Erika's Story

In 1995, the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II, Ruth Vander Zee and her husband were in Germany where they met Erika, a German Jew, and listened to her story. Between 1933 and 1945 six million Jews were killed. Starved, shot, burned, gassed. Erika survived. Born some time in 1944, Erika does not know exactly when or where. She does not know what her parents called her, or whether or not she had brothers or sisters. But she does know that when she was just a few months old, she was saved from the Holocaust. In a cattle car, on their way to death, Erika’s family threw her to life. She was thrown from the train, and taken to a woman who risked her life to care for this baby. She gave her a name, a birthdate, a home, food, clothes and life.