The Language of Shoah

Svetlana, Eva, Sergei.  Though they did not know each other during the war, they speak a common language – one forged in the furnace of the Shoah and tempered by Stalin’s persecutions, one that only a survivor can truly understand. 

Svetlana was sent to the ghetto when she was 19, along with her mother and her three small children.  As she watched helplessly, her mother was murdered.  Later, she was able to purchase a Russian passport and pass as a gentile.  Together with her children, she was sent to Germany to work and somehow managed to survive.

Eva remembers the pogroms, when she and others sat hidden away, silently praying they would escape death.  She recalls the time when a young mother strangled her own baby, for fear the crying infant would give away their hiding place. Like Svetlana, Eva was forced to watch the slaughter of her family. Eva escaped and joined the resistance.

Sergei grew up in Minsk.  When the Nazis invaded, he and his mother were herded into the ghetto. His mother’s work saved them from the first round of slaughter, and only by luck did Sergei avoid the next firing squad.  His mother did not.  Sergei escaped the ghetto and joined a group of partisans.  Few friends or family survived.

After 50 years, the silence has been broken. Svetlana, Eva and Sergei can now share their experiences with other survivors.  Thanks to the Warm Home Program, they meet together regularly — to speak, to cry and to embrace one another as their wounds slowly heal.