Posts tagged holocaust survivor

A Night Inside ‘Bubby’s Kitchen’ With Shira Ginsburg

As the tradition goes, the center of many Jewish households is the kitchen. And for Judith Ginsburg, hers was no exception.

She took pride in her vibrant, tight-knit family piling around the table, sharing laughs and smiles and food — by far and away her love language — and it was there that her granddaughter, Shira, first heard her Bubby’s stories about World War II.

In fact, she can’t imagine a time that she hasn’t known them — or when she started to realize they were unique.

“Like any other child, you don’t know that you’re different, that anything is different, until you get a little bit older and you start to see yourself in the context of the rest of the world,” Shira Ginsburg said during a telephone interview. “So for me, it was just what I knew — until I started telling people my grandparents were in the woods in the war, and they were like, ‘What do you mean, like, camping?’”

Not quite. As teenagers, Judith Ginsburg and her husband, Motke, lived for years in the forests of Belarus, serving as resistance fighters against the Nazi regime.

Read More

A ‘Hidden Child’: Erika Hecht Reflects On World War II in New Memoir

On the edge of Sag Harbor Village, Erika Hecht lives in a modest home surrounded by what she loves — books and art, colorful rugs, an eclectic mix of modern and antique furniture, a lovely backyard with towering trees.

“Wherever I am is my home,” she mused on Saturday morning. “It seems to me I’m carrying my home with me.”

It does not escape Hecht that this practice is a product of her childhood — rooted in a residual fear of loss, the danger and pain associated with forming attachments, only to have them ripped away in a moment.

And so, a collection of artifacts from her youth does not exist, the 87 year old explained, her voice still laced with a thick Hungarian accent. She was a “Hidden Child,” one of thousands of Jewish children who converted to Christianity in an attempt to survive World War II and skirt the Holocaust.

Read More

Holocaust Survivor Finds Solace on the Dance Floor

When Helena Weinrauch dances, she forgets.

In the arms of her trusted partner, she feels no fear, twirling in her gown across the floor as she waltzes, rumbas, tangos and foxtrots. At age 95, she feels free — and, for a moment, not like a Holocaust survivor.

Read More