into silence.”

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"Memories of the nocturnal silence flooded Elie’s ears, depriving his desire to live for all of eternity. What sense is there in living in a world that tolerates such unimaginable cruelty? That thought never stopped lingering."

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"The Holocaust brought out the darkness in Vera’s mind, but she kept the light in her heart. "

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"Barbara was awakened from her disbelief, and this memory lasted her lifetime."

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"Watching as others fall behind when I could simply slow down for them is what will lead to true human suffering"

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Chasia Bornstein was captured at a very young age and had already suffered great loss, but with time and thinking, she eventually made it out of the Ghetto where she was kept. While she was in the ghetto she went against the Germans and joined the underground, courageously fighting the Germans and supplying fellow Jews.

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She could live in freedom and love in freedom with her peace. One week after she and her husband moved to Israel, he was killed in battle. “I don’t have a moment of peace. I have to keep busy, to keep the thoughts from eating into my soul.”

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Even though Vera moved to England in the beginning of World War II, she always had the comfort and relationship with her sister, her only family during this time, keeping Vera inspired and motivated.

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Holocaust Summative- Survivor Testimony Reflection Essay

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Yona originally didn’t know whether to trust Marian but he asked himself continuous times if he was going to make it out alive any other way. It’s important to push yourself every day because you will not figure out what’s going to happen any other way.

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The prisoners fought to keep a grasp of their previous identity. This was difficult to maintain while being one of hundreds of thousands exploited against their will.

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But despite going through these losses, he clung onto the glimmer of hope that he would make it out of Treblinka and be able to build a new life for himself.

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"Starving men and bones and what he referred to as the walking dead"

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“I lay like that for a long time. I didn’t cry. I was petrified.”

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"This was the beginning of us becoming zombies. I still have dreams about that train ride."

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"I heard commotion outside the shop"

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She immediately helped the man up because no one else would.

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"In 1943, Baruch Shub was separated from his family, and his mother, his father, younger brother, and younger sister were murdered."

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"In March 1944, his parents were deported to Auschwitz where they were murdered by Nazis. This had a significant impact on Robert and his younger brother. "

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“She was then deported and was forced to walk in forests without food. She could feel her stomach rise and sink as she walked, that’s how hungry she was."

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“Crawling to reach a faucet with water at the other side of the barrack, and as I was crawling, I would fade in and out of consciousness”

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While many people think the Holocaust is only about the persecution of Jewish people, destruction, prejudice, and hate, there are stories—like Esther’s—that give us another perspective of the horrible genocide.

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One morning in 1933, Kurt Klein, a teenage boy who was living in Waldorf, Germany woke up to see that the Nazis were rising to power with the rise of the Third Reich.

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The family bonds of these individuals make them ever so closer to the people they feel an obligation to and how this bond can make the individuals within the bonds stronger and even more determined to go through hardships.

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One day in 1934, Walter Zvi Bacharach was attacked with stones.

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“I picked him up, and as I did so, a person that was standing there touched my elbow and said, don't get involved. So, I said, why not? Why can't you help this man? And they used two words, concentration camp” (Reiss 01:50–02:00).

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“And he began to defecate right in front of me. And I couldn't believe this. Oh, he was so thin, it looked like the bones of his buttocks would come through the skin

But I stood there saying, no, no. You don't do this in public. Where's your dignity? But you see, that was my hang-up. I was hung up on something called dignity when that man was merely trying to survive. He wanted to live. I didn't know.”

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"Imagine being a woman and being stripped of everything that makes you feel feminine. Imagine knowing that you were just striped of your individuality and everything that makes you, you. During the time of the Holocaust, this happened to an endless number of women."

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He took his gun out of his holster and pointed it at Cooley. Howard said, “Cooley, if I ever see you treat another Jew like this again, I'll kill you” (Cwick 4:03-4:12).

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“They fed us, they kept us, never complained, never looked for excuses. They were warm to us. We never felt that we are intruding, this was the big thing. And it was a real lesson in human decency” (Bem 02:53-03:11).

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"A person with Dignity would look down upon those people and wonder why they would do those things "

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"In 1942, a Holocaust survivor named Clara Kramer went into hiding with her family in a crawl space beneath their home.  Clara and her family were hidden by Valentin Beck, a German Pole who risked his life in order to protect Clara and her family.  By doing this, Clara and her family managed to survive."

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When 14-year-old Kalman Perk woke up that fateful morning, he wasn’t expecting to be the sole survivor of his family

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It would seem that very few people could make it out alive while facing all of these bumps in the road, but Shimon’s strength and resilience allowed him to persevere and escape from Chelmno.

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Chana was determined to get through the war, and she did and she is now married and has two children

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As Eva learned, forgiving is not forgetting; it is a form of self-healing.

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Howard Cwick reflected on his past confrontations and used his experience to learn and change his actions that later potentially saved a Jews life.

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Rita described Mengele as, “Very handsome, like a movie star” ... “Then he says: “what are you doing here?”, Kicks me, and I fly to the right.” (Weiss 3:45-4:26)

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When you hear something, the information sometimes goes in through one ear and out the other. However, forgetting Elie Wiesel’s story doesn’t seem like a possibility.

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Those very neighbors in whose courtyard I played in as a child, those very neighbors who were guests at my mother's dining room table months before, peeked through their windows and turned their faces

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Eva turned her personal experience into a powerful message about learning to use strength in order to dispense forgiveness, so that inner peace can found within healing.