Guest speak­ers and artists Miriam Brysk and Helen Degen Cohen have some­thing in com­mon with my grand­mother; all of these women are Polish sur­vivors of the Holocaust.

On Feb. 24, Cohen pre­sented her Holocaust-themed poetry and Brysk pre­sented her art­work on the same topic. Listening to the women talk about the Nazis invad­ing Poland made me cry silently and reminded me of sto­ries my grand­mother has told me about her own expe­ri­ence dur­ing World War II.

Theresa Cwiek, my grand­mother, or “Busia” in Polish, was raised in Poland just like Brysk and Cohen.

The Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. In the win­ter of the fol­low­ing year, Busia was work­ing in a butcher shop when a Nazi entered. The sol­dier said some­thing to her in Polish that she could not com­pre­hend and slapped her across the face with a thick leather glove. She later lost her eye from this incident.

In 1941, Busia was taken pris­oner by Nazis and spent seven months in Liebenau, a deten­tion camp in Germany.

“We heard a lot of scream­ing,” said Theresa (Busia). “They were tor­tur­ing the Jews.”

All three of these women endured unimag­in­able hard­ships and wit­nessed things that should never be seen by human eyes. Fortunately, due to their strength and deter­mi­na­tion, they were able to reach America, Busia in 1943 and the two other women in later years, and sur­vive to tell their inspi­ra­tional sto­ries.
It’s easy for many of us to read facts and sta­tis­tics about the Holocaust, but the most impact comes from look­ing at indi­vid­ual sto­ries of human strength and sac­ri­fice. As Brysk said, “You have to look at the Holocaust not as six mil­lion, but as indi­vid­ual faces.”