Mara Ginic's Fortunate Escape

Streetcar in Belgrade bearing the sign: "Forbidden to Jews." Belgrade, Yugoslavia, 1941-1942

Mara Ginic (now Kraus) was born in Zagreb, Yugoslavia in 1925. When she was three or four years old she moved with her grandparents to Osijek, Slavonia. When she was five years old her parents divorced and her mother moved to Belgrade, but she stayed with her father and grand parents in Osijek until she was eight years old, when they also moved to Belgrade. After her father re-married, Mara lived with him and her step-mother.

In April 1941, a few weeks after Hitler's troops occupied Belgrade, Mara and her father escaped with the help of her Catholic and ethnic German mother. See Mara's Escape

Miriam Eshel's Journey

View Miriam (Rot) Eshel in a larger map

 Miriam Eshel (maiden name: Rot) is a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Czechoslovakia. In the map above I trace out her journey both during and after the Holocaust. She is the last surviving member of her family. Her entire family perished during the Holocaust except her and one younger brother, however he was killed in later years during military service in Israel. 

During the Holocaust Miriam moved around several times. She experience both ghetto life and concentration camp life and was lucky to survive a brutal death march near the end of the war. I found that by mapping out her journey, I was able to better understand and grasp the distances she had to travel during this time. Even though I do not know what exact routes she would have taken to get to these places, just the "bird's eye view" really put the distance into scope. She had to travel almost 200 miles (probably more, given that her route would not have been a straight line) in a crowded, barely breathable cattle car from Munkacs, Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz in Poland. Some months later she was transferred to a work camp in Stutthof camp. While her story doesnt say how she got there, my speculation is that it was again by crowded cattle car. This journey was twice as long as the first.

Another thing that blew my mind so to say was her journey from Stutthof, Poland to Bramberg, Germany. From a bird's eye view this was more than 450 miles! And she had to make this journey by foot in the middle of winter with barely any food. This was during the death march and was was 1 of 100 out of 1000 who survived. This journey is like walking from Chicago, Illinois to Memphis, Tennessee with barely any food or rest. I think it is safe to save that her survival is nothing short of a miracle.

A photograph taken in the Munkacs ghetto of Miriam and her family. Miriam is the older daughter (top right side)

In 1945 Miriam was liberated by the Russian army, but her journey was not over yet. However, her living conditions dramatically improved. After liberation Miriam was reunited with her brother and they wanted to leave Europe. Because Miriam and her brother were just kids and had no money they couldn't get certificates to places like the US or England and technically not even Israel. But Miriam found a group to help her and her brother get to Israel, but it was not easy. What I found interesting about this journey, after the Holocaust, was not so much the distance, but all the places she had to jump around to before getting to her intended destination. As you can see from the map Miriam moved around twice as much or more than she did during the Holocaust. What is interesting is that this movement wasn't caused by the fact that she had moved around a few times during the Holocaust and couldn't settle in one intended area, but rather that to get to the place she wanted to be (Israel), she had to endure the sort-of politics of getting those to get her and her brother there. They were often told either to wait or to go somewhere else for an wait there. Miriam didn't even step foot on Israeli soil until late 1947, more than 4 years after she had been liberated by the Russian army. 

Overall, I think that mapping Miriam's story really enabled me to put event to a place and gave me a spacial understanding of the events that occurred. To me, personally, I think this is a better way to learn about the Holocaust overall, because it is not just facts or a story from a book, but now there is some really physicality to the facts, to this story.  Not only is there a visual map that I can look at, but there is now a mental map in my own head, which I think will help commit this story to memory.

Miriam and her husband, Jacob, during their 50th wedding anniversary in 2003

Lore Schneider and her Father's Journey

View Lore Schneider and her father in a larger map

Lore’s aunt and her family lived in Washington D.C. and they agreed to sign affidavits for Lore and her parents. The family immigrated to the United States in 1934. During Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938, the synagogue in Bochum was destroyed. Once the war began, Lore’s father spent much of his free time trying to get affidavits for the other members of their family that had remained in Germany. He succeeded in rescuing several of them. Others, however, perished in camps or went into hiding for the duration of the war.

In the meantime, Lore worked as a “government girl” during the war, working in the U.S. Department of the Interior while attending night classes at George Washington University. After the war ended, her father worked for the prosecution team at the Nuremberg War Crimes trials. Lore spent her adult life teaching secondary school and adult education. She has volunteered at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum for many years.

Henry Sperling's Journey

 

Henry Sperling (real name Hershel Sperling) is a Polish Jew that survived through eight concentration camps all before the age of eighteen. In his map I showcase the major moves of his life, in particular during the Holocaust. Sperling is the only surviving member of his family and had a very difficult time dealing with the Holocaust for the rest of his life. 

