My name is Roy Kouski. As a young boy, I joined the Boy Scouts and later played high school football. Little did I know how that would prepare me for my life as an American soldier. I joined the army late in World War II. After basic training, I boarded a troop ship and took the same route to Liverpool that my dad had taken as a young soldier when he was sent overseas. I eventually got to France, where I became an infantry replacement, which meant I took the place of someone who had been injured or killed. When volunteers were requested to serve with the 82nd Airborne, no one came forward....

David Wolnerman was born in 1927 in Modrzejow, Poland. Hannah, David's mother, gave birth to him on the kitchen floor of a two room home. His father had a humble job selling used burlap bags in the village. Abraham, David's brother, and his sisters, Bluma and Gertrude, enjoyed playing soccer with a ball made from their old socks. They were happy. There were both Jews and non-Jews living there and as the war broke out, life got more and more difficult for the Jews. Anti-Semitism was a problem and as Nazi soldiers came often, violence increased. Soldiers came looking for Jewish works so at age...

I was born Szlamek Rzeznik in Poland in the mid 1930s. My big Jewish family affectionately called me Sammy. I was the youngest in the family and dearly loved by Mom, Dad, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I felt very special. My father was a good and honest man with an important job. He was a scribe and spent hours sitting with writing instrument in hand, painstakingly writing the Torah (the five books of Moses). I loved to play, chase chickens, and have tickle fights-the same things children all around the world love to do. My siblings told me scary stories, and my...

In 1940, nineteen year old Jack Welner's boyhood city was transformed and so was Jack. Nazis took a slum area of Poland's second largest city, Lodz, and surrounded it with barbed wire. They forced 160,000 Jews inside. Jack, his brother Shmulek, sisters Henia, Fela and Hanka, mother, and nephew Sevek, were locked inside the prison-like Lodz Ghetto. Some survived; most did not. Over a hundred people died each day of starvation. Others died from disease. Jack recalls being given leaves from red beets to eat. No beets, just leaves. His mother added salt to the leaves and fried them. They would...

I was born Frieda Ella van Hessen on April 24, 1915, in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. My mother had a beautiful soprano voice, which she inherited from her father. I adored her and my father too. Before the war, we loved to sing and my brothers and I gave many live home concerts together. These were "cool" events in those days; they were called "home concerts." I also made many live broadcasts. My own career started with singing the role of Mimi in the opera La boheme for Avro, Radio Holland and with concert performances. The Nazi disaster ended it. My last performance was as soloist at concert...

Fritzi Lorber was born on November 23, 1923 in Vienna, Austria. He enjoyed life in this fine city until his teenage years. In March of 1938, when Fritzi was only fourteen years old, tanks and trucks rolled through the streets. He saw the Nazi soldiers storm into his city. The soldiers were the Sturmabteilung or SA, the original paramilitary wing of the Nazi party. Their nickname was "brownshirts," and their uniforms looked very expensive to Fritzi. The soldiers in brown shirts were intimidating and very frightening to the Jewish boy.

If there were an official position known as "The Holocaust Expert," Ida Kramer would hold that title hands down. For over thirty years, Ida was the Quad Cities voice of Holocaust information for schools, civic groups and the community at large. Ida was born in Philadelphia to Jewish immigrants. Her father's twin sister did not immigrate to the USA and perished in the Holocaust as did many other family members. Little Ida was four when her baby sister was born. Roz and Ida lived with their parents in an area of town called Strawberry Mansion, named for a restaurant famous for serving...