Testimonials

»I Sang to Survive. Memories of Rachov, Auschwitz and a new beginning in America«

Photo: Cover »I Sang to Survive«

Judith Schneiderman was born in 1928 into a Yiddish-speaking family that lived in what is today called Rachiw in the Carpathian region of Ukraine.  The town was originally called Rahó under the Autstro-Hungarian Empire and became a part of Czechoslovakia after the First World War before being given back to Hungary in 1939. After the German army occupied the country in 1944, the Jews in the area were deported to Auschwitz. Judith survived several Nazi concentration and extermination camps. It was singing, above all, which kept her strong. After the end of the war, she emigrated to America and her memoires were published there in 2009.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-08-6
Nominal charge: € 5,00
Available (only in German) from the 2 May at:



»I Wanted to Go Back Home to East Prussia! The Survival of a German Sinto«

Photo: Cover »I Wanted to Go Back Home«

Reinhard Florian was born near Insterburg in 1923. He was ostracised as a child for being a ›gypsy‹ and encountered violence after the National Socialists came to power in 1933. He was arrested in 1941 and survived deportation, several National Socialist concentration camps, gruelling forced labour, hunger and a death march. After the war, it was difficult for him to make a new life for himself in Germany. For years, illness and trauma prevented him from finding regular work. Florian received no compensation as a former forced labourer until the late 1990s. His memoirs provide an insight into the previously unknown history of the persecution of the Sinti from East Prussia. Their publication will coincide with the inauguration of the memorial to the Sinti and Roma of Europe Murdered under the National Socialist Regime, which will take place on 24 October 2012.
Click here to view the German version of the book.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-07-9
Token charge: € 5,00
Available (only in German) under:

»I’m called Nechama now. My life between Königsberg and Israel«

Picture: Cover »I’m called Nechama now. My life between Königsberg and Israel«

Nechama Drober (*1927) was born Hella Markowsky to a Jewish family in the East Prussian capital Königsberg. She witnessed the two mass deportations in summer 1942, during which she lost her closest friends, relatives and classmates. She also experienced the invasion of East Prussia by the Red Armym in 1945. Her father Paul was subsequently deported to Siberia, whilst her mother Martha and five year-old brother Denny starved to death. Hella Markowsky fled with her sister Rita via Lithuania to Kischinew, where they lived until emigrating to Israel in 1990.
Click here to view the German version of the book.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-06-2
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at: info[at]stiftung-denkmal.de.

»How I Survived«

Picture: Cover »How I Survived«

Jack (Idel) Kagan (*1929) grew up in Nowogródek in eastern Poland. His childhood came to an abrupt end with the outbreak of war in autumn 1939. After two years of Soviet occupation, the German occupation and mass murder of Jews started in 1941. Idel was one of around 120 prisoners in the ghetto who managed to escape through a tunnel they dug themselves and subsequently joined the Jewish Bielski partisans. This group saved the lives of over 1,200 Jews – something unique in the history of the Holocaust. Jack Kagan emigrated to London after the war. Since 1991 he has established several monuments in his home town, which is now part of Belarus.
Click here to view the German version of the book.


ISBN: 978-3-942240-05-5
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at: info[at]stiftung-denkmal.de

»The Birch Trees Stand Tall. Conversations with my Father Moshe«

Picture: Cover »The Birch Trees Stand Tall. Conversations with my Father Moshe«

Moshe Brezniak (1917–2003) relayed to his son Naphtali in detail the story of his survival during World War II in his home town, Polish Międzyrzec Podlaski (Mezritch). His flight began in August 1942, when the Hamburg Police Battalion 101 set up the largest transit ghetto of the Lublin district in Międzyrzec Podlaski, and he was able to, time and again, escape deportations and shootings. In May 1943, Moshe Brezniak was deported to the Majdanek concentration camp. He was a slave labourer in Auschwitz and later survived a death march. He emigrated to Palestine after the liberation in 1945. For the first time, the testimony of a survivor from Międzyrzec Podlaski has been published in German translation, telling the story of one of the central sites of the Holocaust – Jewish Mezritch.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-04-8
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at:

»Beyond Survival. From Breslau to Australia«

Picture: Cover »Beyond Survival. From Breslau to Australia«

Kenneth James Arkwright (*1929) was born as Klaus Aufrichtig in German Breslau. A branch of his Jewish family had lived in Silesia since the 16th century. Beginning 1943, Klaus Aufrichtig had to carry out forced labour in Breslau. In 1944, he was deported to a labour camp, but he managed to flee and go into hiding. In 1945, he returned to his home city of Breslau, however, a few weeks later he saw himself forced to leave for Erfurt. He began his studies in East Berlin and emigrated to Perth, Australia, via Paris in 1949, where he became a successful businessman.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-03-1
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at:

»Destined to Live. A Memoir«

Picture: 'Cover »Destined to Live. A Memoir«

Sabina Van Der Linden-Wolanski (1927–2011) was the only one of her family to survive the Holocaust in eastern Poland. She emigrated to Australia via now Polish Silesia and Paris in 1950, with only a diary and a handful of photographs to remind her of her childhood. Decades later, these unique documents became part of the exhibition at the Information Centre of the Memorial. On May 10, 2005, Sabina was a guest of honour and speaker and the opening of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Her autobiography testifies to her assertiveness and the doubts of a young woman in the face of violence and murder, and tells the story of a courageous new beginning as a wife, mother and businesswoman at the other end of the world.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-02-4
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at:

»End of Days in East Prussia. An Unspoken of Chapter of the Holocaust«

Picture: Cover »End of Days in East Prussia. An Unspoken of Chapter of the Holocaust«

January 1945. Hundreds of thousands in East Prussia have to flee from the Red Army. During this time, the SS chased at least 5,000 Jewish prisoners from Königsberg to the Baltic coast at Palmnicken. Only 15 people survived the death march and the massacre that followed – one of them was Maria Blitz from Cracow. 55 years later, now living in the US, she wrote down her story of persecution and imprisonment between 1939 and 1945 and her life story entitled ›My Holocaust‹.

The to-date unpublished text includes an historical explanatory note and further testimonies by eyewitnesses.

ISBN: 978-3-942240-01-7
Token charge: € 5.00
Available (only in German) at: