January 27, 2025 / 10:24 AM EST / CBS Boston
BOSTON – Monday is Holocaust Remembrance Day, marking 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi concentration camp. In Massachusetts, two Holocaust survivors said their experience has never left them.
Ceremonies are taking place in Poland on Monday, which will likely be the last major observance many survivors will be able to attend. The theme for this year’s remembrance is “For a Better Future.”
Hundreds of Holocaust survivors live in the Greater Boston area.
Holocaust Remembrance Day
Tania Lefman helped save her mother during the Holocaust. Her sister and young niece were killed at Auschwitz.
“I fell to the sergeant’s feet and I cried. I said ‘You know what? I am an only child. Kill me first before you kill my mom because that’s all I’ve got,'” Lefman said.
Many Holocaust survivors say they feel an urgency to tell their stories now more than ever.
“I never forget. There’s not one day that I forget,” 94-year-old Holocaust survivor Magda Bader from Chestnut Hill said. “It’s still very much part of me after 80 years. We had all kinds of restrictions not to walk without a yellow band or a yellow star. And then we had to leave our home.”
Holocaust survivors in Massachusetts
Bader recalled her arrival at Auschwitz as a young teen and the frantic separation from her parents overseen by Dr. Josef Mengele, dubbed the “Angel of Death.”
“We never heard about what Auschwitz was. We had to move very fast. They made it sound like we will see each other soon, but they ordered us to move very fast,” Bader said. “That’s when I let my mother’s hand go, and I ended up going with my three sisters. And that’s the last time that I saw my parents, and my sister who was a baby.”
She and her sisters bravely escaped as the Nazi camp broke down in chaos in 1944. She later came to the U.S., spent her career as an art teacher, and built a loving family.
Lefman went into hiding underground in a forest with her mother in Poland for two years. She said wintertime was the hardest, because they couldn’t go steal potatoes or corn from the farmers.
“There were days I was hungry. I was starving,” she said.
Even decades later, the trauma of the Holocaust still haunts survivors.
“My husband would have those nightmares at night. He would wake up and I would have to wake him. ‘It’s OK honey, the war is over.’ It never leaves you,” Lefman said.
Matt SchooleyMatt Schooley is a digital producer at CBS Boston. He has been a member of the WBZ news team for the last decade.
