The alert came at dusk. Eva Perlman (then called Eva Hanna Gutmann), just 12 years old, looked out the window of the apartment her family was renting in Autrans, France, on the second story of what they called “the yellow house.”
On a Wednesday evening in late 1938, the sounds of broken glass shattered the quiet streets of Germany, Austria and the Sudetenland.
It was a beautiful winter’s night in early 1944 when Jack (then Icek) Nierob, 19, left his night-shift job in the steam room of Skarzysko’s Camp C to use the latrine, an outdoor shack near the labor camp’s barbed-wire fence.
The SS entered Mauthausen’s overcrowded barracks 30 one night in February 1944 to punish the 120 boys, including 14-year-old Mike (Miki) Popik, who were engaged in a shoving match to avoid sleeping next to the cold, damp wall.
Sally Roisman — at the time Sara Pola Zielinksi — was asleep in a bed she shared with her mother and two sisters in the Sosnowiec ghetto when she was suddenly awakened by loud pounding on the door.
It was 1944, and Stella Esformes — then Sterina Haleoua — was looking forward to watching the national Independence Day parade in Larissa, Greece.
As the candles glowed, Miriam Bell (née Galperin), her parents and six siblings were singing and welcoming the Sabbath into their comfortable home in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania.
“You have to go to the synagogue,” the mailman announced, banging a drum as he stood outside the house Frida Berger (née Isac) shared with two sisters and two brothers in Comlausa, Romania.
“You have to leave your home. We’re taking you to work.” Rifle-carrying soldiers banged on William Harvey’s (then Wilheim Herskovits) door, giving the family five minutes to pack.
\”We are surrounded by Hitler Youth throwing stones. Get home as fast as you can.” Dr. Leonore Goldschmidt, director of the Goldschmidt Schule (School) in Berlin, told the students as she rushed into one of Curt Lowens’ (then Loewenstein’s) morning classes.
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