Only 6% to 11% of Jewish children survived the Holocaust.
Zelda Fuksman was one of them.
Germany invaded her home country of Poland when she was just 4 years old and her family had to flee to the Soviet Union. “War was our first view of reality,” she said. “Still, we were told we were too young to understand.”
The youngest survivors of the Holocaust have often expressed feeling misunderstood or forgotten — as if their accounts were dismissed because of their age, their memories questioned, or their suffering minimized if they survived in hiding or as refugees rather than in camps.
Which is why groups such as the nonprofit Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust in Palm Beach County play such a vital role, giving its members a bigger voice for Holocaust education and remembrance.
“I am among survivors all my life and they are some of the strongest, nicest, best people I have met,” said Fuksman, of Boca Raton. “But what I see is there is a constant state of mourning and loss. We don’t have our families — many don’t even have as much as a picture — and we had to establish [our own] rules.
“Many don’t have a visual memory of their families — to live a blank life, can you imagine what that’s like?”
Fuksman joined the group in 1996 and today is the executive vice president.
A little history
The group’s founder, Frieda Jaffe, was among those who survived the ghettos in Poland. She was liberated at 7 years old and went on to share her story, speaking and writing about her experience and creating the South Florida organization in 1991.
The goal was to get child survivors to come together, recount their experiences and feel validated.
Jaffe died in February, but her legacy has endured. The group continues to meet on the first Sunday of each month at the Richard & Carole Siemens Jewish Campus in Boca Raton, its members promoting Holocaust education and speaking at schools.
The number of survivors is dwindling greatly. Volunteer Hinda Rosenbaum said hundreds once attended the monthly meetings. But their most recent meeting, on Aug. 3, had about 20 in attendance. Fuksman said about 70 members are currently active, although not all participate.
This makes the push for Holocaust teaching more important than ever. During the last meeting, Jack Rosenbaum, founder and CEO of the nonprofit HEAL: Holocaust Education Advocacy Leaders (and husband of Hinda Rosenbaum), encouraged the survivors in attendance to speak at local Palm Beach County schools.
After Rosenbaum took his seat, some members were compelled to share. Holding onto a chair for support, Larry Gochman began to tell his tale, which he also shares at schools and temples. Gochman was a child when the Nazis came for his home in Poland. His family hid in the woods, sleeping in tents made of pine needles and stealing vegetables from nearby farms. He lived that way for three years before being liberated.
As Gochman spoke, the room was silent. No one could ignore his pain and his sorrow.
“If we don’t teach our students the lessons of history, we are doomed to repeat it,” Rosenbaum said after Gochman finished. “All it takes is changing one student’s perspective.”
Beyond speaking at schools, the survivors have worked hard to push education in other ways.
In January 2000, in an effort to encourage participation and help members get to know each other, Fuksman created a newsletter. Each edition featured a member’s story.
“I would invite them into my kitchen, make them lunch, and we would sit and talk,” she said. Her late husband, Herschel, photographed the survivors. “We did this for about 10 years and had close to 100 stories.”
A former president of the group, Pierre Chanover, brought up the idea of putting the survivor stories into a book. A groupwide effort led to the Child Survivors getting incorporated, allowing them to raise enough funds to publish the book.
Fuksman had one caveat: Any funds generated, which would all come from donations, would be used for Holocaust education and nothing else.
Eventually, two books were published, “We Remember the Children” and “Childhood Lost.” With the help of Eileen Shapiro, former Holocaust program planner for Palm Beach County, 15,000 copies were donated to county schools for their Holocaust education programs.
According to Fuksman, Insight through Education recently began reprinting the books and increased funding to get them into the hands of more local students.
Moments shared
But it’s not all work and no play for the survivors.
When they aren’t working hard to keep Holocaust education alive in local schools, they are relishing in each other’s company. They celebrate milestone birthdays (two members recently turned 100 and 101); they say prayers together, acknowledging the current state of the world; they observe holidays together and host Hanukkah parties; and they speak openly about their pain, creating a bond that can only be formed by a shared trauma.
While every member’s story is unique, they all have one thing in common: They survived — and they lived to tell it.
“We have a responsibility, not only for Jewish history, but for the history of the world,” Fuksman said. “While we are still here, we need to take every opportunity we have to use our voices.”
For more information about the Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust group, contact Zelda Fuksman at zfoxy1@aol.com or 561-477-6992.
