Reflecting on the past’s most disturbing moments may actually be the solution to never allowing history to repeat itself.
That’s according to a Holocaust survivor who shared her stories of survival Tuesday at Letterkenny Army Depot, in Franklin County.
Trudy Klein Gumbers, 77, of Elkins Park, recalls a day she’ll never forget. She says, “How would you feel is terrorists, like the Nazis, came to you and said, get outta here, we don’t want you anymore.”
On Holocaust Remembrance Day, Trudy says it’s her duty to share her story of survival. It started in 1938 when she was 18 months old, in Vienna, Austria.
She says, “We were saved so we could tell the story of what happened, so perhaps the children of the future will be able to take a new course in their lives.”
Trudy says it’s still hard to understand world events like those happening now in Ukraine. She says Jews were told to register. It was similar to what happened to her family nearly 60 years ago.
She says, “Austria was annexed by Hitler.”
But she says there’s hope history will never repeat itself. “”We didn’t have the communication, the web, the instant news. Now we’ve got to use the camera, use the news to make people aware.”
Trudy said her grandparents died in the Holocaust. He dad was seized by the Scotland Yard and she and her mom were shipped to the Isle of Man, a camp near Ireland. In 1942, her family was released and eventually they moved to the United States.