When many of us think about the Holocaust, we immediately think of the profound, painful loss of life. Millions of people died under some of the harshest conditions humanity has faced; a campaign of hatred against Jews, people of color, disabled people, Roma people, LGBTQ people, and more was waged for years by Adolf Hitler and his Nazi regime.
It can seem unfathomable, but somehow in all of that death, there was also life. While no one source has exact numbers, babies were born in concentration camps even as their parents were on the brink of death. Even more unbelievable is that some of those babies survived and went on to eventually have children of their own.
Many people who survived the Holocaust have no interest in revisiting Germany or any of the surrounding countries where the camps were built. But one woman recently wrote about what it was like to travel back to the site of her father's birth, the Leipzig-Schönefeld labor camp, alongside him — even though he never thought he would want to see it.
Samantha Herling wrote about the experience she shared with her father for Alma. She opens by sharing that both she and her father grew up on the Upper West Side in New York City. She was born there, and her father moved there after immigrating with his family at the age of 4.
Her father was born on March 23, 1945, at the Leipzig-Schönefeld labor camp in Leipzig, Germany. That wasn't the first camp his family had been forced into; his parents (Samuel and Fela) spent two years at the Skarżysko-Kamienna labor camp, where they conceived her dad. Her grandfather was then sent to Buchenwald, and her grandmother to Leipzig-Schönefeld. Her father never met his older sister, who was killed in the gas chambers by the Nazis at the age of 4 upon arrival.
She writes that growing up, she didn't know all the parts of her father's story. She began learning more about her father's journey and that of many Holocaust survivors, and she eventually began asking questions. After uncovering an article about her father that was published in 1958, one thing led to another, and her father ended up being invited to the 71st anniversary of the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp.
"At first, my dad was apprehensive; he vowed his entire life to never visit Germany, for obvious reasons. But with some convincing, I got him to agree. It is not often you get an all-expense paid trip to learn more about your family’s history and he wanted me to be his plus-one."
— Samantha Herling
The two traveled alongside 30 other survivors and their family members. At the end, they were greeted by Anja Kruse and Sebastian Schönemann, who run the small museum at the camp. Samantha and her father ended up learning more than they ever thought possible about his family's experience at the camp, the details of which you can read by visiting the original story on Alma.
