we appreciate your time on my name is paul shapiro. i'm director of international affairs at the united states holocaust memorial museum. we're standing right now in the

museum's hall of remembrance, which is a special place in which we remember the victims of the holocaust and pay tribute to the survivors of the holocaust who have done so much not only to help this museum, but to educate the world about what happened during the holocaust. we're doing this on international holocaust remembrance day. it's a special day, established in 2005. so 60 years after the end of world war two, established by a resolution of the general assembly of the united nations, encouraging all countries to remember the holocaust and learn from the holocaust. it's interesting that in that u.n. resolution, based on references made to combating holocaust denial and today we live in an era in which people raise questions or misuse the history

for causes that are not positive, causes. they also make reference to other parts of the international system that developed as a result of learning from the holocaust. the international declaration of human rights grew direct plea out of the denial of human rights in the holocaust era. the genocide convention of the united nations grew directly out of the eyewitness of the world to genocide of the --, of the -- of europe. today, the resolution also encourages holocaust education, and of course, this is an area where this museum is active across the united states and across the entire world. the lessons, i think, speak for them selves. we need to combat rising

anti-semitism. we need to combat racism. we need to respect differences, have a and appreciate the diversity of peoples all across the world, including, of course, all across the united states. one aspect of today's activities here at the u.s. holocaust memorial museum, or reading of the names of victims of the holocaust, sometimes it's easy to say 6 million -- were murdered. it is much more difficult when you realize that everyone one of those people was an individual equal with hopes, with aspirations, with potential to contribute in a positive way to the world. and that all of that pertains was snuffed out. we also provide visitors to the museum today with special offer to cities to meet holocaust

survivors. there are some 20 survivors here today placed at different locations in the museum, including here in the hall of remembrance. and and throughout the permanent exhibition of the museum on the history of the holocaust. so the activities today deal both with the very specific individuals story that only a survivor can really tell in the most powerful way. and also with an opportunity to learn the broader history of the holocaust by visiting the museum. permanent exhibition. we're also providing every visitor to the museum today with a special commemorative pin. the message on the pin is what you do matters. we need to encourage governments and institutions and international organizations to push back against prejudice and

hate and anti-semitism. but we also have to take individual responsibility to push back. one thing that the holocaust teachers for sure is that if you don't push back in the early stages of a wave of hatred to be it anti-semitism or any other form of racial or religious prejudice, if you don't push back early, you can't guess what the conflict chances might be in the holocaust. consequences were truly horrific. 6 million -- murdered, another 20 million people. just imagine 20 million people killed in a war of aggression where the purpose of that war in part was to destroy an entire people. so individual responsibility, if if we learn nothing else from

today's activity, it should be that don't wait for someone else to solve the problem. you have a role in solving the problem of course. ivana harris, not survivor, is is one half from hungary. i mean, knight from germany. oscar yaga perished at darko. yosef was krueger perished at bergen-belsen. here in the museum with a lot of visitors today. and we're in the part that talks about the night of the broken glass kristallnacht. and so i just want to tell you a little bit about that part of my story. my brother and i, we were sleeping in our bedroom and i

was maybe eight, nine years old. and he was seven. and we were very excited because it was going to be our mother's birthday the next day. her birthday is on november the 10th and just around 11:00, some bricks and rocks were being thrown throughout window and my brother was younger than i am, but he's much braver than i am. and he looked out and he saw that it was our neighbors that were throwing the bricks and the rocks through the window. so we were very frightened. and so we ran across the hall to our parents bedroom and the bricks and rocks were coming through their bedroom window, too. and i had a baby brother and his bassinet was right underneath the window. and one of the bricks fell on top of his hand. but he was all right.

