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• Survivors tell their stories, p. 14.
• HMC slates Shoah commemoration, p. 15.
• Historian's book sparks controversy, p. 16.
• Austrians learn about the Shoah, p. 18.
• Teaching the teachers, p. 19.
• Editorial: Responsible For The Holocaust, p. 39.
• Answers to Holocaust questions, p. 77.
• Artist inspired by Jewish heritage, p. 85.
• PBS film uses survivors' accounts, p. 92.
• Hitler's Silent Partners, p. 94.
• Diary of life in Nazi Germany, p. 101.
• Israeli teens tour HMC, p. 118.

Holocaust

survivors

find

personal

•

•

motivations

to tell their

stories of

survival.

Bearing Witness

*F.

ti

4/28
2000

14

HARRY KIRSBAUM
Staff Writer

n

olocaust survivors will play a
large part in Yom HaShoah
ceremonies held in the Detroit
area and around the world
next week as some quietly take the stage
to retell their horror stories. Each story,
though different, has common elements
of personal disaster and loss coupled
within the context of the six million Jews
who perished.
Most survivors held their stories inside
for more than 30 years. But in 1981, the
floodgates were opened when Elie Wieset
urged his fellow survivors to bear witness.
Since then, some have been an open book
in retelling their story; others never say a
word. The old wounds are always there,
yet the reasons for vocalizing them are
unique to each individual.
Erna Gorman was 10 1 /2 years old and
"already an old woman" when World War
II ended, she said from her West
Bloomfield home. She never talked about
the horrors she encountered as a child in
hiding in the Ukraine. Her husband and
two sons only knew that she survived.
One day, some 15 years ago, while
watching a program on cable television,
she saw a Naii skinhead standing in front
of a portrait of Adolf Hitler, raising his
arm and stating, "I am here to finish
Hitler's work."
A flood of repressed memories began
to bubble up: two years of hiding in a
barn hayloft without seeing daylight,
helping her father and sister bury her
mother in a field just days after libera-
tion.
"I lost it," Gorman said simply. She
began seeing a psychiatrist.
"One reminder brought another, and it
was so vivid, it was as though I was reliv-
ing it at that moment," she said. "It was
devastating."
After seeing the psychiatrist for two
years, Gorman decided she was ready to
tell her family what happened. She made
a tape of her wartime experiences to show
her husband, Herbert, and sons, when
they were home from college for the High
Holy Days.
"I sat them down and gave them the
tape — I couldn't face them," she said.

