RESCUING HOPE
Holocaust Remembrance | Histories
“I feel that it is important for as many people as possible to hear these stories in hope that something like this will never happen again.”
We’re preserving the history of the Holocaust by recording and sharing the stories of our community members.
Read the stories of Holocaust survivors in our community.
The Rakovnik Torah | Its History & Its Mantle, Breastplate, and Rimmonim
The Rakovnik Torah acquired by our synagogue in 1973 is one of some 1500 Torah scrolls, often referred to as Holocaust scrolls, which were collected by the Nazis along with other seized Jewish property during the 1940s.
Edith Szmukler Schlesinger
Despite her losses and her wartime experiences, Edith had a tremendous optimism about the world. She lived her final days at Newbridge on the Charles and came to TBE often. We miss her every day.
Zoltan Mathe
On October 17, 1944, a gang of heavily armed youth with an armband of their movement burst into our yellow-starred building and ordered all “dirty stinky Jews” to get down to the courtyard.
Joe Schlesinger
One evening in fall of 1942 Joe returned to the Ghetto to find his home empty; his entire family had been taken to Treblinka.
Max Adler and Elizabeth-Stern Adler
As WWII approached, my father and his brothers tried desperately to get their parents to flee from their country, but they delayed too long.
Walter and Elsie Kaufmann
Walter and Elsie met in Munich and were married on Christmas Eve 1934. During the mid 1930s, as life for Jews grew increasingly intolerable, they could not imagine the horrors that were yet to come.
Ilse Leeser
Ilse was 10 years old when her father and 2 uncles were arrested, along with 30,000 other specific German Jews of influence and wealth, on Kristallnacht.
Betty Lauer
Betty’s father made it to the US in March 1938. But by October 28, 1938, Betty, her mother, and sister were rounded up and expelled from Germany. They were sent to Poland.
Charles Elbaum
My father was born in Lublin, Poland in 1926. He almost never spoke about the Holocaust. This is what I have been able to put together.
Sidonia Natansohn
Sidi was a 15-year-old girl in 1944. That spring, she was among those deported from Hungary to Auschwitz, riding in a packed cattle car to an uncertain destination.
Julian Bussgang
Julian Bussgang was born in Lwow, Poland in 1925. Julian’s family belonged to the “Great Synagogue,” which at the time was considered Progressive.
Israel Gajer
Israel (“Izzy”) was the third oldest of seven children (2 girls and 5 boys), born into an Orthodox Jewish family in Dubienka, Poland.
Samuel Natansohn
Samuel was born into an Orthodox Chasidic family in Poland. He was ten years old when the war broke out, and his family was soon encircled by the German advance.
Malvina Fisch
Malvina was born in Yaroslav, a relatively large town in Eastern Poland. Her parents were store owners, and they lived a comfortable pre-war life.
Hans Laufer
Hans Laufer was born in 1929 into a German Jewish family who owned the largest roofing tile/paper production company in Germany at the time.
Eugene Kohan
Eugene was at a youth group outing when the Germans took over control of Hungary, and he was discovered to be a Jew. He soon found himself under Gestapo control.
Eva (Schiff) Wertheimer
Eva, at age 15, and her siblings were kicked out of school, and then attended a Cheder run by Jewish teachers forced out of their roles in secular education by the Nazi regime.
Gerard Wertheimer
By the time Gerard became a young man, the situation in Germany had deteriorated with the ascendancy of the Nazi regime.
Edward H. Rose
Edward H. Rose had a very remarkable life. His family is so proud of him and would like to share his story.
Hersch Altman
Hersch was born in 1931, the only son of a deeply religious, middle class family, with three older sisters. His parents were shopkeepers.