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Brian: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. Now we'll have an oral history call-in for anyone who is a Holocaust survivor. We invite you to share any one memory, let's say from early in your life from the Holocaust year itself, before 1945 or shortly afterward, and to say how being a Holocaust survivor informs how you see the world today. Our phone number is 212-433-WNYC. If you're a Holocaust survivor listening right now, and you've never called the show before, we're inviting you, or of course, even if you have called the show before, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Again, today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day. We'll have an oral history call-in now for anyone who's a Holocaust survivor. We invite you to share any one memory from early in your life from the Holocaust era itself before 1945 or shortly afterward and to say how being a Holocaust survivor informs how you see the world today. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692.

As many of you know, we've been doing a number of oral history call-ins this year for listeners of different backgrounds and of different ages. This one is definitely in the top tier of topics that are important to have oral histories on. I think that goes without saying. Your story will inform younger people listening today, and it will also live permanently on our website, with audio and a transcript so it will be preserved.

Again, today is Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, and we're having an oral history call-in now for anyone who is a Holocaust survivor. We invite you to share any one memory from early in your life from the Holocaust era itself or shortly afterwards, and to say how being a Holocaust survivor informs how you see the world today. 212-433-WNYC, that's 212-433-9692.

As your calls are coming in, I'll give you some stats. According to the Associated Press, approximately 240,000 survivors are still alive, living in Europe, Israel, the US and elsewhere. There's a social media campaign today apparently by a group called the Claims Conference, that features survivors and their descendants from around the globe and illustrates the importance of passing on the Holocaust survivors' testimonies to younger family members as the number of survivors dwindles.

We're inviting you to participate in that here, passing along, passing it down your memory to the general public. 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. According to The Times of Israel, nearly 150,000 Holocaust survivors still live there, average age, 85. With around 30,000 over 90, and 462 who have lived for over a century. The youngest Holocaust survivors are aged 76, as The Times of Israel points out. If you're one of those people, it's an oral history call-in for anyone who is a Holocaust survivor.

We can expand it a little bit too, as the Claims Conference does in its pitch. If we don't happen to have enough actual Holocaust survivors listening at this moment, we can expand it to children of Holocaust survivors. You can call in too and say how having parents who were Holocaust survivors informed your view of the world that you grew up in. Did your parents talk about the Holocaust or their personal experiences, or did they try to leave that behind them as much as possible and not talk about it? Or any story you think is meaningful or important to tell on this Holocaust Remembrance Day.

It's an oral history call-in for anyone who is a Holocaust survivor or a child of one. We invite you to share any one memory from early in your life from the Holocaust era itself before 1945 or afterward, and to say how being a Holocaust survivor or child of one informs how you see the world today. 212-433-WNYC and we'll take your calls right after this. Brian Lerher on WNYC. Now to our oral history call-in for Holocaust survivors or children of Holocaust survivors on this Holocaust Remembrance Day. Ruth in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Ruth. Thank you so much for calling.

Ruth: Hi. Thank you so much. I'm feeling a little tearful in talking about my parents whom I lost in the Holocaust. I'm of course of advanced age myself, and I've never really spoken about it, certainly not in a public forum. It happened, we were, of course, living in Germany, I was very young, and lost both parents in the Holocaust.

Brian: I'm so sorry.

Ruth: Thank you.

Brian: How do you feel it has informed how you view the issues in the world today?

Ruth: I frankly, I have always been a totally as an adult quite sensitive to suffering, and suffering of course unfortunately caused by all kinds of actions, speech, and so on and prejudice. I would say that while there may have been some improvements in some areas, and I don't mean just geographical, but generally speaking, there's still a lot, unfortunately, and probably always will be, to strive for or to improve.

Brian: Ruth, thank you so much for your call. It took courage, I can tell. Thank you very much. Here's a Dr. Springer in Great Neck. You're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. Hi.

Dr. Springer: Okay, Brian, yes. I was nine years old when I lived in Germany and on the second floor of a three-story house, and I was awakened by a crash of glass about one o'clock in the morning. I went out on my balcony and I saw brown shirts which were like kind of a Nazi trooper for volunteers, and they were breaking into a Jewish clothing store on the corner and throwing the clothing and the dummies out onto the street. In the background, I saw a smoke from the fire, which I later learned was from the synagogue.

Brian: Are you telling us that you personally experienced Kristallnacht?

Dr. Springer: I was there, yes. We left two weeks after that to America.

Brian: How do you think that's informed your life or your politics?

Dr. Springer: I'm not sure whether it directly formed it, because I was always a liberal, but I do think about it occasionally, especially with all the tragedy of cruelty that goes on in our country, unfortunately. I always think that vigilance is the key to preventing these kinds of acts, whether they're done by a government or by individuals. Therefore, they need a tremendous amount of talk about it in order to keep those memories alive.

Brian: Dr. Springer, thank you for being part of that talk. Cordula in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hello, Cordula.

Cordula: Hi, this is Cordula.

Brian: Cordula. I apologize. Go ahead.

