Legacy of the Holocaust

The history of humanity throughout the centuries has been told and retold by word of mouth. Man’s victories and defeats, highs and lows, villains and heroes have been chronicled in a multitude of languages and dialects. They have been handed down from generation to generation.
With the invention of writing and the printing press, all our oral histories found their way into a more lasting, less corruptible medium.
As we celebrate the 60th anniversary of the birth of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948, we felt compelled to chronicle - “The Legacy of the Holocaust” - a nightmarish period of time scores of Queens residents lived through in their early lives.
Today, all survivors are senior citizens; the oldest were in their twenties during World War II. Tomorrow, many of them will no longer be around.
We worked with Holocaust museums and experts in gathering the background of that era from pre-war life across Europe to the rising tide of Hitler and all he hoped to erase. We will bring you into the factories of death to the displaced persons camps and the frantic search for family to new lives in new places.
Over the coming weeks, we will transport you back in time and across oceans, onto the streets ablaze with Nazi furor, into the ghettos of the oppressed and inside the death camps of the persecuted, enslaved and tortured.
We will cross dangerous borders together and we will huddle with those seeking to save their lives. Some succeeded, many failed. We will introduce you to some of our Queens survivors through their own words, both in print and video on our website.
Theirs is an oral history, a personal history that needs to be told and recorded so that it may never be forgotten. Through their words, memories and photographs we will document each of their stories in our series “Legacy of the Holocaust,” which began last week.
We strive with this series, to teach, to inspire, to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust for younger generations through the stories of those who survived it and those who lost their voices because of it.
The first part of the series ran in our issues of May 8. It is available on our web site with the additional of exclusive videos we shot during the months we spent preparing this series. The second part, which includes several survivor profiles, is printed in this issue of The Queens Courier.
Read along as we present the “Legacy of the Holocaust.” The Holocaust was the “Final Solution” to the “Jewish Question” - a calculated attempt, machine-like in its method and its madness, to eradicate a race.
It happened to the Jews and the gypsies, the handicapped and the homosexuals, the communists, Catholics and blacks. Eleven million people, six million of whom were Jews, lost their lives.
Many survived extermination and we bring you their unique and powerful stories - in their words - so that you too, may “Never Forget.”