Remember Me - A Holocaust Survivor's Story

During the Nazi occupation of Holland, 1940?1945, the Jewish community there suffered devastation on a scale as great as in any other nation in Europe. Only a small percentage of Dutch Jews survived the systematic annihilation. The land was flat and easy to patrol, people?s backgrounds and religions were well documented, and the physical appearance of a Jew was often obvious and very distinctive. In this environment, love was difficult?but not impossible.

This memoir tells a love story that grew during the occupation?that of Nardus and Sipora Groen, as written by their son, author David Groen. It is the story of two Jews who were drawn together by the basic goal of survival. One was an Orthodox Jewish man who evaded the grasp and arrest by the Nazis numerous times, although each time as a member of the resistance and never as a Jew. The other was a woman whose innocent beauty and Jewish-looking face compelled her to move from place to place and exhibit an almost unimaginable courage in order to avoid detection and almost certain death at the hands of the Nazis.

Together, and with the help of many special people, including a couple whose righteousness reached the highest level one can imagine, they have lived to tell their story.

David Groen, the youngest child of Nardus and Sipora Groen, has had the benefit of a listening to their firsthand accounts throughout his life. David has an extensive knowledge of Jewish history and has interviewed many of the individuals featured in the story, both in the United State and the Netherlands. Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, he has lived all over the world, including Jerusalem, London, and Philadelphia. He currently lives in Queens, New York.

During World War II, a young Polish American girl named Cecylia was imprisoned in a Nazi labor camp. After more than sixty years, with the sincere encouragement from her friends and family, she has decided to share her extraordinary story. In surprising detail, Cecylia recounts the daily struggle, physical and mental anguish, humiliation, fear and yes, even humor of her otherwise bleak life in the camps.

Hers is a story that centers around a little-known aspect of the war, and it is told here from a fresh perspective, that of a young girl facing unimaginable horror?and unexpected hope?as a prisoner in a Nazi labor camp.

This is fifteen-year-old Hanna Berkenski's journey from her family's tiny apartment in the Warsaw Ghetto, through the awful night she spends in a cattle-car with her mother and sister, to her three years as a violinist in the welcoming orchestra at Auschwitz.

The real horror begins as the train arrives at Auschwitz. Hanna's first impression is of a warm welcome because of the flowers and sunshine and music. She has been told she will be spending the next few weeks in a "work" camp until her family is reunited and relocated. Even the snowflakes make her feel a sense of relief...until she realizes they are not snowflakes at all, but ash.

Hanna is taken to Building 11, where the "welcoming" orchestra women are housed. Her red hair is shaved, her arm tattooed, and she is given a blue skirt, a white blouse, and a violin. She is also given a gray dress, which she wears when she is not performing. And then she spends three years in Hell.

?You are not giving them up. You are saving them. You have my word that I will see they are safe. At war?s end, I will reunite you. I promise.?

A Holocaust story unlike any you?ve read before.

When Yanusz Dov vows to protect the family of his Jewish friend, Kalman Gold during the Nazi occupation of Poland, he is drawn into a saga that spans three generations and three continents. Yanusz stages a daring rescue from a concentration camp, hides the escapees from relentless Nazi hunters, and risks his own family, church, and life in order to keep Kalman, his wife, and his twin children safe.

After betrayal and the cruel realities of the occupation shatter the family ties, one of the twins finds a new home in America, while the other is lost without a trace. Separated by thousands of miles, brother and sister struggle for survival, unaware that their fates are still bound together. Throughout it all, Yanusz must rely on courage and faith to repay his childhood debt and fulfill his lifelong promise.

The events in this story are timeless and will touch the heart of every reader.

"From the ashes of the holocaust, a gripping, powerful tale of love, loss, and redemption."

"Certainly, a masterpiece novel portraying dramatic, though authentic, events from the holocaust epoch that are brilliantly intertwined with fiction." -- New York Times best-selling author, Michael Levin

This book tells the stories of three child survivors of World War ll. One spent her childhood in England, the other two in Germany. Each of their stories is quite different. Pat was four-and-a-half when the war between Great Britain and Germany began on September 3, 1939, but it wasn?t until she was seven that her family life in England changed drastically. For Hilda and Ursula, both born in Berlin, their worlds turned upside down on January 30, 1933, when Hitler was elected Chancellor of Germany. Hilda would be seven four months later; Ursula had just had her seventh birthday. All three children survived the war for different reasons and in different locations. One escaped Germany days before war was declared, one barely lived through a bombing raid in England, while the third survived a concentration camp. As young children, all three had wonderfully happy childhoods, childhoods that changed suddenly and unexpectedly for each of them when they were seven.

The personal story of a young Jewish girl trapped in Nazi Germany. Separated from her younger sister, Edith and her mother witness the farce of the Red Cross visit to Terezin, escape the gas chambers of Auschwitz, and survive the labor camps of the Russian Front. This is a story of horror and miracles, and of triumph against all odds.

In 1939, as the Nazi occupation grew from threat to reality, the Jewish population throughout Europe faced heart-wrenching decisions—to flee and lose their homes or to go into hiding, hoping against all odds to avoid the fate of being discovered. Holocaust survivor Flory A. Van Beek faced this terrible choice, and in this poignant testament of hope she takes us on her personal journey into one of history's darkest hours.

Only a teenage girl when the Nazis invaded her neutral homeland of Holland, Flory watched the only life she had ever known disappear. Tearfully leaving her family, Flory tried to escape on the infamous SS Simon Bolivar passenger ship with Felix, the young Jewish man from Germany who would later become her husband. Their voyage brought not safety but more peril as their ship was blown up by Nazi planted mines, one of the first passenger ships destroyed by the Germans during World War II, sending nearly all of its passengers to a watery end. Miraculously, both Flory and Felix survived.

After recovering from their injuries in England, they returned to their homeland, overjoyed to be reunited with their families yet shocked to discover their beloved Holland a much-changed place. As the Nazi grip tightened, they were forced into hiding. Sheltered by compassionate strangers in confined quarters, cut off from the outside world and their relatives, they faced hunger and the stress of daily life shadowed by the ever-present threat of certain death. Yet they also discovered, with the remarkable and brave families who sacrificed their own safety to help keep Flory and Felix alive, a set of friends that remain as close as family to this day.

A tribute to family, faith, and the power of good in the face of disparate evil, this gripping account captures the terror of the Holocaust, the courage of those who risked their lives to protect their fellow compatriots, and the faith of those who, against all odds, managed to survive.