and so while we were hovering in my parents bedroom and in the corner, trying to decide what to do, these neighbors had uprooted a lamp post and they carried it on their shoulders and they smashed up from door and they they they they broke the door and the glass was strewn all over the floor. and then they went through our apartment and they took some things and they broke some things. but what their main objective was was to go to the rabbi's apartment that was above ours. and so we were really frightened. and my father said, well, let's go hide up in the attic. so we went up to the fourth floor where the attic was, and. there there was the rabbi's family was also hiding already, but the rabbi wasn't there. and i looked out this little

window up in the attic, and the rabbi was standing on his veranda and the two ss men were holding him on. both of his arms and another came along and cut off his beard. and later i found out that they put him in jail for the simple reason that he was the rabbi and that he was jewish. and then later on, i found out that they didn't only do that to our apartment, but they did it to all the jewish families in but that's not the town where i was born in germany. and then i found out that they took all of the jewish men that lived in our town and they put them all in jail. and then i found out that they burned down our synagogue. and then i found out that they not only did this to the town

of, but now, but they did. they did it in every city where they would where there was a jewish community and all of the men, jewish men that night were put in jail and picked up stores were the jewish stores were broken into. and everything was looted and so many synagogues burned on that night. and because so much glass was being broken and they called it kristallnacht, which means the night of the broken glass. and you stay there. yeah, well, that's a yes. did we stay there? well, that's a very good question, everybody. before that, the night of the broken glass, many --, you know, wanted to stay in germany because they figured maybe hitler's going to blow over and

everything is going to be all right. but after the night of the broken glass, all of the -- wanted to get out. but it was very difficult to get out of germany because you had to. first of all, the germans wanted you to leave. the whole idea was for the -- to leave, but there was no place for them to go. so because all of the countries in the world were had a quota and they didn't, especially the united states, and in order to get a visa to the united states, you had to wait a long time and you had to have all kinds of papers and you had to have somebody here in the united states to vouch for you and to tell them the united states government, that these people are not going to be a burden to our economy and they're not going to take away the jobs of the american people. so my father in law, all of the

other jewish people, had a very difficult time getting out. but we finally my father finally found a lady that would smuggle two children. my brother and i, into france. and so we were safe in france for a while. somaya friedman, born in 1938, just died after 1944. the zuckerman that born in 1934, in krakow. david pilcher. 1940 220. the the scientist i'm a survivor. asked me my story. what's your story out? i was born in the netherlands in the middle of the nazi occupation. november 1941. my parents had immigrated to the

netherlands from eastern europe to escape anti-semitism. they had three children and two sisters born before the occupation. and as i said, i was born in the middle of the occupation. november 1941, when i was about eight months old. our family was forced to go into hiding and this is actually a photograph of me with my sisters just about the time the new year separated and forced to go into hiding. my two sisters were placed with a very devout catholic family, and they also formed a new catholic identity. and this is my two sisters or participating in a catholic school procession and i was placed and so happens with a

dutch indonesian family. indonesia was a dutch colony and there are a lot of indonesia and people living in the netherlands and this family happened to be close friends with my parents and that's the family where i ended up actually, this is my foster father or my first two foster sisters, and that is the nanny who took care of me. the nanny. this is another picture of the nanny holding me when i first came to the family as a nine month old baby. and this woman spoke no dutch, only her native indonesian language, which is now called bahasa. and she was never taught to read or write, but she had a heart of gold. and she's the one who really saved my life.

i remained with her and with the family for the next three and a half years, and that's why i'm able to be here today. i'm told that i slept in her bed and that she kept a knife under her pillow, vowing to kill any nazi who might try to come and get me. oh. oh. there were some close calls periodically i would have to go to hiding in a closet, but i thought that was just a game of hide and seek. so the memories that i have of my years with the mother family are all very good ones. sadly, the story of my sisters isn't entirely a different one. oh, there. the husband denounced his wife to the nazis as hiding to jewish children. so his wife was immediately arrested, sent to concentration camp, but fortunately survived.

lived. my two sisters, however, were immediately taken to auschwitz, where they were killed, and they were only five and seven years old at the time. the train, the transport that took them to our auschwitz, a 215 unaccompanied children, one other one person who happened to be not same convoy that same transport or it was my father's youngest brother who happened to be reported at the same time, and he died along with my sisters of february 11th, 1944, in also killed in the gas chamber in auschwitz. both my parents were deported. my mother, fortunately survived a total of 12 concentration camps, including auschwitz. but my father went through an

