‘My entire family was killed’

Abraham H. Foxman wrote (March 13) that he survived the Holocaust because his parents gave him away as a child to a Polish family who even converted him. This reminds me about my little sister – when a neighbor asked my parents to give her to them for adoption, my father spoke to my mother, “How can I give my Jewish child to a Christian?” My entire family, as well as all my cousins, was killed by the Nazis. She, my little sister, did not survive the Holocaust. The ADL’s Hidden Child Foundation has on its board some survivors who, like Foxman, were hidden by Polish Christians. My older sisters couldn’t survive as a non-Jew because of her Jewish accent, as we spoke only Yiddish at home. And so none survived.

Jewish men who had German wives were much more likely to survive. No studies have been made about this, as far as I know, but from my readings of Holocaust literature there is overwhelming support for this theory. The study of the problems of the survival of a minority in a society is just as relevant in today’s world.

The Sephardic chief rabbi in Israel stated that the Jews in Germany were punished because they introduced Reform Judaism. Nobody even suggested comparing the percentage of survival of Polish Jews (who were the most religious Jews in Europe) to those Jews who survived in other countries.

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