2022 First Person with Holocaust Survivor Peter Gorog

oh [Music] welcome thank you for joining us for first person conversations with holocaust survivors my name is bill benson i have hosted the museum's first person program since it began in 2000 through these monthly conversations we bring you first-hand accounts of survival of a holocaust each of our first-person guests serves as a volunteer at the museum holocaust survivors are jews who experienced the persecution and survived the mass murder that was carried out by the nazis and their collaborators this included those who were in concentration camps killing centers ghettos and prisons as well as refugees or those in hiding holocaust survivors also include people who did not self-identify as jewish but were categorized as such by the perpetrators this week we're joining you during the annual national days of remembrance which was established by the u s congress to remember victims and honor survivors of the holocaust today our guest will help us remember one of six million victims his father during our program please send us your questions and let us know where you are joining us from in the chat we are honored to have holocaust survivor peter garag share his personal first-hand account of the holocaust with us peter thank you so much for agreeing to be our first person today welcome hello bill and thanks for having me today and a world welcome to everybody out there who logged in to heal my family story we are honored to have you peter you have so much to share with us that we'll start right away before you tell us what happened to you and your family during world war ii and the holocaust please tell us about your parents our pod and olga grundvald and their life in hungary before the war both of my parents were born in 1907. my mother was born in a small village or a little town what is ukraine today its name is yuzuko road that time during the austrian hungarian empire it was umar and this is their wedding is this their wedding day this picture we're seeing uh yes uh they met in uh 1930 and um got married in june 1937. my mom came from an orthodox family a very observant family my great-grandfather was a rabbi and she after finished um elementary school uh she went to a vocational school she was trained to be a secretary but she didn't like it so she went to a vocational another vocational school and she was an apprentice in a store which made hats for ladies and then she had her own business doing that what who were her clients where her first clients uh were from people she knew actually one of her teacher who was the very first client and after that clients came by word of mouth and she had a very good business peter your parents were very active they did a lot of things outdoors tell us what kinds of um activities your parents enjoyed well before the war my parents had a very normal middle-class lifestyle they loved the odd door they went skiing in the winter and camping and kayaking in the summer my mom loved all of these activities except uh skiing because um she thought it was too cold but this picture in the screen shows that they had a really good time you know i think that is just such an endearing photograph that is just absolutely fabulous and on top of outdoors activities i think you've told me that they they enjoyed dancing they went to the movies they just had a really um great life together at that time yeah that's correct they had a relatively normal life financially they were well established my father was a office manager at a publishing company until um she was called he was called up for forced labor service and we'll get to that in just a moment before we continue peter i want to let you know that we have people watching and listening to you today from around the country from minnesota tennessee massachusetts and alaska and we have people watching today from different places in the world we have international viewers from south africa denmark scotland and hungary today so i know that you'll be very pleased about that anti-semitic laws implemented in the late 1930s and the start of world war ii in 1939 changed things considerably for jews in hungary will you describe these changes and how new restrictions impacted your parents between 1938 and 41 there were three major an anti-semitic laws the number of jews who could serve in any company was restricted first for 20 percent later on 6 percent there was an earlier law which restricted the number of jewish students at colleges and universities there were restrictions of how many uh actually there was a ban for jews participating in media companies and leading theaters it affected my parents uh also when there was a decree that the hungarian government prohibited non-jews to serve jewish households so the nanny my mom hired to take care of me while she was in the shop my mom had to let her go and it caused difficulties to run the business and taking care of me right you mentioned the forced labor service of a moment ago the hungarian government established these forced labor services and in august 1940 your father was conscripted into a forced labor battalion what did that mean for your parents well first of all they were separated uh actually my mom was already pregnant when my father was called up the first uh duty for three months and the first three months of my pregnancy was very hard as she told me later and uh financially they were not affected because my mom was able to continue her business and interestingly enough the company which employed my father paid history also but being separated freshly married pregnant woman you can imagine it was very hard oh i i can't only imagine peter did your mother know where he was sent for his forced labor and do you know what kind of work he was forced to do well she only knew the military back where my father had to report to and when she my father came back after three months obviously he told her what he was doing and where he was stationed and in the picture in the screen you see my father with all of the jewish people who were called up for this service between ages of 18 and 55 these were very special units in europe they were not military units but they were attached to military units the government didn't trust the jewish people to handle weapons and rifles so