Holocaust survivors share their stories with D-M

  • Published
  • By Senior Airmen Jacqueline Hawkins
  • 355th Fighter Wing Public Affairs
DAVIS-MONTHAN AIR FORCE BASE, Ariz. --  Six Holocaust survivors thought back to their days of the Holocaust with Airmen from D-M at the Officer's Club to educate them on what they had to go through to survive the hardships during those times.

"May the memory of the martyr of the saw ghetto guide us to fight injustice and enemy to value god's great gift of freedom and to respect those who fight honest to preserve it today," said Rabbi Sam Cohon.

One survivor, Lily Brull, who lived a normal life in Antwerp, Belgium, with her mother, father and sister before in 1940 when she was ten years old, things started to change.

"In those days you listened to the radio for the news and it was your sense of entertainment," she said. "You would listen to Hitler screaming his speeches and millions of people cheering him on. There was that feeling before anything had started that bad things where going to happen because that he was saying he was going to terminate every Jew and Europe and everywhere else."

Her family applied for Visas to get out the country but they where denied. With what had happened they had to get out of the country so they left for France hoping the French would be able to keep the German's out. They went from town to town, village to village, trying to use any kind of transportation that they could to get there. While going from place to place they have bombs falling from the sky at them.

Ms. Brull said, "The biggest fear would be getting separated from the family. While hiding in buildings back in a room the bombs would start in the middle of the night and you never knew what was going to happen."

The family made it to France and there was an American consult there and a ship to go to the United States. The family had to wait for their Visa to come through and finally they did.

"We got aboard a cargo boat with about 1,500 other refugees taking about three and half weeks with horrible conditions and not enough food for everyone. British solders fired at the ship and came on and took a group of nuns, which wasn't nuns at all they were Germans that were trying to bring documents and guns to set up camps on this side of the world," said Ms. Brull.

With these events it leads the boat off track to Spain where they would have their first meals in weeks. While eating the food someone had poisoned it and everyone was sick for about a week with no medical attention.

Finally leaving Spain and being able to come to America with only having the things on their back and no money, their uncle had read the story in an American paper and sent them a telegram with some money.

"I grew up a normal lifestyle with my family. I went to Hunter College, New York, the Michigan University, where I meet my husband and have three children and life has been good to me," said Ms. Brull.