Against All Odds

Holocaust Survivors: Examples in Resilience on the occasion of Yom Ha Shoah
Adapted April 15, 2026  

Historical background:                          

• 1932: the National Socialist Workers Party (Nazi) receives the majority of votes in Germany.
• January 30, 1933: President Paul von Hindenburg names Adolf Hitler, leader of the Nazi Party, chancellor – head of government.
• 1934: Hindenburg dies. Hitler declares himself, the Leader (Führer) of Germany. Consequences:
  • The Nazi party is the sole political party 
  • The free press is abolished
• Between September 1935 and November 1935: Nuremberg racial laws are passed:
  • Jews lose their German citizenship
  • A “Jew” becomes someone who had one or two Jewish grandparents
  • Thousands of converts from Judaism, Catholic clergy and Protestant ministers, are classified as “Jews.”
  • Jews, Blacks, and Gypsies are not allowed to marry “Germans.”
  • Individuals seeking to marry are required to obtain a government-issued certificate verifying their eligibility for marriage.

• September 1,1939: Germany invades Poland marking the beginning of WWII.
• 1942: most of Europe is under Nazi occupation. 
• Spring 1945: Germany surrenders.
• Result of WWII:
  • Estimated 17 million people murdered. 
  • Including 6 million Jews and 1.5 million Jewish children. 
  • Of the 9.5 million Jewish adults, 35%-43% survived. 
  • Of the 1.5 million Jewish children, 6%-11% survived.

Survivors had lost everything – homes, properties, families. They were starving, scared, homeless and penniless. The trauma they suffered during those years had a major physical and psychological impacted their lives. They had nowhere to go. Many gathered in Displaced Persons’ Camps set up by the Allies in Germany, Austria and Italy. The total number of DP camp inhabitants reached a peak of some 250,000. The last camp closed in 1959.

According to Merriam-Webster Dictionary, “resilience” is the capability to recover from stress and the ability to adjust to misfortune.

Resilient people face reality with staunchness, make meaning of hardship instead of crying out in despair, and improvise solutions from thin air

They make the most of what they have, putting objects to unfamiliar uses. In the concentration camps, for example, resilient inmates knew to pocket pieces of string or wire whenever they found them. These might later become useful to fix a pair of shoes, perhaps, which in freezing conditions might make the difference between life and death.

After liberation, Holocaust survivors are examples of resiliency. With unbelievable strength and willpower, they started to rebuild their lives and families. 

The story of survivors is one of people who are living proof of the indominable will of human beings, their tremendous capacity for hope. It is a story of just how remarkable people can be. 

In the DP camps, Jews set up:

• Social
• Cultural, religious, educational programs
• Soup kitchens
• Vocational workshops for the younger ones with no marketable skills
• Kindergartens and makeshift schools were set up for the few child survivors
• A military training for those heading for Palestine

Researchers estimate that a quarter of Israeli soldiers fighting during the Israeli War of Independence were Holocaust survivors. There is a monument in Israel commemorating Holocaust survivors who fought and fell during that war.

One of the main priorities for survivors was to reestablish families, to have children and raise a new generation of Jews. The first year following liberation saw six to seven weddings a day, and sometimes even 50 in one week.

After a few months, there were thousands of pregnant women in the camps. Between 1946-1948, the highest birthrate in the world was that in those DP camps. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin writes: “What makes Jews remarkable is not that they believe in God after Auschwitz but that they have children after Auschwitz, that they affirm life and the future.”

Life in the camps, however, was temporary; most survivors emigrated as soon as possible, most to Israel, about one third to the US, and several thousand settled in Europe, including in Germany.

After resettling in their new homeland, adult and teens survivors did quite well. Some became multimillionaires; others built successful careers.  

Some examples:

Simone Veil, born in Nice, France in 1927, deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and Bergen-Belsen, became French Minister of Health, the first female minister in the French government, the first woman president of the European Parliament and under-secretary of Social and Urban Issues. She died June 30, 2017.

 Thomas Lantos born February 1, 1928, in Budapest, Hungary, found refuge in a safe house operated by Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who used his official status and visa-issuing powers to save thousands of Hungarian Jews. Lantos is the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress. He died February 11, 2008.

