Northwest Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Ethnocide Education

Name

Judith Ockinga

Question

How did you come to have your mother's earrings? Were any other of your family treasures saved? Thank you. We have seen four of your talks now, and the movie premiere. We are so fortunate to have you here.

Answer

My Uncle and Aunt came to the United States one month before World War II. They brought the earrings with them when they came, and gave them to me when I arrived to America.

Name

CK

Question

Did you ever see people lose hope or their hope turn into Delusion?

Answer

In Auschwitz Birkenau I did see people who gave up as they fell in the dirt. They were then picked up by soldiers, and we never saw them again. After the liberation I met with people who didn’t want to remember or talk about it. These people were depressed, but I remained faithful.

Name

Brandi Keller

Question

Where were you when you learned that the war was finally over and what were you thinking?

Answer

I was still in Germany. It was May 8^th, 1945 when I heard the war was over in Europe. But after that came the Japanese part of the war. It is important to note that the war was only over in Europe. What was I thinking? I was happy! Laughing and crying at the same time!

Name

Charis Hensley

Question

I just read a book called Playing for Time, the story of a cabaret singer, Fenelon Fania. It is her point of view when she was a part of the woman’s orchestra in Auschwitz. When you were in Auschwitz, do you remember that orchestra?

Answer

 I did listen to the orchestra! They had an orchestra out of the prisoners, and they had to play for us. We would have to march to them and listen. We had to sit there in the dirt and mess and in a horrible dress and hungry. That was the only time when we all cried. We already didn’t have enough tears, we were dehydrated. But then that music came on, and it was music we played ourselves. Music that I previously played on the piano. It struck us so deeply and emotionally. We started to cry, and we started to talk. Where is the whole world, how come we are dying, thousands and thousands of us a day? And this happened only when we listened to the music. That music gave us a real memory of going back to our real lives. We were already dying; we were hardly alive. Yet, when we heard this music, we really thought about our families and our past life before Auschwitz.