they did all the hard and dirty work for the army peter you were born march 10 1941 your father was back from the forced labor uh work from his one of his uh first times being sent so he was there for your birthday on birth but he would soon be sent away again for forced labor duty what do you know about his visits that he did it was able to have with your mother and with you and and and about this tell us about this wonderful photograph well unfortunately i um don't know very much because my mother uh didn't tell me about those periods when my father was at home visiting us uh the only thing i know i know from the pictures because i know just the way he was looking at me that he loved me i also know about his feelings also because while he was away he was able to send postcards every week and he was sending this postcard and telling my mom how much he was missing her and me and he requested pictures and so all of these came together the documents my mom preserved the pictures the postcards and finally the diary which my mom started later and we'll talk about that a little bit later i know peter this particular picture is of great significance to you it is because this is the only picture uh which has all three of us yeah i'm so glad that you've been able to have that and be able to keep that all these years peter you just mentioned that your father was able to send postcards while he was in the forced labor battalions we have an image of one of those postcards if you don't mind peter tell us about this postcard and and we would love to have you read an excerpt from it if you would this is the last porsche card my father sent from the labor battalion dated 1940 to december 10. and i will read a little bit of excerpt from the card just to show um how much my father loved us how much he hoped that one day we'll we will be reunited my dear little squirrel which is a hungarian term people use for their loved ones and my golden will be her i got all of your cars cards they caused me a great pleasure and i ask you to write more often because reading every line is a special holiday for me your cards are full of longing for me and can you imagine how much i long for you and for a little warm home but for the time being we have to be very patient we have to wait that fastly and trust in the good lord i cannot emphasize enough how much you have to take care of your heart and if you don't mind read the last line that he wrote in this particular card i got very little news about my dear mom how is she please also write about my dad and the family it would make me very happy if you would ride on a whole week of events as a diary million kisses to you dear peter from rpad who loves you a lot thank you for sharing from that peter i know that that must be very very very difficult to read from but at the same time i know that you treasure that immensely before we go on peter if you don't mind i'd like to share a comment from susan who's in our audience susan says thank you for your willingness to share your story i just wish to say that you were so loved by your parents the look your father has given you says it all and then from kelly another audience member kelly says what a handsome family i'd like to remind our audience to please share your questions for peter via our chat features now please don't hold back peter please tell us what that time was like for you and your mother with your father gone first of all thank you susan and carrie for your kind words it means a lot to me about uh our life while my father was gone again my mom tried to continue her life art life as much as possible she worked very hard in her shop interesting love war or no war people still got married and there was easter and christmas and for whatever occasion uh ladies needed new hats so she was very busy and again financially we were okay not only because of my mom's business but also the company my father worked for continued paying for him until we got the notification that he was killed peter uh we had an audience question from uh kim and you you just answered her question that she just popped into the chat feature and she she wanted to know what olga did to make ends meet in order to support herself and her son with your dad gone but you've just described that in good detail so thank you for that peter you mentioned when your mother stopped hearing from your father when did your mother stop hearing from your father i read from the last postcard in december 1942 and the next news about him came from the red cross it was a notification that my father disappeared during war activities in january 1943 uh excuse me any other details or just that no details uh only disappeared and that was a word which could cover all kind of possibilities it could mean that he escaped it could have meant that he was captured by the soviets it could have meant that under the harsh circumstances and the winter of 1942 43 was really harsh he was just too weak to march and he was left behind actually we do know that he was left behind because there was only one person who came back from his battalion and he saw a diary written by an other conscripted jewish man and diary had a reference to my father saying that arpi was left behind and left behind again could have meant anything this man surviving man's guess was that probably he was frozen to death and i i guess um peter that in the intervening years you've really never learned any more details about your father's death no unfortunately neither did i nor all the people who lost loved ones um during the holocaust i might share this a little bit of uh statistic just a tragic statistic with our audience of the approximately 50 000 that were deployed as in the forced labor battalions in occupied ukraine where your father was only six to seven thousand returned to hungary so less than twenty percent far less than twenty percent of those uh like your father returned peter you you mentioned a few moments ago your mother's diary um tell us about your mother's diary before i tell about the diary i just wanna inject a little bit of information everything i am telling you and the audience today came from information from this diary from the postcards from the pictures from the documents my mom saved and later on very much later on i had a taped interview with my