Generations Presentation by Susan Straus

My Mom’s Story: Child Survivor of the Holocaust

Susan Straus (she/her) is the daughter of Jewish Holocaust survivors Henry and Judy Straus. Having previously shared her father Henry’s story at the Oakmont Carnegie Library, she returns in to recount her mother Judy’s experiences: her family’s uprooting from Germany to the Netherlands, their deportation to Westerbork — a Nazi transit camp — in 1943, and their subsequent transfer to Theresienstadt, a concentration camp that the Nazis presented as a “model” Jewish settlement to deceive the outside world. Judy and her mother survived the war; Judy’s father, who was ultimately deported to Auschwitz, did not. Susan’s presentation includes video testimony, allowing the audience to hear Judy describe her experiences.