Surviving the Holocaust: Stories of Resilience

Only 10-15% of Jewish children in occupied Europe survived the Holocaust. Child survivor, Thomas Buergenthal, attributes his survival to sheer luck, the kindness of strangers, and an unyielding will to live.

Roman Kent, who survived Auschwitz, insists that we must remember the crimes of the Holocaust. He stresses that we should not generalize guilt but remember the individuals who suffered and those who inflicted suffering.

Eva Kor, a Mengele twin, preached forgiveness as a means of self-healing. She believed that forgiveness was the ultimate act of self-liberation from the trauma inflicted by the Nazis.

Hidden children often struggled with identity after the war. Yehuda Bacon, hidden in a monastery, later became an artist, expressing the complex emotions of his experience through poignant artworks.

Liberation was not the end; survivors faced displacement and loss of kin. Elie Wiesel described liberation as a moment of joy overshadowed by the devastating realization of immense loss.

Max Mannheimer spent decades speaking about his experiences, emphasizing the importance of remembrance. He used painting to cope and to communicate the memories that words could not capture.

Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate, Imre Kertész, insisted on the importance of education about the Holocaust to prevent the corrosion of culture that could lead to such atrocities again.