mom and i am putting together the pieces from those these sources and i'm still in the process of finding out some minor details which does not change my narrative but at the same time it helps me to have a good timeline and facts together considering the diary this was started after my mom got the notification from the red cross that my father disappeared and she started to write down her thoughts and everything what happened to us hoping that one day my father would return and she would be able to recall those times we spent separated from him and so she wrote down in notebooks we which he usually used for her customers writing down their names and the measurements of their head and phone numbers and between two customers data she wrote down um her thoughts and if i may read just one paragraph from her diary plea please do peter we i know our audience would just love to hear you do that she wrote um one day you will show up at our door without any advance notice and then i would not switch with anyone in the world and i be the happiest person ever lived this is the only thing that keeps me going it gives me to endure what lies ahead and how wonderful it will be to be together again i cannot imagine any greater happiness i would have gone crazy if i could not find consolation in our little peter i hope and i believe that the good lord will hear us hear our prayers and he will help us to see each other again and soon you know peter the between the excerpts you read from your father's postcard and that excerpt just knowing their excerpts from the diary they are such a profound statement of the love they had for each other and for you i i can't imagine the feelings that you must go through each and every time you look at that peter as hard as conditions had been for jews in hungary life became profoundly worse when the nazis occupied hungary in march 1944 how did things change so dramatically and what did it mean for you and your mother and other jews the holocaust history in hungary was different from practically all of the other european countries namely that hungary wasn't occupied by the german nazis until 1944 nevertheless the conditions for jews was were as hard as it was for the people the jews in the rest of europe in 1943 44 march uh the german troops uh marched into budapest and in a couple of days later they started arresting hungarian jews and in the matter of um three months mostly from the countryside more than 400 000 hungarian jews were deported to the nazi death camps set up in poland most of them went to auschwitz and practically nobody returned our life in budapest was a little bit different because of the logistics they just didn't have enough train to start the deportation from budapest shortly after the nazi occupation as you as you said they were the nazis were focused primarily initially on emptying the countryside of jews for those of you who are in budapest you were you were ordered to move into designated housing known as yellow star houses that were marked with the star of david tell us about your experience living in the yellow star house and this i don't think this is your actual house but it's a very good example of what that meant that's correct it's not our actual house but um in april 1944 the hungarian government issued a decree that all jews have to move either to the budapest ghetto or so-called that is designated houses the yellow star houses in hungarian they were called jido houses and um and we had to move out from our apartment we moved to a yellow star house where there was an apartment occupied by a relative of us very far removed relatives i don't think my mother even met her before the war and they were generous enough they took us in and that's where we spent the next few months peter um as you as you mentioned a short while ago after the german occupation between april and july 1944 most of the jews living in the hungarian countryside over four hundred thousand as you said were deported primarily to auschwitz in budapest this that's the period that you were living in the yellow star house life of course then became even more dangerous in budapest for you when in october 1944 the fascist aerocross party gained control of the country and began a reign of terror against the jews your mother was arrested during this time tell us how that came about how did that happen in october 1944 the far right um hungarian nazi party the hero cross took over the government and our life took a turn for even worse what happened uh was that the government instructed hungarian jews to show up at brickyard which was located just outskirts of budapest and this brickyard was connected by railway to the regular railway lines and this was the place from where most of the budapest jews were deported to concentration camp and killing camps my mom defied the order and we didn't go to the brickyard we did go however to a so-called international international safe house which will set up a certain part of budapest some neutral countries embassy at this time they realized that there were many jews were alive and they tried to save as many as possible so what they did was they rented out and leased apartment buildings and had as many jews as possible to move into those buildings where they were protected for a while and peter before before you moved into the international safe house that you're we're just beginning to describe it was before that that your mom was actually arrested is that right she was arrested after she as you said defied the nazi authorities and did not go to the brickyard correct my mom was arrested while we was still staying at the yellow star house what happened after she didn't show up at the brickyard somebody reported her to the police and the hungarian police came and arrested her and this is one of the few personal memories i have because i remember the morning we were sitting at the breakfast table two hungarian police man john armory uh showed up at our apartment building they had a very fancy uniform this is why i remember and they arrested my mom and i was crying i was crying because earlier my mom when i didn't eat my meal she threatened me that the police will come and the police will take me away this time they came not for me but for her she was taken to an infamous hungarian jail the so-called