Description
Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1947, Susan Silverman met her husband, Harry, at school when they were both twelve years old. Harry was born in Antwerp, Belgium, where his parents, Abraham (Abe) and Blima (Beatrice) Silberman (Silverman), survived the Holocaust by hiding with a Christian family. Abraham and Blima met and married in their home shtetl of Kanczuga, Poland, where Blima worked as a seamstress and dressmaker and Abraham worked as a furniture upholsterer and violinist. The couple fled by train to Belgium in 1939, avoiding a massacre of the majority of the Kanczuga Jewish community by the Einsatsgruppen when Germany swept into the Carpathian mountains. After the German army invaded Belgium, Blima and Abraham were separated when Abraham was sent to a forced labor camp. After escaping a transport bound for Auschwitz, Abraham made his way back to Antwerp where he was miraculously reunited with Belima. The couple immigrated to the United States in 1948. After growing up together, Harry and Susan married, had a daughter, Micah, and son, Alan, and eventually settled in Georgia, where Susan taught elementary school and Harry worked in the insurance industry. They were married for 38 years, until Harry’s death in 2005.
Citation
Susan Silverman Interview, 2020-08-06, Legacy Series Oral History Program, 2013-, KSU/14/05/03/001, Museum of History and Holocaust Education, Kennesaw State University.
Rights
The digital reproductions on this site are provided for research consultation and scholarly purposes only. To request permission to publish, reproduce, publicly display, broadcast, or distribute this material in any format outside of fair use please contact the Museum of History and Holocaust Education or the Kennesaw State University Archives.
Identifier
ksu-14-05-03-001-01015
Format
video/mp4
