Holocaust survivors remember Thousands gather at D.C. museum

WASHINGTON – Hiding in a haystack, Sonia Goodman escaped the piercing bayonet blade by only half an inch. She recalls the moment as if it were yesterday, but this happened during World War II, when German Gestapo (secret state police) officers were searching for Jews.

Emotional and often painful memories like Sonia’s were shared Saturday and Sunday by thousands of other Holocaust survivors who had traveled to Washington, D.C., to gather for the 10th anniversary of the Holocaust Memorial Museum.

“Many local people have helped us,” said Olga, Sonia’s sister. “I wish I could have thanked some of them. They saved my life.”

Sonia and her sister grew up in Antwerp, Belgium. After Germany had invaded the small Western European nation in 1940, Belgium became a place where Jewish people were persecuted.

Their father was arrested in the streets of Antwerp and then deported. Many years later, Olga and Sonia found out that he had perished shortly after arriving at the death camp of Auschwitz. Their uncles and cousins underwent a similar fate.

“We felt like hunted animals,” recalls Olga. “After my father’s deportation, we knew we couldn’t stay any longer in Antwerp and decided to go to Brussels, where Belgian resistance fighters helped us to remain undiscovered.”

Olga and Sonia then moved to a small village near Bastogne, in southern Belgium, where they remained in safety until the war ended.

Today, Sonia, 74, lives with her husband, Robert, in Queens, New York, but they have a summer house on Mount Desert Island in Maine.

“The pinewoods remind me a lot of Belgium,” she said, referring to the Ardennes, a region marked by its gentle hills and pinewood trees, where both girls survived throughout the war.

Her husband paints in his studio while Sonia writes poetry. “Going to Maine in the summer has helped me in preserving my sanity,” she said.

Joining the two sisters was Rachel Goodman, 79, who traveled from Florida to attend the survivor’s weekend. She also lived in Antwerp and met Sonia and Olga earlier at the event. They spent the afternoon sharing their memories and stories of the days when they still lived in Belgium.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., paid tribute to nearly 7,000 Holocaust survivors from various states by organizing the two-day event.

Activities included a Survivor Village, where survivors and families were given the chance to reunite and meet with fellow survivors, and plenty of workshops where survivors were shown how to record their testimonies for posterity, among other things.

“This event is the culmination of our 10th anniversary year,” said Sara J. Bloomfield, museum director. “We are moving into a new generation, so our challenge is to make history as relevant and meaningful for the generations to come.”

Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel, who delivered the keynote address Sunday afternoon, embodies this center, according to Bloomfield.

Wiesel had said in the past that “a memorial unresponsive to the future is a violation of the past.” Bloomfield added that the museum tries to teach the lessons of the past by gathering witnesses of the past, which it did this weekend.