moshoni street jail where she was kept for three weeks three weeks without being interrogated without knowing why she was there and what's gonna happen her and after three weeks she was called up to the commandant office and the colonel i think that was his rank ask her if she has any documentations or reason why she should be released and my mom fortunately had that document she got from the hungarian red cross and the death certificate later on from the budapest council and she showed that those documents to the commander and and he looked at it and mom when she told me the story later she didn't know what was uh the commandant incentive nevertheless he let her go he came back the apartment and that's when we moved to the internationally protected house if if he didn't know it sounds like your mother bluffed her way through that one yes uh she used her hootsburgh a couple of times during those years we have an audience question related to this um peter michelle says thank you for your generosity peter i'm interested to know who cared for baby you when your mother was arrested in budapest baby me was taken care of um the wife of the husband and wife couple who stayed in the apartment the husband was already taken away for forced labor battalion and uh she took good care of me for those during that time when my mom was away and she was really happy seeing my mom coming back and having another opportunity to move on and and have another chance to leave peter you began to tell us a few moments ago then about where you went next and that was the series of safe houses that were sponsored by uh other countries will you tell us more about that and what it was like for you and your mom yes embassies of neutral countries like sweden and switzerland and spain and portugal and even the ambassador from the vatican tried to have jews by issuing documents uh so-called shoots passes uh these documents were a certain kind of id cards which proved that the person whose name was in the document was protected by a foreign government and they saved many many lives just by giving these documents also by having these protected houses where they put the sign of the embassy on the building which claimed that this is the territory of switzerland or spain and by international laws the hungarian government and the hungarian police and hungarian nazis couldn't go into those buildings and we were protected peter the the house that you were protected in was under the um jurisdiction or the authority of the swiss is that right yes that's correct the council of the swiss embassy carl lutz uh was very instrumental in saving thousands tens of thousands of jews mostly in budapest by giving these uh id cards and by having these houses set up where they and we were protected um he uh negotiated actually with the hungarian government for 7 000 id cards he used this agreement to protect 7000 families which actually men two three five people per family all together if i remember correctly more than sixty thousand hungarian jews were saved by carlos of course your safety in these homes even though they're protected was not was not permanent it was really turned out to be temporary tell us what you remember about your experiences your own experience in that international safe house in this international safe house we had an apartment we shared with two other families and that was very common that many families were crammed into one apartment who were strangers to each other at the beginning later on we got to know each other and we have actually my mother uh helped them and we were held by by others uh we didn't stay in the apartment a lot because um during this time that was the last few months of the war the allied forces relentlessly bombed budapest and uh we spent most of the our time in the basement of the building which was a temporary bomb shelter and that's uh where we spent most of our time during the day and during the night we went back to our apartment peter will you tell us about the um uh experience you had with the aerocross guards that were guarding you at the and as you were playing guarding i have to say it in quotation mark because they were there to make sure that nobody leaves the building also they were there because um they raided the building every two or three days like they had a quarter and they led a certain number of people away while we were guarded by these not hungarian nazis we children played in the inner court of the house which was a kind of playground we were little boys playing cowboys and indians and we were shooting at each other and these um nazi guards um were sitting there and laughing at us because we were having a yellow star of david on our clothes and uh we were imitating uh with sticks uh and uh whatever we had rifles and pistols and rebel wears and shooting um at each other was a great fun for them we kind of got to know them by name actually and this was actually our luck when it was our turn when during uh the aerocross raid they showed up at our apartment and we were about to be led away but uh one of these um thugs uh recognized me and he told to his cameras that hey guys let's go to the next apartment i know peter he's my friend and they went away and um we were saved peter of course you you wouldn't be there too long and eventually all remaining jews were ordered to move to the ghetto in november 1944. we have a video question from a student kennen who's from scottsdale arizona who is asking you about this let's let's um listen to kennan's question my name is ken mcandrews and i am from scottsdale arizona and my question is what were your experiences in the ghettos like and did you kind of see a degree of community and support or in your experience for people more focused on themselves and their families peter kennedy's question is what were your experiences in the ghetto like and did you see a degree of community and support there well after uh staying at the internationally protected houses for just a few weeks we had to move there were only about 20 people left in the building all the others were led away some to the brickyard some to a railway station some to the budapes ghetto and some to [Music] the banks of the danube river where they had to disrobe take all of their clothes off and they were shot into the river so