Seeing my family in the story

I was introduced to Phyllis by a friend who thought I would be interested in the documentary that she was producing since I was a Second Generation Holocaust survivor. However, I couldn’t believe just how personally I was connected to this story of life in the refugee camps after the Holocaust. As I watched the trailer for the documentary that Phyllis had created, I was astonished to see images of my mother and uncle in a picture of students in the school that they had helped to create in DP Camp Foehrenwald.

.

My mother and her brother left their family and they ran from Kostopol, Poland to Uzbekistan, Russia to avoid the Nazis. My mother and father met in the DP Camp and like many other couples, married very quickly. Everyone was so anxious to start a new family as many had lost their entire family in the war. My father was a survivor of the Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. It was very difficult for him to speak about his traumatic experiences in the camp. He seldom spoke about his family before the war, so my siblings and I knew very little about his life in Poland. It wasn’t until many years after he had passed away that I found out that my father had been married before and had a son. It is presumed that they both perished during the Holocaust. As a child of Holocaust survivors, I find that I have an immediate emotional connection to other Second Generation survivors. I told the story of my father’s family to my brother-in-law, who was also born in Germany to survivors, Upon speaking to his uncle about it, he was told that his father also had a family that was lost in the war. I am continually amazed by the similar personality traits among children of Holocaust survivors.

I am very excited to be a part of the production of Phyllis’ documentary as I know it will provide new insight into the lives of the survivors after the war. Our film has the potential to help the world better understand how these refugees survived all that they had been through and went on to rebuild their lives.

Marty Elbaum

Country Pointe

Plainview, NY