Eighty years after the Holocaust occurred, 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Ruth Millman connects with high school students by sharing her story. On Monday, Jan. 27, members of 2GNJ, Hellen Schlam, Ellie Breslow and Paula Cohen, came to the West Essex auditorium to share their organization’s goal and introduce Millman to freshmen and juniors.
2GNJ is an organization made up of children of Holocaust survivors whose goal is to keep their relatives’ memories alive. It is dedicated to providing information to enhance awareness about the worldwide effects of hate. They strongly believe that education is a force that can address intolerance, promote respect and affect positive change.
Millman came to the U.S. when she was 11-years-old and was born in Warsaw, Poland. She grew up with her father, mother and older sister in a very large, wealthy family with around 87 relatives outside her immediate family. Sadly, all of her extended family members were murdered but one. During the talk, Millman shared her experience of being moved to a Jewish ghetto barricaded by barbed wire, forcing Jews to live in two bedroom apartments with several other families. As a young child in the Ghetto, she was stepping over dead bodies and watching people being beaten or murdered.
After bribing Nazi guards, her father managed to get her and her mother out to hide in a basement for four years but had to send Millman’s sister to become a nun to save her life. Her mother was married off to a Christian man for three months where she “became” Catholic. Ruth started going by the new name Tereasa and was attending church every day. When this marriage ended, they had nowhere left to go and had to learn how to steal food and live on the streets. It was not long before the two were caught and sent to the Lintz Labor Camp in 1943.
In the labor camp, her mother worked an 18-hour workday making guns for the Germans. Soon after they arrived, Millman fell sick and was refused medication. Her mother and four other women wrapped Millman in blankets and stole shears from the kitchen, cutting a hole in the gate of the camp. They escaped without anyone noticing and boarded a train with no destination.
Arriving in Italy, they were taken in by a group of Partisans until the Americans came and liberated them. Millman described how the Americans shouted “You’re free” and threw Hershey bars and cans of peaches to the people on the streets.
“It’s the most wonderful thing that I could ever remember,” Millman said.
Later they reunited with her father and sister, moving to New York and restarting their lives. Millman and her father escaped the mental illness caused by trauma, but unfortunately, her mother and sister did not. Despite years of therapy and living in the United States, they never fully recovered from the horrors they endured. Moving to America, her father was very passionate about being faithful to the country that took them in.
“He told us, ‘This country took us in, I want you to speak English and eat American food,’” Millman said. “We want to give back to this country that welcomed us.”
After trying her hardest not to be Jewish, she finally gave in to her mother’s wishes and embraced her culture. She said that Hitler took away her childhood, as she didn’t learn how to read until she was twelve-years-old, and didn’t have any friends or any normal childhood experiences. She is now blessed with three children and six grandchildren, taking her life back from Hitler.
“He did not win, I won,” Millman said.