when the house was almost empty the remaining us about 20 people uh we were taken to the actual budapest ghetto where we were let free we got to a little park within the ghetto and one of the nazi guards told us that the russians are coming the russians will be here in a matter of weeks go find an apartment for yourself and we went and we found my mom found an apartment where we stayed for a little time the conditions in the ghetto was horrible i cannot describe it really uh again budapest was under uh constant bombing rates by the allied forces and we spent most of the time in the basement of the building which wasn't really a harried shelter it was uh a place where people who originally occupied those apartments kept their wood and coal for heating during the winter but there was no wood and there was no coal available so the apartments were cold the windows were all um broken because of the bombing and uh we spent most of our time on the dirt floor my mom put down a blanket and that's where we stayed peter b before you go on just a a word this is this is an image of a portion of budapest that's been completely shelled and battered right correct uh what you see in this picture is from a picture taken from the buddha side you see uh one of the first permanent bridge uh built in uh the 19th century bombed all of our bridges were destroyed by the germans uh because they detonated it they don't didn't want so that red army to pursue them and again uh we lived in a building on the best side together was uh on the other side of the danube river uh while we were in the ghetto our parents uh went um out uh during two bombing raids and tried to collect as much food as they could find there were no grocery stores they went to the bumped out building and run it through whatever was left and they came back with stale bread and one day my grandmother came back with a big slab of bacon which uh was not the kind of food we ate because uh my parents and grandparents kept the kosher laws nevertheless we eat it because every calorie we took might have meant that we had one more day to leave concerning the question about community yes there were all kind of signs of community while we were in the internationally protected house the house uh had a laundry room and uh which uh the ladies who stayed in the house and actually uh it was mostly mothers grandmothers and some elderly men who were in these protected houses they used it as a community kitchen everybody who had any kind of food they took uh to this kitchen the mothers made meal for everybody even for those who didn't have anything to contribute for the mail so that was a strong community and again it helped us to survive peter before um i go on to a couple more questions i'd like to share some audience comments with you if i could charise writes thank you peter for sharing your experiences of the holocaust i know this must be hard for you your story is an encouragement as well as a valuable lesson for many others and then gary writes peter when we light our candle tonight we will think about your father thank you all for uh being here and um supporting me peter you've um i think just really hinted at how awful it was at the end of the war in that ghetto you've um going out and having to do whatever you could to find food broken windows no heat very little running water when you could get it sanitation was horrible and constant shelling and bombardment bombardment all the time but it came to an end will you share with us your memory of being liberated from the ghetto and then what happened yes finally it came to an end in january 1945 when the soviet red army liberated the budapes ghetto budapes was not liberated until the next month the remaining german and hungarian army constantly shelled the pesticides from the buddha side so there was no respite for us and but the ghetto was freed and we were free to move back to our home the russians um my memory is actually and uh that i vividly remember a russian soldier who came to our apartment and gave us candy it turned out later on that it was some kind of special candy which was infused with vitamins so um we back on the russians or the soviets at that time as liberators it turned out later that they were not only liberators but occupied yes also but that's for another story so we were able to go back to our apartment um i have a memory of walking back from akkad swagswa that's where we stayed to patter fishing the roots which is a good 15 minutes walk for a grown-up not for a not even 40 year old young boy it was cold it was very cold i remember the streets were covered with snow and and i saw dead bodies i saw that horses i i still feel the stench of uh those bodies and um but we were happy we were happy to go back to our apartment and your in your apartment it had not been bombed it was intact yes we had many quote-unquote lucky moments during the holocaust and that was one of them that our apartment building was not bombed out the apartment was intact the people who stayed there they preserved everything they weren't too happy seeing us coming uh back but nevertheless they took us in uh we shared the apartment for a few few more months until it's an irony this was an ethnic german family and the hungarian government because ethnic german supported the nazis some of them joined the ss they punished collectively the whole german population or german ethnic german population of hungary and they had to leave what was what remained from nazi germany peter as you said a moment ago the irony of the soviets liberating you and then of course you were uh under their occupation for for a number of years and that's for another time but tell us a little bit in we do have a few minutes left not many how how were you and your mom able to rebuild your lives after the war after the war um in 1946 um my mom decided to leave hungary and immigrate to the united states the picture you see in your screen is the picture taken out from our passport and uh because of the strict quota system here in the united states at that time we weren't able to leave immediately actually we were waiting for years until we were eligible for the visa but meantime the soviet uh occupied hungary in the soviet occupied hungary the communist party took over the government and they closed the borders