Memories Of A Holocaust Rescuer By Jennifer Armstrong Summary

The Germans were deporting 5 to 10 thousand Jews a day at the Umschlagplatz. Were the Jews would be tightly packed in cattle cars and shipped off to death camps like treblinka were they would be sent to labor or the gas chambers were you executed. Death camps would try to hide what’s really going on. The death camps would say turn in all your valuables so you can be delouced but what they really are doing is sending you to your death.People that are war profiteers would sell some of the valuables that were collected at the death camps. So Irena was terrified when they started deportation she was afraid that all the kids that she put in the orphanage in the ghetto. Several days after wards there was tremence fire fights that broke out all over the ghetto. So Irena sprung into action thinking that the Germans would be distracted from all the fighting so that Irena can smuggle more Jewish kids into the Aryan side. Irena looked at danger straight in the face and smuggled kids through the sewer. Once the Nazi got wind of people smuggling Jews through the sewer they started putting posing the sewers so in anybody went down there they would die. That day Irena smuggled almost 200 kids throughout these

In the year 1941, Lithuania was invaded and many Jewish families fled from Lithuania. Margarets family didn't leave because her brother Alik was at a children's holiday camp. Margaret was never sent to a camp, she lived in the ghetto. Margaret's description of the ghetto years as “dreadful”. The people were forced to do hard labour and were deprived of their food.

In the book Escape Children of the Holocaust, author Allan Zullo highlights the struggles of three innocent Jewish children, Hanci Hollander, Halina Litman and Gideon Frieder. All three children were born in different countries affected by the Holocaust; Hungary, Poland and Slovakia. If you did not know, the Holocaust was a gruesome time in the world’s history. There were concentration camps for Jews. All because of one Austrian man, Adolf Hitler, who hated the Jews so much he did not want one Jew left standing. Consequently, he made the Nazi Germans hunt, enslave and kill the Jews.

When Hitler first came the people in her town didn't believe that he would invade them. When he did, they were all shocked. The Jews were then treated like trash. Eva says she will always remember one day and that is because the Nazis made them walk all the way to the town square. Once they made it, there was a fire in the middle of the ground.

Her heart was pumping as she approached the window. Right before Eva jumped her father said, “I know you will stay alive. You have the Belzer Rebbe's blessing.” When Eva got up to find her sister and brother dead she took off her yellow star necklace and promised herself to never wear it again.Eva knew she had to go on, so she ran back to Oleszyce. Eva found a family friend who hid her for a few days but soon made her leave because it was too dangerous. Eva then found another family who housed her for one night. Eva’s final plan was to go to a nearby train station. She paid for a ticket to Krakow with the money one of the families gave her. In Cracow boys and girls were caught and sent to work in Germany. Luckily they didn't know Eva was Jewish, so she went along with the kids. All the kids were inspected by doctors and, that’s when Eva came up with a Polish name, Katarzyna

Many, many people suffered during the Holocaust war. The Jews in particular were in grave danger. The drama ‘Anne Frank’ outlines so many ways that this historical event caused a shift in the mood of the characters and their relationships. Before the Holocaust, Anne Frank was just an ordinary Jewish girl living in Germany. A German leader named Adolf Hitler developed a plan to destroy the Jews and to rule over the specific places where they lived. What Hitler did to these poor Jews, and the sheer terror they endured at the hands of this Nazi leader is purely unfathomable.

The two siblings were standing outside of Kinderheim L410, an old prison, with hundreds of other Jewish children (Levine 64). They would stay here with little food, space, and knowledge of what was in their years to come. One day, Hana and her brother received a letter stating he was being deported to a labor camp. She was headed to Auschwitz.

In The Journal of Hélène Berr, we are given the first hand account of a young Jewish woman in Paris during the German occupation. This primary source provides a strong insight into how Paris was changing before Hélène’s eyes. Hélène started keeping a journal to preserve memories, but over time, as the German occupation started to change her life, it became something more. Her writing became darker, because so did her outlook. For one, towards the end of the

Born in Poland, Henia Weit was the youngest of nine children in her family. She lived in a town by the name of Sambor. Unfortunately, the town was bombarded by German soldiers shortly after Hitler started his reign of terror on the Jews. Henia’s family was forced to do laborious work in a ghetto until they were all deported to a concentration camp. Fortunately for Henia, she was able to escape and never went to the concentration camp herself. Instead, she had to survive for several years alone, with only her sister to turn to.

