Cedar Rapids Gazette Article, March 9, 2024
One of youngest Holocaust survivors brings new story
to remembrance to Cedar Rapids
Read the complete article at https://www.thegazette.com/article/one-of-youngest-holocaust-survivors-brings-new-story-to-remembrance-to-cedar-rapids/
When Erika Schwartz started attending a Holocaust survivor group over 40 years ago, she didn’t quite fit in.
Born in the Nyiregyhaza, Hungary, ghetto one day before the Nazis sealed it off in 1944, she had the paperwork to prove she is one of the youngest remaining survivors alive today at 79. But despite most of her entire family being murdered before World War II ended, it wasn’t until about nine years ago that others started taking her story seriously.
As an infant, Schwartz’s father helped her and her mother escape to Budapest with the right paperwork, where the two lived disguised as Christians into the early years of the Soviet Union’s control. Her father, a labor camp escapee, lived on the run to avoid making his family a target. Before long, he was returned to the Hidegseg labor camp in Hungary and murdered, too.
At age 4, Erika was sent after her mother to the United States. It wasn’t until she was about 70 that she started to tell the story.