nobody in nobody had so i grew up in a communist hungary i got a very good education i became an electrical engineer meantime my mom was working hard very hard she couldn't continue her business nobody wanted to have hats they were happy they had anything to put to cover their heads so she became a sims fest uh she worked in a co-op um two shifts from six in the morning to doing the afternoon or two in the afternoon until then but um she earned enough um to have food on our table and we weren't rich we weren't even middle class but we weren't persecuted because we were jews and uh by 1980 i um uh had um a very good job i worked in the in a research institute for physics i had opportunity to visit or to go to western europe to international meetings and conferences and i just realized that uh the lies we heard on the radio and by that time uh i don't even remember we had television at that time but all the media was uh got controlled by the government so uh we heard only one voice the voice of the hungarian communist party and i defected to the united states in 1918. and and again that would be uh just make for an entirely new hour for us to talk to you about that i i do want to be sure i ask you though peter um did other members of your extended family survive on my father's side my grandparents survived but only a few months they were weak they were elderly there was hardly any food available even after the war there was no medical supply available and they died in a few months after the holocaust was over my two uncles on my father's side they were taken to forced labor battalion and they never came back either on my mother's side an aunt and an uncle of mine they were lucky enough to get out from hungary and came to the united states and they were the ones who invited us to come and stay with them after the war which um never realized except when i defected to hungary and they were great help for me peter before i turn to my last question of you for today i'd like to share a comment and a question from our audience dean at dean's comment is your mother was so very brave and then another viewer wrote in to ask what do you think is the most important lesson your mother your mother taught you peter well uh she taught me a lot of lessons mostly by example she was an incredible woman she was very brave she is my hero her tenacity and her determination to survive [Music] was unsurpassing and i am here today because of those qualities of her she instilled in me a work ethic she worked very hard after the war to sustain us and um hopefully and um i think uh successfully i uh i was able to acquire those qualities and uh trying to instill in my children and grandchildren peter thank you for answering her questions so so articulately my last question for you please tell us what it means to remember the victims of the holocaust and what does it mean to you personally to honor your father and your mother through sharing your experiences tomorrow is yom hoshua we will remember the six million who perished during the holocaust i will light a candle in their memory and in the memory of my father and i light a candle in the memory of the more than one million children who died during the holocaust many of them murdered in concentration camps many of them were my age three four years old when they were shipped to auschwitz i owe to their memory to preserve their memory i am a volunteer at the holocaust museum here in washington dc and do whatever i can do to tell my story to educate people to talk to children go to colleges and universities our museum motto is well known never again but unfortunately we are not there yet as we speak there is a war going on on the very same ground where my father died holocaust wasn't the last genocide of the 20th century after the war was over we had genocide in cambodia and uganda and bosnia so there are a lot of things to do uh to fulfill the second part of our motto never again what you can do matter what you can do matters you bill and i and everyone in the audience we cannot be silent anymore when we see injustice hatred bigotry anti-semitism we cannot be silent we all we all have to raise our voices we all have to do our part what we do matters peter you do it so eloquently you do it so compassionately thank you thank you for doing this but also all the other times that you speak and share your message that is inspiring to me and to everybody who's listening to you today there's so much more that we could have heard from you today we didn't have the time um you as you said you got a good education but you um you built the first computer in hungary and then came the united states had a career in aeroscience aerospace including being very involved in the hubble telescope and the james webb telescope which is you know just just occurring right now i wish we could share some of that peter thank you thank you um thank you for giving us the glimpse into your mother and father's life your mother she she she's my hero now too and she's was a remarkable remarkable woman so peter thank you so much for spending this time with us today thank you bill for your kind words and thank you everybody who logged in today and shared this time with us thank you i'd also like to take a moment to thank our donors first person is made possible through the generous support of the lewis franklin smith foundation i'd like to invite our viewers to join us in commemorating days of remembrance you can watch the ceremony on our youtube channel listen to echoes of the past survivors memories and victims experiences and honor the memory of the six million who are killed and please join us again next month on may 18 2022 at 1 pm eastern time for a conversation with holocaust survivor and museum volunteer alan firestone allen and his sister evaded roundups in his hometown in german occupied poland by hiding in an attic and a wardrobe before being liberated by the soviet army tune in to learn about his experiences of loss and survival thank you for watching today

Channel: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Views: 37,212

Keywords: Holocaust survivor, Holocaust Museum, Bill Benson, Peter Gorog, German occupation of Budapest, ushmm

Id: q-YA94qGyok

Length: 61min 27sec (3687 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 27 2022