equal number of camps, but was so exhausted that he survived long enough to see liberation by the us army. but he died two months later and is buried in a concentration camp. former concentration camp called evans high in the austrian alps. so i never got to meet my father, never got to meet my sisters. and i tell the story, share it with students especially, but with law enforcement people. anyone who wants to learn the terrible consequences of hate. and sadly, that's a lesson that the world still hasn't learned. i'm especially concerned the fact that some forms of bigotry are now becoming states sponsored and that i think

especially against lgbt people, for example, there's an extremely sad and worsening because that is really the next step in hate when it becomes state policy. u.s. epstein perished an account think men from the netherlands. you know liechtenstein. i'm from hungary. so the sign says i'm a survivor. ask me my story. what's your story? my story is that i am a child survivor of the holocaust. i was born in. 1941 in budapest, hungary. i'm fortunate i lost my father during the holocaust. i have only pictures of him, but not personal memory. my mom and i survived. i survived because of his bravery and determination to

survive no matter what the story is that until 1944, we were living in the apartment where i was born, and when the nazi germany occupied hungary in march 1944, the life of the -- of budapest changed to complete me. we had to leave our apartment and. and we had to wear a yellow star of david. first we moved to far removed family member's apartment. they were brave enough to hide us for a few short weeks until somebody reported my mother to the hungarian police. the police came and arrested her. she was taken to the most infamous hungarian jail in budapest.

she was there for three weeks until they let her go and we had to move again. and we didn't move to the budapest ghetto. we had because my mother was afraid that once they collect the -- at one place, it will be easier for them to ship them to the concentration camps in poland, we survived for a few weeks because of the people from various foreign embassies in budapest, mostly from new countries like sweden, spain, portugal and switzerland tried to do everything to save the remaining --. what happened was that the american government recognized that there were still many --

alive in europe. in 1944. they set up the war refugee board and they sent diplomats or people in diplomacy. these guys in various european capitals, to save as many -- and possible role of wallenberg, whose picture is behind me, was one of them. he was a swiss swedish diplomat. he had no connection with hungary. he was not jewish, never the last. he was brave enough to come to budapest. what he did and some of the other ambassadors in budapest did, was to give papers proving that people were either citizens of their country or they were about to immigrate to those countries and those people saved people's lives for a while, only for a while.

what they did was also they rented out apartment buildings in budapest and they put the flag of the embassy on those houses and what happened, according to the international law, those houses and people inside their houses were protected from the local authorities. so those -- who were able to move in through those houses were protected forever. and this is where really in a house which was protected by the swiss embassy card, which was a swiss diplomat, is not as famous as raoul wallenberg. nevertheless, he saved almost as many -- in hungary as raoul wallenberg did. we lived in this protected house until october. 1944, where the foreign right nazi party, the ad across, took over the government and they

couldn't care about international laws anymore. and this nazi thugs came into the apartment building where we lived and took people away one by one. some of them were taken to the railway station and shipped to auschwitz and other concentration camps. some of them were taken to the banks of the danube river, where they had to disrobe, take off their shoes and clothes, and they were shot into the river. we were lucky now that while we stayed in this protected house, i befriended one of these young nazis, and he knew me by my first name. so when it was our turn and they came to our apartment, he told to his comrades that, guys, let's go to the next one. i know a little bit over. and so they went to the next apartment and they were not as

lucky as we were. and that was the time we had to leave the protected has and moved into the budapest ghetto the last few weeks of the war and the holocaust. we lived in the budapest ghetto in circumstances. it's very hard to describe. we spent four most of our time in the basement of the building because the allied forces already attacked budapest and bombed relentlessly during the day. so we spent our time in the basement of the apartment building which had floor. it was used to store wood and coal for heating the apartment in the winter. food and water was hardly available, no electricity whatsoever in budapest was really destroyed during the last few months of the war, and that's where we survived until

january 1945 with my mother. the soviet red army came into the ghetto and we were free to go back to our original apartment and we were lucky again because the apartment was occupied by a family. they moved in a year ago when we had to leave and when we went back, they gladly gave us our apartment and all of our belongings because my mom was able to take on the few small object with her. we needed all of the furniture, everything else was intact. we moved back to our apartment and the rest of the stories. i grew up in hungary. in 1949, the communist party took over the government. i grew up in budapest during the

