I Lived to See Liberation

Friday, July 19, 2024

Featured Guest: Holocaust Survivor Rebecca Siegel

Holocaust survivor, Rebecca Siegel was born on November 23, 1929 in Amsterdam, Netherlands, and spent her disrupted childhood in Amsterdam. She still carries memories of the invasion of Holland by Nazi Germany in 1940, as well as her father’s activities helping Jewish refugees from Poland and Germany.

Rebecca recalls being forced to leave her elementary school for a Jewish school in June 1941 and forced to relocate to a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam. As conditions for Jews under the Nazi occupation grew worse, her family was deported to Westerbork in September 1942 and then deportation to Bergen-Belsen, as the terrible conditions worsened; her father was murdered while in Bergen-Belsen. Rebecca & family were transported by cattle car in April 1945 to an unknown destination; abandoned while on the train by Nazis.

A short time later her family was liberated by American soldiers, as they returned to Amsterdam and immigrated to the United States in 1951.