The Days of Remembrance of the Victims of the Holocaust is an 8-day period designated by the U.S. Congress dedicated to our collective imperative to never forget the Holocaust. For Inge Goldschmidt Oppenheimer, a Holocaust survivor, it is impossible to forget. She shared her experiences with host Mike Sacks on HuffPost Live.
Oppenheimer and her family were sent to Terezín, a ghetto in what is now the Czech Republic, when she was 12. Three years later, she was separated from her family and deported to Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi concentration camps.
"I was one of the lucky ones who was sent to a labor camp, which I'm sure is what helped me survive, you know -- just plain luck," she said. From the labor camp, where she worked with 500 women in an ammunition factory, she was sent back to Terezín. But as she explained, she had little hope of finding her family.
"Having been at Auschwitz and having seen what went on there, I had no hope at all of my parents surviving. And then it turned out that there was somebody who recognized me and said 'your parents are still here.'"
Oppenheimer also shared the story of reuniting with her family: "My mother was free to go around and come and you know, find me, so you can imagine what that was like. And of course she hardly recognized me because you know, in Auschwitz they shaved our heads. I weighed very little, about 60 pounds -- I was skeletal, most of us were, but alive."