communist shame until 1980, when i defected to the united states and i have been living here since then. i got a good education. i worked with computers in all of my lives, and that's what i did when i came over here. i work for mostly now, so great project. hubble space telescope. james webb space telescope and other smaller project. i started a family happy father of four girls and so three, five girls and i have five granddaughters and retired in 2014 and ever since then i have volunteered here in the use them where i really am proud to be a

part of the volunteer team because there are very few survivors that age 81 i am the baby in the group and that will be one day when there will be no survivors to tell our stories. and so every opportune to to talk to people is an opportunity to educate people and make sure that the the holocaust will never happen again. so we'll ask born in 1933 and breast to died there at the age of seven. selah born in 1933 died at the age of eight. in 1941. revela la polsky, born in 1938, in vilna, died in the killing fields of connery in 1943, at

the age of five, signs says, i'm a survivor. ask me my story. what's what's your story? my story is survival. basically out of a town of about 3000 --, they are less than four, probably a dozen that survived. all the -- were execu rated and those that were in hiding with many of them expose that, including my brother for four five kilo. well, it'll the equivalent of £5 of sugar. so my story is involved. it was long we went through many phases. first escaping the russians, escaping the ghetto, the nazis.

again, the russians. and eventually coming to the united states through italy. right? yes. my friends that aren't here today, what would you want them to know? i volunteer at the museum and speak about what happened in my town because i feel that's the only testimony there is and that's why commemoration of their lives, because there are no pictures, no lists of names, no numbers. and the nazis gave out numbers. they didn't know the population by, but they didn't expect them to be called by name. they were the numbers. my town was eliminated in may. of 1942. to give you an idea how quickly

they disposed of the -- in eastern europe. at first, many of the holocaust survivors did not talk about it. i was thrown into a situation where i started to talk about it because i was bullied in school. i came here, i was 15. i had no papers, had to start with elementary school. i went through a quickly then junior high and high school, and needless to say, my english was horrible. i did hardly knew any. i have been. sort of trying to incorporate all the language that i knew before because i started out with polish, belarus, hebrew and irish and went on to russian and german and eventually to two

italian and then english and a smattering of languages on the way from below us, through poland, through all the countries that brought us into italy. and so i kind of. just adapted to languages as far as family, anybody that we met along the way became family. we had none. i sometimes think that i don't even remember all the names of my relatives. my mother was one of six or her siblings, with the exception of two, were married with families. i know how many children they had, but i hesitated to speak to my mother about relatives because it would break her up and the one broke her spirit completely was losing my

brother, who was left with a family in hiding. and as i said, for the price of £5 of sugar, he was exposed by a neighbor. my mother must have been brilliant at some time to be able to figure everything out. she was resource ful. she was resilient. my father happened to have died in 1937. she was left with a five year old and a two year old and she managed both businesses with the help of her parents. her father and mother and my father's mother, my other grandmother. her only desire was to save me. and she got she got that wish. and she was looking for my brother. she i, i have letters that she wrote to organization to the red

cross and to other organizations. if she couldn't believe that somebody killed him, that was the only thing my family always tried to shield any of the programs that used to come up on television about the holocaust because it would break her up. robert and i really perished and not silent. rivka long, right from poland. salomon lee tobias from poland. kurt linden felt perished. how the money. both my parents were born and the eastern part of hungary. my mother was the oldest of 12 children and my father was the youngest of seven and 1924. about a year after world war one ended, my father and two of his

older brothers decided to move from hungary to romania, where they established a dairy farm. before long, they became very successful because one of their biggest customer was the romanian army. my father was still a bachelor at the time, so in 1930 he went back to hungary to find a bride. he found a bride and brought it back to romania, where three children were born, two girls and a boy and that boy. we lived in peace and harmony with all the gentile farmers in the area. my father tried to help them whenever possible. they needed help. my mother tried to help him. he grew up in a farm which was great. open air nature. it's great for a for a child to grow up on a farm. it was a primitive life, but it was a great life. i went to kindergarten. i went to first grade. one of our neighbors was a priest. that priest used to come by our house once a week and ask my father for a donation to the church. and some day he products for

some of the congregants who could not afford it otherwise. in 18 years my father lived in that area and never was as he refused such a request. one day in november of 1942, the same priest showed up. however, this time he came with the police officer and two armed soldiers. we didn't know why they came, so we all came out of the house and tried to find out what was going on. when we came close to the group, the priest pointed to us, looked at the police officer and said, as these you don, these are --. so we will turn in the authorities because we were -- by a priest. the police officer told us that we have 4 hours to vacate the farm. my father tried to argue with my mother, try to try to convince them. perhaps they're going to stay. she told them. look, this is our home. the children were born here. we don't know any other place. he says.