Simon Wiesenthal, the famous “Nazi Hunter” and author, survivor of German concentration camps, spent his life tracking down war criminals and fighting for human rights. Born December 31 in Buchach, Ukraine, died in Vienna, September 20, 2005.

Many children survived by being taken in by righteous gentiles. They were traumatized when, after liberation family members came to reclaim them. Many did not even recognize their own  parents.

Despite it all, child survivors also adapted; they went on with their lives, as if nothing had happened: they went to school, college, got married, raised a family. Many became famous and important in their respective fields. For some, the past did not catch up for them until adulthood.

Examples: 

Naphtali Lau-Lavie, born in Poland in 1926, was among 904 boys liberated by the Soviets in Buchenwald concentration camp in October 1945, together with his brother Israel Lau. 

Both emigrated to Palestine July 1945. Lavie became a correspondent, diplomat and public figure. He worked for Moshe Dayan, Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Shamir and was Israeli consul-general in New York City. He died December 6, 2014, in Jerusalem.

Rabbi Israel Lau, Naphtali’s younger brother, born on June 1, 1937, in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland, was six years old when liberated from Buchenwald. He immigrated to Palestine with his brother. From 1993 until 2003 he served as Chief Rabbi of Israel. In 2008, Lau was appointed chairman of Yad Vashem.

Eliezer “Elie” Wiesel, another child survivor of Buchenwald was born September 30, 1928, in Transylvania. Wiesel was a professor, political activist, author, and chair of the President’s Commission on the Holocaust which established the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. In 1986, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. He died July 2, 2016.

Another example of resiliency was my father, Salomon Lederberger, born August 30, 1909, in Zabno, Poland.

He, my mother and I survived only because of his ingenuity and guts. He got forged Aryan ID for my mother, a forged birth certificate for me and arranged for the two of us to be smuggled out of the ghetto. We ended up living in Warsaw. 

In 1943, my father escaped from the ghetto and joined us. 

On August 1, 1944, the Polish underground staged an uprising which was crushed in October, and Warsaw was systematically blown up house by house.

The surviving civilian population, including us, was marched to a transit camp in Pruszków. 

Mothers and young children were released, and my father, feigning dysentery, escaped from the transport to the hospital, and we were reunited.

We found shelter with a Polish farmer living with his wife and two daughters in a two-room farmhouse and remained with them until liberation.

After liberation, Spring 1945, Father found watchmaking tools in the ruins of a shop in Sopot, in the North of Poland. He started a watch repair and optical business and was very successful.

Two years later, in 1947, the Communist Party came into power. My father, the “big capitalist,” was being harassed and extorted by the Polish equivalent of the IRS. He was advised by friends “run and disappear.”

He got Polish passports, bribed the Belgian Vice-Consul to receive the needed visas, abandoned the store and all its content and we escaped to Brussels, Belgium.

Before leaving Poland, Father had changed his zlotys into English pounds as they were more valuable. After arriving in Brussels, he found out they were all forgeries. He had to start all over again to make a living. 

As Belgium would not give foreigners work permits, he commuted weekly to Frankfurt, Germany – occupied by the US army – to start a new successful business, twice within two years.

He died June 18, 1991, in St. Louis, Missouri.

I would like to end with this adapted poem, written by survivor Alexander Kimel.

The Creed of a Holocaust Survivor

I do believe, with all my heart,
In the natural Goodness of Man.
Despite the blood and destruction,
Brought by one man, trying to be God,
In the Goodness of Man, I do believe.

I do believe, with all my heart,
That God created a beautiful world,
The sun and the trees, the flowers and the bees.
And the best way to serve God, is
To enjoy the fruits of His labor of love.
Despite the painful memories from the past,
In the joyful celebration of life, I do believe.

I believe with all my heart,
That the Messiah and the Kingdom of Heaven will come;
When man will conquer his destructive urge,
And learn how to live in harmony with nature and himself.
When all the preachers of hate will be silenced,
And man will become his brother’s keeper.
When man will stop killing man, in the name of God,
And nation will not lift weapons against nation.
When it will be, I do not know, but
Despite all the signs to the contrary.
In the dawn of a Better World, I do believe.

Please leave your comments below. 

Read more by Felicia Graber.