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By JewishSelfPublishing

The years between 1933 and 1945 found more than six million innocent Jews persecuted, tortured, and murdered by the wicked Nazis and their ruthless accomplices.

But tens of thousands of brave Jews miraculously escaped the Nazi inferno. The same unwavering faith and determination that kept them going through the darkest days was their guidi

• Language: English
• Publisher: JewishSelfPublishing
• Release date: Mar 21, 2019
• ISBN: 9789657599259

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Copyright © 2019 by Arielle Pfefer

ISBN: 978-965-7599-24-2

All rights reserved.

The editor can be contacted at [e-mail].

Copyediting: Chaya Silverstone

Cover artwork: Andrew Galitzer

The cover illustration represents the Jewish survivors of the Nazi horrors. The hand symbolizes their fortitude and strong desire to survive, so that our heritage, traditions, and values could be transmitted to the future generations. The hand is drawn like a stone statue to show that their stories will live on forever, anchored to the roots of their offspring as depicted by an olive tree.

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Dedicated to all the Jewish souls that perished al kiddush Hashem,

and to the ones who survived to continue their precious missions on earth.

Preface

I am fortunate to be celebrating my becoming a bat mitzvah on Purim, March 21, 2019. In honor of this milestone, I decided to collect stories of Holocaust survivors, in order to serve as a testimony to future generations. As the number of survivors diminishes, and the number of Holocaust deniers increases, the perpetuation of the calamities endured during this period remains uncertain. This booklet should serve as proof of the atrocities that European Jewry suffered during World War II.

Humanity lost millions of their fellow men, women, and children during the Nazi era. Their innocent souls were systematically exterminated. For the majority of these millions, these innocent souls were annihilated because of their Jewishness. My great-grandparents from my mother’s side fortunately escaped Europe before the war. However, my father’s family was not as lucky. I had the opportunity to learn their stories of bravery, resilience, and, above all, faith.

In order to collect these accounts, I asked my own contemporaries to share with me their families’ stories. My friends had the opportunity to converse and hear about their families’ experiences. I then compiled these accounts into this booklet. My hope is that this period in Jewish history lives on. This work has become of utmost importance to me since I am a member of the last generation to have met survivors.

During my research, I came across a sentence from the book of Esther that points to a connection between Purim and the Holocaust. It states in chapter 9, verse 28, that Purim should be remembered and kept by every single generation to come. The days of Purim should not fail from among the Jews, nor the memorial of them perish from their seed. Therefore, the Holocaust should be taught and learned by children of all future generations. It is an event that should become part of our identity, as it transcends through history. It is up to me to pass on these horrific but true events that occurred to our families.

Arielle Pfefer

Purim 5779

Benny and Sally Levine

Arielle Pfefer

6th grade, Yeshivat He’Atid

Teaneck, New Jersey

B

enny, my great-grandfather,

was born on March 26, 1922, to Isaac and Rosa Lewin. He had a younger sister named Rivka. Benny grew up in the town of Swislocz (also called Svislach and Sislevich), Poland. He went to a Jewish day school, called Yavneh, an`d his favorite teacher was Emanuel Goldberg.

He and his family ran a successful business of raising cattle to sell for slaughtering. Benny and his father often traveled to Warsaw, Poland, to sell the hides from the slaughtered animals.

At the age of nineteen, life as Benny knew it suddenly ended, as the Germans invaded his hometown in 1941. He remembers one incident in particular, when the rabbi of his synagogue went to the street with a prayer shawl over his head carrying a Torah scroll. A German soldier went over to the rabbi and began cutting his beard, at which point Benny ran over and begged the soldier to cut Benny’s ear or tongue instead. The German soldier then hit the rabbi’s face with his pistol.

Benny and his family, along with everyone from Swislocz, were forced onto crowded trains, destination unknown. They arrived at Auschwitz, where Benny was immediately separated from his family. He later learned that his parents and little sister were killed in the gas chambers on the tenth of Shevat, in the year 1942.

Benny was immediately put to work at Auschwitz. He was assigned work building roads and other menial jobs. He was also a maverick, doing whatever he could to stir up trouble for the Nazis. For instance, he once tried to escape, but he touched