no, we have orders to transfer you, to relocate you to another part of the big city of yass. at that point, we pretty much knew where we were going because in 1941, a ghetto was established in the us. so after the 4 hours were over, we tried to figure out what can we take with us? you know, you look around, you have all kinds of things in the house. what do you take when you have only 4 hours? so obviously we took whatever cash we had in the house, some religious books, my mother's jewelry, and then we tried to pack whatever we actually needed, blanket pillows, cooking utensils, eating utensils was the food. i was wherever we were transferred to the ghetto authority, we given over to the police of the ghetto where immediately they were given us a real star that they had to wear. i was left side pocket. you were given rations of bread and kerosene and offered a we

gave in a one room in a house of the house for other family house. so that particular house had approximately 25 or 26 individuals living in one place. the room that we were given at that completely empty was two beds, nothing else in there. there was no classes, there was no table, nothing. so we had to store everything that we brought with us that we were allowed to bring with us underneath the every individual was between the ages of 18 and 50. we had different jobs. they had to perform primarily manual jobs. my father's job was to sweep the streets in the summertime, shovel the snow in the wintertime. and my mother's job was as an orderly and in a hospital where she had to scrub bullets and do cleaning and so on. so at this point things were pretty bad. same that we arrived there. many -- were rounded up from the surrounding villages, cities to brought into the ghetto.

i as i mentioned, we were given ration cards for bread and kerosene. the ration bread was a quarter of a loaf bread every two days per person. and five liters of kerosene for a week which that service for heating and also for cooking five liters approximately point three gallons, which was not very much for one would be getting the rations that cut the bread rations. i had a system which was two years older than me. my father told her to go god go out and get the rations. until one day he found out that a lot of hooligans were taken and jewish girls. from that point on. he said that from this. now you going to go out and get the rations because he were afraid of my sister, the same hooligans who picked the jewish girls also picked on jewish boys. many times. i would come home, but i was beaten up. bloody face. but that never hurt as much as when these hooligans stole my

bread. which meant for the next two days we had nothing to eat. when my mother realized what happened, she also realized that this could happen again and from that day on she started thrashing us for moral rations. so when i got my first ration of bread, she removed one slice. two days later, she removed another slice and she accumulated entire loaf of bread. when these hooligans stole my bread again, at least we had something to eat. things in the ghetto wasn't wasn't really. this was. it was a lot of problems. food was a problem. sicknesses was a problem. so people were suffering. people were dying. one day when my mother was working at the hospital, scrubbing the floors and the children's ward, she heard a child wheezing. i couldn't breathe now. she was the oldest of 12 children, so she knew pretty much her mother passed when was the 10th child. but so when she realized what happened, she knew exactly that

the child cannot breathe. so she went over to him and realized how he's already purple on his face. she called up the doctors to come quickly. they came and they saved this child's life. and so happened. and that child was the child of the chief of police, of yash, which later on who got a course of because of that goodwill that my mother performed, we were either later on he was able to we were able to able to get out of romania because of him. so while we were in the ghetto, things were pretty much pretty bad. we one day when my father was working in the in the area where he was cleaning from the farmers market, old farm, i came over to him and he said, i'm really sorry to see you in the condition you are here. you are always helping other farmers. you were well-to-do people and here you are now cleaning up my house, which was really hurts me

a lot. is anything i could do for you? so my father said yes, it must. a food could help us a lot. so from that point on, he said to my father, he says, i'm going to speak to other farmers in the community and see they can do to bring some extra food the next week. when he came back, he said to my father that the farmers get together on a big field every night and they leave as a caravan to the market on thursday morning. why don't you wait between two and 3:00 in the morning? the certain spot outside the ghetto? i will try to give you some food. so that's what happened. so the next thursday, my father went out to be discovered. then between two and 3:00 in the morning to have somebody outside the ghetto between those hours only meant one thing. that individual try to flee and will be punished very severely. but my father thought it's a good escape, okay, to do that.

