How We Survived

By Marie Kaufman (Editor), Michael Berenbaum (Foreward), Dr.Sarah Moscovitz (Introduction)

Meet the children from World War II’s Europe who faced and survived the reality of Germany’s decision to annihilate Judaism at its roots. Experience, through frightened eyes and terrifying memories, the remarkable firsthand stories of survival by 52 people who lived as children through this most horrific event of the 20th century, the Holocaust.

You will find yourself privileged to become a witness for posterity to these stories of Holocaust survival. This volume of personal accounts is all the more precious because of how few children survived. In Nazi-occupied Europe, 93% of Jewish children were murdered. Every surviving child needed a helping hand, a kind adult (or many), in order to make it. Heroism comes in many guises. It may require faith, morality, modesty, love, respect, and sacrifice. Whatever the personal ingredients, relatively few stepped forward. What did the children themselves contribute? Their silence, co-operation, intuition, facility with languages, suppression of grief and tears, delay of mourning enormous losses, the will to live. Astonishing. A child one day – an adult the next. There could not be even one mistake. The penalty for any failure of judgment meant death.

The reader should note that these traumatized children did not become killers or thieves. They struggled to become good citizens, raise families, and contribute to their communities. If survival itself was a miracle, so was surviving survival. Each one of the stories offers an opportunity to learn from a child’s experiences with prejudicial hatred and pure evil, about personal fortitude and resilience, about rare individuals who helped children in need, and about courage – the courage of the survivor to share his or her story. The reader will be well rewarded.

Hardcover, 476 pages