Miracle Child: The Story of a Holocaust Survivor in her Own Words

It has been almost 80 years since the end of the Holocaust. Today, there are fewer survivors who can tell their stories about the Nazi atrocities. Hanna Wechsler is one of these amazing people.

It took many years before Hanna could talk about her experience. Born in 1936 in a small town in Poland to a Jewish family, she was a young girl when the Nazis tore her and her parents from their lives.  When the Germans invaded Poland, the family hid, first in a barn with the help of a Polish family. After hiding for a short while, they lived in a Nazi controlled ghetto and escaped to Hungary before being captured and transported to Auschwitz at the age of six.

She survived that ordeal, as did her parents, and emigrated to Israel in 1948. She studied at Tel Aviv University, met her husband Harry, and moved to the United States in 1968.

Hanna became a teacher, and taught Hebrew at Congregation B’nai Israel in Emerson for 40 years. After her husband died in 2011, she became a public speaker. She has given testimony to the Shoah Foundation,  spoken at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Manhattan and to hundreds of adults and school children about her Holocaust experiences. Her memoir, In Spite of It All, tells about how, even in the face of adversity, one can persevere and prevail. Hanna writes: “In Auschwitz, surviving for a day was like surviving for a lifetime.”

Despite the horrors that Hanna experienced, being a witness has been her life calling.

On International Holocaust Remembrance Day (observed on January 27), come to hear Hanna Wechsler’s unique, courageous and uplifting story — how she survived Auschwitz and went on to thrive and make an impact on others. She is committed to helping to ensure that her story, and that of the other survivors, is not forgotten and that history will remember the lives of those who suffered.