and the risk is live per hour to make sure that we get some extra food. so that happened almost every every thursday. my father would go out and get this extra food from this farmer. one day that farmer didn't stop. so my father realized something is bad. and when he saw him again in the farmers market, the farmer came over and said to him, i'm sorry, i can no longer help you because as individuals told the police that some of the farmers are helping jewish people. i'm afraid for my part, for my family and i'm sorry, i can't help you anymore. my father realized that. he said, thank you very much for all the help that you gave us. i understand. and from that point on, we did not have any help from the farmers. and june of 1943, there was a post that signed in the ghetto stating that every individual male between the age of 18 and 50 have to assemble for the next day and a day.

a ghetto center and because it would be sent over to different place to work, they would not be coming home on a daily basis anymore. the night before that, my father was supposed to be assembled. we all cry. they couldn't sleep. we didn't know when we're going to see my father again. if you ever going to see him again the next day. when he walked out of the house, the room to go to the assembled area, i asked them, papa, can i walk with you to where you're supposed to go? and he agreed. we were walking hand to hand. hand. we didn't speak at all. once we got to the assembled area, my father told me that it's time for you to go back. at that point, he turned to me, put both his hand on my shoulders, and he said that he said five words to me that i was remember the rest of my life. he said that take care of the girls. i was not yet and a half years old. you can imagine the weight of

these five words that meant to me. i could have said, i'll try, do my best. but instead i said, i'll take care of the girls. i will see. once he left, he was shipped out to a camp on the border between and moldova and ukraine on a slave labor camp. all these years we were away before and together of having heard from him. we didn't know if he was alive. dead. finally, we were liberated by the russians in 1944, the summer of 1944, and eventually a few months later, my father actually showed up. he hitchhiked on convoy, russian convoys and farmers wagons, walked a lot and finally came back. so we were reunited. my father, in the spring of 1945, the entire family who remained in hungary at that point stayed in hungary. now we know from history that

germany invaded hungary in march of 1944, between april of 1944 and july of 1944, 440,000 -- were expelled, were transferred to auschwitz. among these foreign, 40,000 -- were 33 members of my extended family, my grandparents my uncles, my aunts, my cousins. they all were shipped to auschwitz. the old ones and the young ones immediately put to death. and the gas chambers, those who were able work, were sent to auschwitz from auschwitz, they were sent to various other camps where they died. we know when or how or where. the only know the individuals, three individuals that we know for a fact were together was with my grandfather and two of my uncles were in auschwitz. my grandfather died of starvation a month before he was liberated. two of my uncles survived a liberation. one was 21 years old. one was 22 years old.

each one weighed £65. so you can imagine what they looked like. they look like walking skeletons when the red cross came into these camps. and so the condition that these people were in, they put them on ships and shipped them to sweden to recuperate. unfortunately one of these two uncles did not make it to sweden. he died on the way and he was buried at sea. and one individual did make it to sweden. he was there in a cemetery room, in a hospital for four years to gain his weight and his held back. so from 33 members of my extended family, only one person survived. eventually he made it to the united states when i and then in 1947, my father realized there's no longer a future for jewish people in romania. so we tried to leave and at that point we couldn't leave. we filed for exit visa and he came back a few months later, denied the father another time

again was denied. so finally my mother went over to the police station where that individual chief of police was. he said, i saved your son's life, save my children. and he had pity on her. and he actually gave us an exit visa and we left romania in may of 1951. we arrived in israel, which originally was palestine, arrived in israel. i stayed in israel for ten years. i served for three years in a elite fighting unit and then came to united states to visit my uncle. i got married here. yes, i have five grand, five children and 12 grandchildren. they all name after one of these individuals who were murdered by the nazis during the holocaust. and that's in general what happened to us over a period of two years that we were in the ghetto. it was.