Joseph Werk shares his story of escaping Poland during WWII and his involvement with the IDF’s volunteer service Sar-El.
A fortune teller predicted Morris Waitz would die in World War II. Now 100, he says he “beat that by a little bit.”
“Listening is much more important than speaking.” Participants in Moment’s Wisdom Project, which highlights stories of those lucky enough to have lived long Jewish lives, share their words of wisdom and pieces of advice as the year comes to an end.
My aunt couldn’t stop hugging me. I didn’t remember ever having been hugged in my life. I remember thinking, “This is kind of nice.”
Confidence also comes from the people who trust you; in my case, my parents, friends, bosses, students—they had confidence in me.
My parents never spoke “Jewish” at home—they wanted their kids to be American. But the year the survivors lived with us, I learned Yiddish in teaching them English.
Edith Everett’s days continue to be filled with endeavors to repair the world and she encourages others to do the same.
“There was no food, no heat. My mother scavenged for wood from bombed and abandoned houses to get heat. Eventually, the Iron Curtain closed the country. My parents felt that we had no future there. We were considered too bourgeois.”
Born in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia, in 1931, Erika Hassan survived the Holocaust in the mountains before emigrating to the United States in 1946.
