World

Holocaust Remembrance

Survivor recounts "those horrific days."

Johanna Boyle
The Mining Journal

Marquette

H

aving grown up during World
War II, the Holocaust and the
years after, Erna Gorman knew
about prejudice.
Much of her childhood was spent
being called "dirty Jew" by Nazi soldiers,
Ukrainian villagers and her own French
schoolmates.
"I can't forgive that word," Gorman
said.
Gorman was the speaker at the
Holocaust Memorial Service on April
21 during Holocaust Remembrance
Day at St. Peter Cathedral in this Upper
Peninsula city.
After spending a childhood in hid-
ing and much of her adult life trying to
forget the past, Gorman began speaking
out because of the continued hatred she
sees in the world.
"I guess the human being likes to hate
rather than love," she told her audience
of more than 200.
"Many millions of people died in the
Holocaust, but I am here only to rep-
resent the Jewish child and what the
Jewish child suffered in those horrific
days," she said.

The Backdrop

Gorman was born in Metz, France, in
1935 to a Polish father and Ukrainian
mother. Her family traveled to Poland in
1939, just before the outbreak of the war,
to attend her aunt's wedding.
The family was trapped in Poland by
the start of the war; and after watching
their relatives disappear — likely killed
by their non-Jewish neighbors, Gorman
said — they fled to her mother's family
in the Ukraine.
Her Ukrainian family soon also disap-
peared, forced to dig their own mass grave
before being shot. Gorman's father was
forced by the Germans to bury the bodies.
Gorman, her parents and her sister had
been moved into a ghetto in the village,
where they managed time and again to
escape deportation to the death camps by
digging a hiding place under the floor.
Eventually, Gorman and her family
escaped the ghetto, running through
fields at night to a nearby farm, where
the farmer and his wife agreed to hide
them in the hayloft of his barn.
"The courage of this one human being
is beyond my understanding," Gorman
said. "If he had been caught, he would
have been put to death. His children
would have also."
Gorman and her family spent the next
two years in the hayloft, unable to wash,

move or speak above a whisper. The
farmer brought them a bucket of food
and water every day, along with a third
bucket to use as a toilet.

On The Edge
When fighting between the German and
Russian armies moved closer to the farm,
the farmer carried them down from
the hayloft — they were unable to walk
— and they crawled through the snow
toward the Russians.
During the escape, Gorman's mother
was killed.
Although helped by the Red Cross, life
continued to be hard back in her native
France, where Gorman was teased at
school. When she turned 17, she and her
father immigrated to the United States,
where she found work in a sweatshop
and took night classes to complete the
education she never had.
A sort of agreement was made between
Gorman and her father to never speak
of the past, which lasted until Gorman's
own children had grown.
Twenty years ago, Gorman saw a televi-
sion broadcast on the rise of the white
supremacist skinhead movement, which
forced her repressed memories to resurface.
It prompted her to speak out once more.
"To this day, I truly feel sorry for this
world; but I'm brutal about my feelings

Holocaust survivor Erna Gorman speaks

in Marquette.

and emotions," she said. "After the war,
I strived for a new life ... It would have
turned me into a hating person, and I did
not have time for hate LI

This story and photo are used with permission

of the Mining Journal, Marquette, Mich., where

the story appeared April 21, 2009.

Lauded For Efforts

Jewish Community Council cites Activist of the Year.

Z

ina Kramer will receive the
2009 Activist of the Year Award
from the Jewish Community
Relations Council of Metropolitan
Detroit at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 26, at
the Jewish Community Center in West
Bloomfield.
U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich.,
will be the program's featured speaker.
She will address "Navigating Troubled
Waters: Activism in Tough Times." Gov.
Jim and Janet Blanchard are honorary
chairs of the Activist of the Year pro-
gram.

Kramer, the daughter of Holocaust
survivors, immigrated to the United
States following World War II and
shaped a lifelong interest in history,
politics and community.
After teaching history, government
and behavioral science for five years at
Bloomfield Hills Lahser High School,
she teamed up with political activist,
educator and former State Senator Doug
Ross. She served in a variety of posi-
tions in state government as Ross' atta-
che. She was a delegate to the National
Democratic Conventions in 1992, 1996

and 2008.
Kramer founded
Events Marketing in 1987
and is president of the
Bloomfield Hills firm,
which specializes in event
production, public rela-
tions and marketing for
both corporate clients and Zina Kramer
non-profit entities.
She is the author of four editions of
the Events Resource Guide, a comprehen-
sive directory of the venues and vendors
used to produce events in Metro Detroit.

Hugs for Grandma, her
new children's book
designed to explain
the behavioral changes
experienced by loved
ones with Alzheimer's,
will be published this
spring.
For information about
the Activist Award and
program or opportunities to honor
Kramer, visit the Council Web site,
detroitjcrc.org , or contact the Council
office, (248) 642-5393, ext. 9.

❑

May 21 2009

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