Meet shortly. This 2017 season is made possible by the generosity of the Lewis FranklinSmith Foundation with additional funding from the arlene and Daniel Fisher foundation. Were grateful for their sponsorship. Firstperson is a series of conversations with survivors who share with us their firsthand accounts of their experience during the holocaust. Each of our firstperson guests serves as a volunteer at this museum. Our program will continue twice through mid august. The we seems website at ush. Mm. Org, provides information about each of our first pierson guests. Estelle will share her experience for about 45 minutes. If time allows, we will have an opportunity for you to ask estelle some questions at the end of the program. Todays program will be live streamed on the museums website. Bes means people will joining the program via a link from the museums website and watch from across the country and around the world. Recordings of all firstperson programs will be made available on the museums youtube channel. The life stories of Holocaust Survivors transcend the decades. What you are about to hear from estelle is one individuals account of the holocaust. We have prepared a slide presentation to help with the introduction. Estelle laughlin was born in w arsaw, poland, on july 9, 1929. She just had a birthday. Is highlighted on this map and warsaw is highlighted on this map of poland in 103933. Estelle was the younger of two sisters. In addition her to her parents, her family included many aunts, uncles and cousins. The nazis invaded poland on september 1, 1939. Soon after, estelle and her family were forced to move into the warsaw ghetto. This photo was taken when estelle came to the United States. In 1943, the family went into hiding. The warsaw ghetto uprising began on april 19, 1943, and continued until the final liquidation of the ghetto on may 16, 1943. Jewish fighters faced overwhelmingly superior forces of the germans that were able to hold them off for a month. Estelle and her family were hiding in a bunker during the uprising and were among those discovered and forced out of hiding. You see here an historical photograph of german soldiers leading jews captured dudring the uprising during the uprising to the deportation in may, 1943. After they were estelle discovered,and her family were deported to a concentration camp. Estelle, her mother and sister endured labor in two more camps before being liberated by the russians. Estelle, her mother, and sister emigrated to the United States in 1947 on the we close with estelles immigration certificate which was issued in july of 1948. Her sister and mother arrived in new york in 1947, they had 30 between them. Estelle and her sister went to work in the garment district. She met her husband, a survivor from berlin in new york. They moved to cleveland where her husband was a labor organizer. After the birth of for second son, estelle began attending college in cleveland and finished after they moved to washington, d. C. , in 1961 when her husband joined the kennedy administration. Estelle became a teacher. And became a reading specialist. She retired in 1992. Her husband died in 1998. Died in 2008. Her three sons are very accomplished, one is a professor in geology, another a psychologist, the third with his own business. They have given estelle seven grandchildren. One for each day of the week. She has her second greatgrandchild. With the addition of a great granddaughter that is now on e month old. She moved five years ago from washington dc to chicago. She speaks at the bureau until 2011 which moved to chicago. She was also a member of the survivors writing group and published in the echoes of memory. She has written a book, transcending darkness, a girls journey out of the holocaust. It was a finalist for the 2012 ford reviews book of the year award. She is now doing a work of fiction about the warsaw ghetto with the title of stateless. She will sign copies of transcending darkness, and with that, i would like you to join me in welcoming our first person, estelle laughlin. [applause] thank you, estelle, for joining us. Traveling from chicago to join us. You have so much to try to tell us in a short time, so we will start right away. You were just 10 in warsaw when world war ii began with the invasion on september 1, 1939. Before we turn to all that would happen to you and your family during the war and holocaust, start with a little bit about your family and you and your life before the war began. Ms. Laughlin i was born in warsaw, poland to a middleclass family. In my selective memory, warsaw was radiant trees against open blue skies with good neighbors, cousins and family, kindness and trust and love. From what you have told me and what i read in your book, your father, you were extremely close to your father. Tell us. Ms. Laughlin my father was a very nurturing, a very i our parents imprint themselves on us, and my father taught me my values, taught me to trust, taught me to love. He taught me to embrace all of humanity. And that trust, that love, that foundation helped me survive all with love and compassion and joy of life. And your mother, she had fled violence from antisemitism in native russia. Ms. Laughlin my mother is the history of jewish people. Persecution is not new to jewish people. Jewish people were chased from one place to another. One year they were welcomed. The next year they were kicked out. And my mother was raised in a small town in russia. And she was kicked out during world war i and came to poland. And she came with also, taught me compassion. Even though she was persecuted, she would tell the russian people are very suffering people. She was both a very compassionate and love nature and pass that on to us too. When germany invaded poland september 1, 1939 starting world war ii, warsaw was attacked that very day. What do you remember of that day and the siege that followed . Ms. Laughlin the sad thing for the day was the people in poland were aware that we were threatened. We heard about the aggression, the nazi aggression, invasion of the land. We felt we were so prepared for war. Yes, war was an abstraction. The very next day it was beautiful, and sadly there was this tremendous explosion. The air was sucked out of the room. The earth trembled, then there was silence. Then sirens, and we turned on the radio