In the video, "Survivors' Return to Life - Part 1", ISHS staff member Sheryl Ochayon presents the story of the survivors, from the moment of liberation to their experiences searching for family members and loved ones. Ms. Ochayon discusses the magnitude and complexity of liberation as a bittersweet moment for most survivors, their attempts to return home and try and locate relatives - often all gone - and the postwar anti-Jewish attacks, dilemmas, and hardships. The materials discussed in this video are available on our website and in teaching units produced by the ISHS.
Sheryl Silver-Ochayon is a staff member at the International School for Holocaust Studies, Yad Vashem
- Part 1: Survivors' Liberation and Return to Life
- Part 2: Liberated but Not Free
- Part 3: What Now? Where To?
This is the first of a two-part video dealing with the topic of liberation and return to life. For Part 2, click here.
Further pedagogical considerations
- Contextualize the tragedy of the Holocaust within time - accentuate that for survivors, the “story” doesn’t end with the end of World War II.
- Raise the immediate dilemmas survivors faced after the War: Can we carry on living? Where to go? Can we find meaning in survival? etc.
- Highlight this initial postwar period as the beginning of the process of grappling with the future.
Teaching aids
- Jewish Self-Help in Warsaw
- The smuggling of food into Warsaw Ghetto
- From Ringelblum’s Diary: As the Ghetto is Sealed Off, Jews and Poles Remain in Contact. June,1942
- From the Diary of Stanislaw Adler on the Closing of the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw
- The Dilemma Of Jewish Self Help
- Ghettos in Nazi Occupied Europe 1939-1944
- The Anguish of Liberation and the Surviving Remnants
- The Anguish of Liberation and Return to Life - Teaching the Legacy