 

Sperling had an interesting journey from his first ghetto in his hometown of Czestochowa, Poland to his final days in Glasgow, Scotland. After the Holocaust Sperling he had a difficult time settling down and spent time in different countries. I found it interesting to see his difficulty in finding a place to live and a job to keep after the Holocaust. It is clear from the 20-page testimonial he wrote after his experiences in the camps and from his friends’ and family’s responses that he was never able to forget his experience and that it affected the rest of his life. He spent time in Europe post-1945 but was not able to keep a job and then moved from place to place until he finally settled in Glasgow, Scotland. 

What I found most remarkable about his story was the fact that due to the horror he experienced in the Holocaust he was not able live a "normal" life afterwards, mentally or geographically. Through this class we've learned each survivor deals with their trauma in their own unique way, and while it is logical, it is just upsetting to learn that his memories had so impacted his life. To know that the actions of strangers for three years can have such an impact on someone for more than forty years. He was left with nothing after the Holocaust, no family, no home, no money and it was difficult for him to make his new life. I think part of the reason he did not stay in Central Europe is the fact that his home was ruined and that he no longer had anyone keeping him there. His childhood was gone and his teenage years were tainted with horror. Only once he built a family did his "geographic life" become more stable.

By putting Henry Sperling's story on a map it allowed for me to see it in a different context. Seeing his overall story and the contrast between the volume of movement during 1942-1945 and from 1945-1989 was very interesting and helped me to visualize and better understand his journey. He covered many more miles after the Holocaust but went to many more places during the Holocaust. To actually see the movement he experienced during his teenage years and to imagine even the movement in my own life is difficult enough, let alone to think about the harrowing, traumatic experiences he went though. By seeing Sperling's story through a new medium it helped me to more completely understand his journey and some of the affects one may experience by being forcefully displaced and moved around so many times and at such a young age. 

See Henry Sperling's Journey

Source: Treblinka Survior by: Mark S. Smith

Conclusion

This project allowed us to very easily see the difference in four survivors’ stories. We wanted to pick the stories at random in part to see how this would turn out just by chance. We were hoping for different stories, different camps, and different maps. And thankfully, those are the results we found. The stories of Mara Ginic, Henry Sperling, Lore Schneider and Miriam Eshel all began in Europe and then took a very unique path. Miriam and Henry spent time in Auschwitz and also briefly lived in Israel while Mara and Lore both escaped the Holocaust but in very different ways. We think that as a response to being displaced and losing your sense of community at such a young age reflects your search for a “home” and for finding yourself for the rest of your life. Miriam, Mara and Henry spent time searching for a place to settle down in after the Holocaust. Lore on the other hand, was more geographically stable once she found her place in the United States. All four stories tell the tale of young adults affected by the Holocaust. In our examples, you are able to see the effects (geographically and/or mentally) this horror had on them for the rest of their lives. Each had their own way of dealing with the tragedy, be it to work at the U.S. Holocaust Museum or to end one’s own life

By presenting their stories through a map it allows for the audience to visually see where the stories coincide and where they differ. It allows for the audience to see the overlap rather than to just hear about it. For us, it made each story more personal since it created a visual representation of their constant movement. It was very interesting to see how each survivor we chose had a different story and yet a similar enough theme. The Holocaust impacted their life, forever and always, and it not only impacted their thoughts and their nightmares but it affected how they related to other people and how they built relationships within a community. It changed what “home” meant because for all of them since they grew up not having one. This assignment gave us the opportunity to discover more of the aftermath impacts on the survivors and to see how one story is not representative of the Holocaust, nor do a few stories make one unifying voice. Each and every survivor is unique and each and every survivor has handled their post-1945 life differently. Not only can you learn from hearing their story but with this project you can also see a visual representation through their map.

Several studies have confirmed that geographic maps can facilitate the recall of related text, a phenomenon called the "temporal contiguity effect." *(See footnote) This way of learning information improves recall of facts, especially for visual learners. However, when learning about the Holocaust specifically, it's important to note the possibility of trivializing the emotional aspects of the historical events. While we feared that this way of learning about Holocaust stories could depersonalize Holocaust learning, we in turn felt for the most part a heightened connection with these individuals' stories, as we followed their paths on the individual level instead of considering the events as collective history.  When we presented the story of Mara Ginic to the class, they as well responded that they felt more emotionally connected to her story because they were able to see and imagine the distance she traveled just in order to live. Our conclusion therefore indicates that "mapping the Holocaust" can and did succeed in helping us learn the facts of Holocaust stories without trivializing the linked emotional learning.


*(Crooks, Steven, David White, Sribhagyam Srinivasan, and Qingfu Wang. "Temporal, but Not Spatial, Contiguity Effects While Studying an Interactive Geographic Map." Journal of Educational Multimedia and Hypermedia, 17.2 (2008): 145-169.