and heard the announcement that we were trapped in warsaw, and we were at war without declaring war. In a few seconds i changed from being a child to being an adult and carrying a burden that was placed on children. Warsaw held out for a full month following the german invasion of poland. You wrote after they invaded, immediately my life changed beyond imagination. Tell us about those changes. Ms. Laughlin i turned 10 when germany invaded poland. Immediately my life changed beyond recognition. My once peaceful streets were now patrolled by foreign soldiers. They shouted insults and cruelty. They snapped whips in our homes and streets. They isolated us in the tiny ghetto and built a thick wall around us. They filled the ghetto with people driven out from surrounding areas. Most people came on foot, most without a penny in their pockets. Many without shoes on their feet. Most died in the cold and hunger and typhus in the street. People covered the bodies of the children. They were saying our children must live. Children are the holiest things. Yet in this inferno, people fought heroically to hold onto their values, to hold on to the meeting that was most essential to us, to own a book was the act of defiance, was considered a capital crime. Yet all over the ghetto people had different libraries. Your father was one of them. Ms. Laughlin yes, my father had a stash of his favorite books by yiddish authors. Windows blinded with covers to keep our existence secret in a small room, eliminated by cars light, we had no electricity. My father would pull out the special books and read to us, bringing books to life. We even had theater. I didnt mention the jew is community immediately organized itself into widespread centers to support and help the neediest among us. And the self aid center supported theaters. Theaters, imagine theaters and we had no bread. An author and historian in the warsaw ghetto, his name was kaplan, and he said it is remarkable when we dont seem to need it at all, we need poetry more than we need bread. And it is true. I think our souls really need to be nourished. I think our ability to express ourselves, to think for ourselves is our own godliness. Guns have reigned over our heads, did not stop from celebrating. We pulled the window shades down, and we celebrated. All over the ghetto, heroic teachers met with children in little rooms and taught them to hold on to their imaginations and trust in love. And all of that, the theater and the poetry was done clandestinely. Ms. Laughlin it was a capital crime, capital offense. In the ghetto there was a large wall built around the ghetto to enclose you. Will you say a little bit about that . Ms. Laughlin it is hard to imagine, but your horizon is closed, that you are in prison. There is really much more to say than how terribly undignified this form of life was. I was struck, estelle, by something you wrote. You wrote children followed adult examples to resist barbaric laws. In our complex, there was no child over 10 who did not have some public duty. Will you say more about that . Ms. Laughlin yes, yes. Well, we shape our community. And as i pointed out, that there was tremendous moral resistance, and children model their behavior. We hid our books under our clothes. Now i recognize what a heroic act it was, but we did not give it a second thought. But we knew if we were caught, we would be shot. Our parents would be shot, so would our teachers. Children volunteered. In my book, i describe how children collected clothes and food and put on shows and raise money for needier children. It was a tremendous moral resistance in holding onto warsaw. In holding on to ones self. Another interesting thing about the ghetto was i dont recall i may be incorrect, but i think we were allowed like 81 calories a day. I am not sure about the number. But i know that it was less than 10 of the required minimum daily calorie need. And there was smuggling. We were completely enclosed are the wall, and there was a curfew. We were constantly watched, but yet there was smuggling. Children know older than eight or 10 years old kids would smuggle, would remove rocks, bricks from the wall and go smuggling. The wall of course was stained with blood if the child was caught. It was nothing. If you manage to get through food, home, the day. There was also a larger scale smuggling, and that was done by bribery with the nazi guards, filled their pockets with bribery. So there was some trade, some blackmarket trade in the ghetto that was going on. We were able to survive, many of us, and most were not. The nazis started deporting large numbers out of warsaw to the concentration camps in 1942. How are your parents able to keep you from being taken by the nazis . How did you survive in the time of the deportations . Ms. Laughlin july 1942, the month of my 13th birthday, the deportations of the warsaw ghetto began. We had no idea the depredations what the deportations meant. We were told that we were to be resettled. Some jewish people werent even forced. They wrote letters to their families inviting them places where they were fed and sheltered and taken care of. So you can imagine many destitute people marched willingly and unknowingly to death. Many people hid. Warsaw was an ancient city, and most people had been a part of the building, so people would hide in an Apartment Building where Children Play hide and go seek. We hid behind couches, people hid under beds. They hid in cupboards, wherever they could vanish from sight. My family, we obscured by putting a wardrobe in front of the door. While we were hiding between july 1942 and september 1942, in a mere two months, 99 of the children disappeared. Can you imagine a World Without the sound of children . Without the presence of grandmothers and grandfathers, because old people and children were the first to be killed . I was one of the children still alive. We never heard from the people who were dragged away. But a few people managed to come under the cover of the night back to the ghetto, and they told us about the horrendous train ride to a place called treblinka where people were gassed. It is hard to imagine that anyone that loves their mothers and fathers and children can do such a horrendous thing. This is why i am here to share this story, and i believe this is why you are all here, because we have to be reminded from time to time that human beings are capable of such utter cruelty. And appreciate so much more the recognition and importance of love. As you said, 99 of the children were gone. The nazis had essentially decreed children under the edge age of 14 were useless. You were 13. Ms. Laughlin i was 13. I thought, what happened if they come after me because i was contraband, forbidden to exist. My father said, i will burn their eyes out with acid. I will not let them take you away from me. I believed that i was safe if only in his love. At some point, estelle, you and your family were still in the ghetto. It had been divided i think in 1943 into three sub ghettos, and you went to work in a german factory. Will you tell us about that . Ms. Laughlin so nobody there were just a few jewish people who were allowed to exist. They were classified as the useful ones, and the others were contraband, were forbidden to exist. They were called the wild ones at that point, the ghetto, most of the people were gone. The deportations were carried out in tremendous numbers. I think to the end it was 2000 people a day. And i forgot to you were forced to go to work in a factory. Ms. Laughlin yes, so the people who were legal, a very small number, were employed in three sub ghettos. The ghetto was referred to it was like a haunted place. It was so quiet, i remember we lived in an Apartment Building. We were the only family in the entire building. So i would sometimes walk out into the courtyard and open the gate and listen and hope i would hear a sound of life, of a neighbor, of a friend. Silence was so palpable, it was crawling. The people, there were three sub ghettos. And the people who were allowed to live, the useful ones, were in a factory. My mother, sister, and i were fortunate enough to work without any pay, it was a privilege, because it give you you were legal to be alive. We work in one of those shops mending uniforms. German uniforms. As the ghetto is being liquidated or more and more deportations are happening, you moved to a bunker on the ground floor. Tell us about that. Ms. Laughlin at the point when the people that remained, the remainder of the people became aware of treblinka, they began to organize themselves in resistance. At that point, organizing yourself in armed resistance made sense. So they built a network of bunkers. My father was a member of the underground to remove from our apartment, our apartment on the second floor. To the ground floor, so we could build a bunker. There was a network of bunkers. They also built between the bunkers for navigation. They also built a tunnel under the wall in order to get to the christian side and get from the christian underground. They also used the sewer. The sewer was a very useful means of communication. So we had a bunker. The entrance to our bunker had to be a secret. The trap door was the powder room floor. All under the commode. Ms. Laughlin our existence would be in this netherworld. Once the warsaw uprising began, which was an extraordinary event, what was it like for you in the bunker . What was it like . Ms. Laughlin so in april 1943, events interrupted with nazis entering the war, tanks and armored cars and flocks of bomber planes and humongous loudspeakers announcing that we better all report for resettlement. Of course we knew what resettlement meant. So when we heard that, we took the trap door, went down the ladder into the dismal basement, pulled the trap door down, i felt the ceiling press down on me, the depth of the floors closing in on me, the flickering of the light was our substitute for the sun. The ticking of the clock was our only clue when morning was rising and night was crawling. Was falling. The few people in the bunker with us was my whole nation. And while we were in that bunker trying to go out in the street, facing a 20th century army, armed from head to toe, facing armored cars, tanks, bomber planes was a handful of poorly gunned, poorly clad, poorly fed free jewish fighters. They stepped in front of open windows, climbed out of the bunkers, faced the tanks, bombs falling, incendiary bombs. And what is remarkable, that it took, the Freedom Fighters, the handful of fighters, fought longer than it took france or poland. You shared with me that when the edict was given to abolish the ghetto, it was to be done in three days as a gift to hitlers for his birthday, and it took a month to accomplish. Ms. Laughlin right, right. In january 1943, there were a few skirmishes between the deportations were resumed, but the Freedom Fighters put on a fight. And they fought for four days. The germans were unprepared, so they withdrew. And himmler promised hitler that for his birthday they would deliver it within three days. The present would be the war of allo cleanse warsaw of jewish people, so it was cleansed in three days. How were you found, estelle . You were in the bunker, but eventually you were found. Ms. Laughlin they were at the ceiling over us, and we were dragged out. At that point there was no place to hide anymore. They dragged us out into the street. Buildings were crumbling to our feet. Wereous tongues of flames licking the sky and painting it an otherwordly color. Plumes of smoke. And they dragged us to the center. We did not march like a swarm of nameless people, we were people with dreams, hope. Children asked me how did you feel inside . I said i felt no different then they feel or my grandchildren feel. I too want to catch a ball flying in the air. I too wanted to feel the damp grass under my feet. I too wanted to take my family and friends for granted as all people should, and they marched us to the center. Blood and congealed all around us. Tell us about your father. Ms. Laughlin we arrived in the morning after a night drive in a train, a Freight Train. They were pelting just for the sport bullets in the car at people all around us. The electrified barbed wire fences, in front of us was the crematorium, the chimney and the smoke and the stench of human flesh. If that wasnt enough, in the assembly field, there was a gallows from which our people were hanging. My father was left there. My mother, sister, and i my ands 13, my sister was 14 1 2. My father was gassed. Mother was the only mother, we were the only family of three people, which made us very fortunate. Everyone else, as far as i know, was alone.