Cordula: I have to thank my daughter, Yohana, who pushed me to call you. I want to share a memory I have from after the war. I was born in the middle of the war in the Netherlands from my parents who were refugees from Czechoslovakia, German speaking. After the war, there was huge antisemitism movement in the Netherlands. I was cursed at as a dirty Jewel, as a dirty German, et cetera. That, I think makes the consequence of all this for me, is that I'm extremely worried about the increasing antisemitism all around the world, not only in the United States, in Western Europe as well.

In Western Europe, I don't know how it's here, but in Western Europe also it results in antisemitism. The Israel situation results in huge antisemitism, and that's another worry for me.

Brian: Does the Israel situation cause you any conflicted feelings.

Cordula: Yes, of course. For me, of course, yes, I'm very worried about Israel. I'm disappointed. I fear for a situation that will break down or is breaking down already democracy in Israel. I'm sorry because I would love that country, but it's difficult to love it at the moment.

Brian: Cordula, thank you for your call. Peter in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Peter.

Peter: Hi Brian, nice to talk to you. My mother was from Poland, and my father was from Romania. I'm a first-generation US citizen and New Yorker. My mother's father was killed one night, and she went into the woods with her mom. My father made his way across Europe when he was a teenager, and both, I guess, left probably around '45 I would say. For me what's most interesting is that they both had incredibly traumatic experiences.

My father didn't talk much about it. My mother, she talked about it a lot and even started an organization that ended up being part of the UN. The most interesting thing is I was raised with a Jewish identity but almost an atheist home. My father hated religion, and he blamed religion for why this all happened. My mother didn't want to blame religion because she felt a little guilty. We barely practiced. I couldn't tell you two things about any of the holidays we have. The most important lesson, I think-- sorry, go ahead.

Brian: No, I apologize, the most important lesson.

Peter: I was going to say the most important lesson that my mother, both my parents but especially my mother taught me growing up and living in New York was to have empathy towards other races because when we got to New York, we were just a white family, and the oppression that they had in Europe wasn't the same, and we were now watching the oppression of non-white people and so it was very important for them to have me empathize with what Blacks and Hispanics were going through in the city.

Brian: That is an important lesson. On your father blaming religion, did you and he ever talk about how even in Germany, in the period leading up to the Holocaust and during it, a lot of the Jews in Germany, as I understand it, were quite assimilated and secular, and so it wasn't about religious belief per se, it was about their Jewish peoplehood.

Peter: You're probably right, but I think as time passes, whenever you'd have discussions, or when we were in New York in years past, and my dad was older, if there were ever discussions about the war, it wasn't about what it's like being a secular Jew. When he met other Jews ultimately, religion came into the picture. I think that's what made my dad so averse to it because his entire life he was, he was a secular Jew in Bucharest, Romania. I think he was in a band with non-Jews, and it was never an issue. It was like Israel, the way Israel used to be.

As soon as he came here, all of a sudden, his experiences were related to being Jewish, and I guess, associating it with religion because of that because he was never religious, to begin with, and then when he came here, and he felt it was thrust upon him, he became even more [unintelligible 00:13:58]

Brian: More anti-religion. Peter, thank you for your call. I appreciate it. Francesca in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hi, Francesca.

Francesca: Hello. It's interesting. I'm named after my maternal grandmother, who was Francesca in Poland. My mother was 12 when her city, Woods Lodge, was invaded in 1939. Both my grandparents died in the Holocaust. They were taken away. Now, my mother at age 15 managed to escape all over Europe and because she never spoke about it directly to me, but it was all innuendo implication of what had happened, the horror. She was very angry with me when I became a teenager, and I couldn't figure out why.

What it was, it turned out after, I always say, my first 10 years of therapy was that here she was trying to survive and where her next meal was going to come from, and I was worried about whether there was going to be a dance at the high school that Saturday night. She just could not accept that I had had no hardship, even though she didn't want me to have any hardship. She didn't know how to be a mother to a teenager who wasn't going through trauma.

Brian: You worked through some of this in therapy. Did you and she ever actually talk it through like that?

Francesca: Yes, we did. Then we never had an argument again after that. The effects of the Holocaust on the children of survivors and then their children. My son is an actor and he played Anne Frank's father in a play. He's a professional actor. He was traumatized by it. He said he couldn't get it out of his head what had happened to my mother. It helped him with the role that he had to play.

Brian: Francesca, thank you so much for the thoughtfulness of that call. We'll get one more in here. Karen in Montclair, Karen, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in. I apologize in advance I have to limit you to 45 seconds as we're at the end of the show.

Karen: Okay, I'll take the 45 seconds. Hello, I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors. My father, just like the previous caller from Bucharest, my mother from a shuttle town in Czechoslovakia, [unintelligible 00:16:54] which is probably now Ukraine. Growing up Holocaust in first the Bronx, and then in Bayside, Queens impacted my life and continues to do. I lost my parents, I returned from a career in Los Angeles to take care of my parents because there was no plan and wrote a screenplay called Surviving the Ashes. You carry this with you both as an honor and as the children of survivors, you keep surviving. Yes, like the last caller, through therapy, you discover a lot about yourself and healing keeps happening even after they're gone. I just want to say thank you for the opportunity to share on this day of Memorial Day.

Brian: Thank you so much, Karen, and thank you all who called in on this Holocaust Remembrance Day.

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