Michele Gold's Story (Second Generation)

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Michele shares her mother’s remarkable journey from her childhood in Leipzig, to her escape on the Kindertransport, to her life after the war.

Henry was born in Brody, Poland.   In 1941, when he was 14, Nazi Germany occupied his town. The Freidman family was Jewish so what most people thought was unimaginable began to unfold right before their eyes.  Henry and his family hid on a farm owned by the Symchucks, a Christian family.   For 18 months the Symchucks hid Henry and his family in a space the size of a queen sized bed.   The Symchucks have been recognized as “Righteous Among the Nations”.

 Yoka was born in Holland.  Her parents and brother went into hiding in 1942 while she was sent to live in 12 to 16 different places during the same time.  She was 2 ½ years old and all she understood was that she was moved every couple of months and it was dangerous to hide a little girl like her.  She couldn’t use her own name and found the rules to be different with each family she stayed with.  When she was 5 she was reunited with parents she did not know. Her family never spoke with her abo

She survived several concentration camps - Terezin, Auschwitz, a slave labor camp in Hamburg, and Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Anne Frank died.  There are not even words to describe the daily fear that followed her everywhere. They lived “just like animals” with almost no food and no water. Her experiences on the overcrowded cattle cars, parading in front of Dr. Mengele hoping to be selected to live, and digging trenches when bombs were falling all around them cannot be comprehended.  

The Jakobs’ family were German Jews who had fled to Holland in 1938.  Bert was 8 years old when he and his family went into hiding in the barn of the Driessen family in the Netherlands. They hid for 25 months undetected. 

Born in Greece. Italy invaded Greece during WWII. As the Italians retreated, Jews were urged to leave before the Germans came.  Joe and all his family hid - in caves, in the mountains of Greece

Anna “Angie” Suss Paull was 17 in 1939 when the war started in Poland.
 
Angie endured the Holocaust in the Lodz ghetto and in Auschwitz concentration camp.

When George was 13 the Nazis put them under house arrest, then they were rounded up to go to a ghetto and soon transported on a cattle car for 3 weeks to Auschwitz concentration camp. His grandfather died on the train; his mother and little brother were gassed. He was forced to watch his father tortured. When liberated George was a skeleton weighing 33 pounds!