This Web site about the Holocaust has been created for the Hunter community by Hunter Alumnae who are Holocaust survivors.

We are a small group of women, perhaps no more than several dozen, who graduated from Hunter High School in the '40s and '50s. How many of us there are is not known, for it is only now at the start of the 21st century that we have identified ourselves and sought each other out. When it all happened we were children, perhaps younger than entering 7th graders. When we attended Hunter, wanting only to fit in, we carefully and deliberately kept our unique history from classmates and teachers.

One million of the six million Jews who perished in Hitler's Holocaust were children. We are children who survived. In sharing our Holocaust experiences with you, our aim is to bring a human dimension to historical events that are largely incomprehensible, to bring a name and a reality to a horrific period of 20th century history. We feel we can do this because we were there. In some respects we Hunter graduates are like you, the current students; but in other ways we were and will always be very different, because our Holocaust history has affected and continues to affect our lives and our relationships with family, colleagues and friends.

Sharing our experiences with each other, one common thread ran through all our accounts. Until recently, we did not consider ourselves survivors of the Holocaust, because we ourselves had not been inmates in any Nazi concentration camps, though close family members were. Yet, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington. D.C. and the Shoah Foundation consider all whose lives were disrupted by the Hitler regime survivors. It has taken us decades to accept and come to terms with our Holocaust childhood, and share it with our children, grandchildren and closest friends. Now we share it with you.

In our histories you will read that for being Jews, we were expelled from our schools and homes. We survived Kristallnacht, the infamous Night of the Broken Glass on November 9-10, 1938, and saw our fathers put in concentration camps. We managed to flee from Germany, and other Nazi-occupied countries, including Austria, Czechoslavakia, Holland and France. Edith Schleissner Nathan, June '49 graphically describes one such flight during which the family spent time in six European countries before finally reaching the U.S. While we eventually found refuge in America, many members of our close families did not. Cherished grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins perished. Their extermination haunts us to this day.

Hunterites Remember the Holocaust

Click on a title to read the personal history.  Or click here to begin to browse the testimonies.

Holocaust Survivors

The Second Generation, Children of Survivors

The Third Generation, Grandchildren of Survivors

Share Your Experiences

Are you a HCHS survivor of the Holocaust?  Or are you a child or descendant of survivors?   Or a descendant of someone who did not survive?  If you would like to share your story, email it to .   Please include your name and graduation year.  If you would prefer to have your story posted anonymously, indicate that as well. 

If you have related photos or documents, you may email those (jpg format preferred for images) to the webmaster, '84.

All comments or questions regarding this site are welcome. You may email private comments to the .

Links:

• Hunter College High School - Main Page:  http://www.hchs.hunter.cuny.edu
• Hunter College High School Alumnae/i Association:  http://www.hchsaa.org
• Resources for / about Holocaust Survivors

This site was edited by Eve Kanner Rosenzweig Kugler, Jan. '49 []
The webmaster is Mark Rosenzweig, '84 []

All content on this site is copyright © 2000-present by the various authors.   All rights reserved.