>> Amb. Stuart Eizenstat: Thank you for joining us for our 2022
Days of Remembrance commemoration.
I'm Stuart Eizenstat and have the privilege to serve
as Chairman of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
Every day, the Museum honors the memory
of the victims and teaches the lessons
of Holocaust history.
These lessons are both timeless and
timely, but today is an especially
moving and meaningful day. For today
we pause to focus solely
on the victims. To reflect on who they
were before they became victims.
Nazi Germany set out to murder every Jew in
Europe and tragically succeeded in killing
six million men, women
and children. We pay homage to them,
remember them, learn lessons from them.
This is always a day of immense sorrow
and deep reflection.
Yet this year,
Days of Remembrance happens as the Ukrainian
people are fighting to preserve their freedom
from a Russian invader who outrageously
misappropriates the terms of the Holocaust
by falsely claiming de-Nazification
and genocide prevention as the pretext for
a totally unprovoked invasion
of a peaceful, sovereign nation.
The Germans and their local helpers killed
1.5 million Jews in Ukraine.
Today we remember them and all the victims
of the Holocaust.
And today we hear from some who survived.
These survivors bear witness for their families
and loved ones. They bear witness to teach us
to warn us and to inspire us.
Now let's hear their stories.
[Music Playing]
>> Irene Weiss: I come from a family of six children.
We enjoyed school, had lots of friends
and life was normal.
We lived in a farming village called
Bótrágy, which was part of Czechoslovakia
when I was born.
It was then controlled by Hungary.
Now it is Ukraine.
It is hard to explain how suddenly and
dramatically our lives changed in 1944,
when Nazi Germany occupied Hungary
and took control of my home town.
Local officials came to our home and
demanded all our money and valuables.
Hungarian authorities took us to a ghetto
where we stayed for three weeks.
We were ordered to board a cattle train.
My family struggled to stay together.
The train took us to Auschwitz.
I was 13 years old.
The door of the train opened and guards
shouted at us to get out and leave
our belongings behind.
First, men were separated into
a different line, then the women and children
than my mother and younger brothers were
sent in another direction.
I was holding the hand of my 11
year old sister, Edith.
when the guard separated her from me
and she disappeared into the fast moving
crowd. I never saw my mother,
father and younger siblings again.
Out of our family of eight,
only my older sister, Serena and I
survived the Holocaust.
The trauma of that separation has
stayed with me to this day.
>> Narrator: Wilhelm and Johanna Schischa were among
the six million Jews who did not survive.
Before the Holocaust
they were raising their family in Wiener Neustadt,
Austria, where they owned a clothing store.
Germany annexed its neighbor, Austria, to fulfill
its goal of uniting the so-called "master race"
in a Nazi empire.
That meant that Jews like the Schischa's faced
persecution.
The Nazis seized Wilhelm and Johanna's business
and transferred it to non-Jews.
The Schischa's also were forced to sell their home.
Their possessions were stolen.
Wilhelm was arrested and imprisoned for 10 days
during Kristallnacht, a wave of anti-Jewish
violence that Nazi leaders organized in
November 1938.
Even their 11 year old daughter, Lilli, felt the impact
of Nazi persecution and prejudice.
A friend stopped walking to school with her and
ultimately she was expelled from school.
The Schischa's son, Edi, age 24,
escaped Nazi Austria for Palestine.
Wilhelm and Johanna knew Lilli had to leave, too.
They made the agonizing decision to say goodbye
to protect her.
They sent her to England along with other Jewish child
refugees.
They didn't know it would be the last time they would
see each other.
For the next two years, Wilhelm and Johanna tried
to obtain visas to emigrate so they could reunite
with Lilli.
It was a long and expensive process.
Before they were able to leave,
Wilhelm and Johanna were deported from Vienna to
the Apollo ghetto in German occupied Poland.
They continued to write to Lilli and other family members
and even sent photos of their life in the ghetto.
In one letter, they wrote,
"We know for certain my dear little girl
that your longing for us is the same
for us.
Just be patient.
And strong."
Lilli wrote back often, "You really
have no chance of leaving the country?
It weighs so heavily on my mind that I can't do
anything for you. If you could
only be here."
The conditions in the ghetto were extremely harsh
and many Jews died there.
Most others were murdered in the Sobibor
or Belzec killing centers.
Eventually, the letters to Lilli stopped.
She never found out for certain where her parents
were killed.
After easily taking over Austria and dismantling
Czechoslovakia, Nazi Germany's aggression
continued. It invaded Poland,
igniting World War II.
Two years later, the Nazis attacked Soviet
controlled territory, including Ukraine,
which was home to one of the largest Jewish populations
in Europe.
Special militarized forces followed the front lines
with orders to kill Jews and other civilians
perceived to be enemies.
At first, these units targeted Jewish
men of military age, but they quickly
started massacring entire Jewish communities,
regardless of age or gender.
Before the German invasion, about
160,000 Jews lived in
Kyiv.
Many fled the German advance. By
the time the Germans occupied the city,
there were just 60,000 Jews remaining.
Most of them were unable or unwilling
to leave.
They were mainly women, children,
elderly and the infirm.
Over two days in September 1941,
more than 33,000 of Kyiv's Jews were massacred
at a ravine called Babyn Yar.
German authorities ordered victims to the site.
With the help of auxiliaries
they made them undress and forced them to
enter the ravine.
The perpetrators shot them in small groups.
Dina Pronicheva, a survivor,
later testified.
"With my own eyes, I saw this horror.
Terrible cries of panic stricken people
and quiet children's voices calling 'Mother.
Mother' reached me."
Before she, too, was shot,
Dina fell into the pit.
"I pretended to be dead.
Those who had been killed or wounded were lying under
me and on top of me,
many were still breathing.
Others were moaning.
Suddenly, I heard a child weeping
and the cry 'Mummy.'
I imagined my little girl crying
and I started to cry myself."
At least one and a half million Jews were killed
during the Holocaust in what is today
Ukraine.
After Nazi Germany invaded Italy, its
former ally, members of the Pacifici
family met different fates.
Rabbi Riccardo Pacifici chose
to help Jewish prisoners at an Italian internment
camp and refused to go into hiding.
Instead, he opened his synagogue in Genoa
every day.
He was arrested there and sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau,
where he was killed.
Rabbi Pacifici's wife, Vanda,
had fled with her mother and two young sons,
Emanuele and Raffaele, to Florence,
where the Archbishop and his secretary were helping
Jews find places to hide.
For one night
the boys hid with their mother and grandmother,
but they were not allowed to stay because they were
in a convent, only for women.
The boys were sent instead to a school where
mother, Marta Folcia, welcomed them.
When the Germans learned that Jews were hiding at the
convent, Vanda, her mother and other
Jewish women were arrested and deported
to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where they were murdered.
Meanwhile, nuns at the school were able to protect the
boys.
It was not easy because German soldiers occupied
the school for a month.
Mother Marta taught herself a special blessing in
Hebrew that she would whisper to the brothers.
They remained in hiding until their liberation
in August 1944.
>> Marcel Drimer: After Nazi Germany occupied
my town of Drohobycz, Poland.
My father's sister, Ryfka,
and her two young children
came to live with us. One day
when my mother, sister and I
were out of house,
we heard that Jews were being rounded
up. We hid in the fields
where we could hear their
screams.
When we returned home, it was empty.
Everybody was gone, and
Aunt Ryfka and her two
little boys were deported to Belzec
killing center with other members
of my family.
Her older son was named Henius.
He was my age and we played
together before he was murdered.
I feel responsible for keeping the memories
of my family alive.
My immediate family found places
to hide for the rest of the war.
We spent the longest time
with the Sawinskis, a Polish-Ukrainian
farming family.
First, they hid us in their attic.
then in their stable and then
underground in a hole during a long,
cold winter.
If we had been caught, we would have
been murdered and the Sawinskis'
would have been killed too.
Millions of ordinary people
allowed the Holocaust to happen.
But some people made the
choice to help. The Sawinskis'
saved my life.
Today, I remember Aunt Ryfka,
her son, Henius, and her other
son, whose name has been lost.
>> Irene Weiss: Today, I remember Leah Fogle,
Meyer Fogle, Moshe Fogel,
Gershon Fogel, Ruane Fogel
and Edith Fogel.
We now invite you to honor the memory
of those lost by reading names
of some of the six million victims
and remembering them.