When Irene Safran was only twenty-one years old, her carefree life ended in the face of the Holocaust. Born to two Jewish parents as one of ten children-- four girls and six boys in all-- in Munkachevo, Czechoslovakia around the year 1923, her world changed in early April 1944 when she and her family were transferred to a Jewish ghetto. For the next year, Irene's life was a series of deaths, losses, and humiliations no human should ever have to suffer, culminating, years later, with a triumphant ending. Her story is proof that the human spirit can triumph over all manner of adversity and evil.

Anxiety washed over the poor boy. It was dark, darker than Zerdek had ever know. With each second that passed, a low mumble could be heard from the corner. Something or someone else was here with him. Wherever here was. He shut his eyes thinking about the light. Thinking about anything that would make it seem like he was back at home. Home. He tried to remember the faces. He tried to remember each of the tree top building. Yet it was a blur. Everything that had happen with-in the last few hours, day, months was a giant blur from him. He had no concept of time. A click came from afar, as light came barreling in. Zerdek let out a low growl as he covered his eyes, unable to adjust to the light quickly enough. Arms reached out and pulled to two

“I pray you never stand at any crossroads in your own lives, but if you do, if the darkness seems so total, if you think there is no way out, remember, never ever give up. The darker the night, the brighter the dawn, and when it gets really, really dark, this is when one sees the true brilliance of the stars.” These words were spoken by Gerda Klein, a Holocaust survivor. Her story is filled with desperation and an overwhelming sense of hope. Gerda Weissmann was born in Bielsko, Poland. Both of her parents and her older brother died during the Holocaust. She was somehow able to survive “the ghetto, deportation, slave labor camps and a three month death march. She was rescued by an American soldier named Kurt Klein. She ended up marrying him and moving to the United States.

My goal with my research is to look into the resistance of both the Jewish people and the others in European society who assisted in Jewish escapes. The perceived image of the Jews during the Holocaust is of “lambs to the slaughter.” The pictured painted of the rest of European society is one of either knowing accomplices or silent spectators. The Jewish people had many forms of resistance, some small and some large. While many of their neighbors were silent spectators, but many people were actively resisting the tyrannical Nazi government by assisting Jewish escapes. Each of these individuals risked their lives and the lives of their families and friends to aid these hunted individuals. They all deserve to have their stories heard and honored. In a time of complete chaos and destruction many people would not have the ability or fortitude to save the life of another person. The people that I will discuss in this paper were not only able to take that step, but put themselves and their families in real and eminent danger for the life, at times, of a complete stranger.

One of the many important and most memorable incidents of World War Two would be the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, the Germans who were known as the Nazis, considered the Jews to be “enemy aliens”. As part of this, the Nazis thought that “Aryans” were a master race. Therefore, they decided to destroy the Jewish race, and created genocide. The Jews were put into unbearable torture at many concentration and death camps. In fact, 6 million Jews were killed in this incident; however, there were many victims who survived this anguish. One of the many survivors was Simon Wiesenthal, who survived the Nazi death camps and began his career as a Nazi hunter.

Irena exhibits this through the book as she faces countless challenges during the Holocaust. She follows her morals and saves over 2,500 children from dying parents inside the Warsaw Ghetto, which ends up with her being thrown into Pawiak prison and beaten severely. Irena still stuck true to her morals, telling the Gestapo that she had nothing to do with ZEGOTA and was a simple social worker. Nearing the end, she stayed alive by telling herself, “there is nothing more they can do to hurt me. I am already dead”. Eventually, she was sentenced to death, but escaped. Though World War 2 ended soon after, she was forgotten and shamed by Communist Poland. However, she didn’t care about fame or money. She faced many hardships in her path, and some may think it isn’t worth it to follow this route. However, she touched the lives of others and created a better world for numerous people, which made everything worth it in the end. Her only regret was not doing more. Not figuring out how to escape Pawiak sooner, not being able to save her mother, not rescuing more kids. Irena kept pushing herself to an impossible limit, and achieved