also by Ruth Horak: Read: "Losing All; Gaining...

Outside, she could hear the matches scratching. As the village around them exploded in flames, the Nazis attempted to set the last house alight. Within these walls, Maria Weinstein huddled in the embrace of her newly adopted family. There, amid the chaos, Jew and gentile united as one family in fervent prayer.

Vera Schlamm One of the questions I was asked frequently when I first came to this country is: Was it really as bad in the camps as they say in the news?” Now the question is: “Was it as bad as was shown in films such as ‘The Hiding Place’ or...

Some survivors do not tell their kids anything. They just don’t. Some survivors tell their kids everything. When I was a little boy, I crawled into my father’s lap and asked, What is that number on your arm?” He didn’t flinch, he told me he was...

My father, Fred, was born in Germany in 1925. The son of a baker, he lived in a village of 2,000 people. The town had very few Jews, ten families to be exact. As a young boy, my father had to look among the non-Jews for playmates. School Days By the time my father was...

Losing All; Gaining All I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935. Our family owned one of the largest textile factories in the Czech Republic. In 1940, when the Germans occupied this area, they first took the industrialists, and my father was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. We...

“I remember they had us lined up. The Germans were talking among themselves, loud enough for me to hear. Some of my buddies started asking me, ‘What’s happening? How come you’re ready to pass out?’ I told them, ‘This is the way it’s going to be. They don’t know what to do with us and so they’re going to shoot us.’ ”