COMMUNITY
community spotlight By Tracy House
Generations After Children of Holocaust survivors: Part two Generations After is telling the stories of the survivors’ children. Operating under the auspices of the Phoenix Holocaust Survivors’ Association, a not-for-profit organization, GA is entirely volunteer run, and provides educational programs for the community, a monthly discussion group for children of survivors, a program to aid elderly survivors, and social gatherings for children of survivors. “We like to focus a little bit less on our parents’ experiences, but the truth, we were not the eyewitnesses. So we are the eyewitnesses to the eyewitnesses,” said Janice Friebaum, Generations After chairwoman. “Our experience growing up
with them is very different and the messages we like to give, which we feel will have a positive impact on the world, are different then the messages that come from survivors. Because our story is basically, how does trauma, when it happens to your parents or grandparents, impact the successive generations. Many of us, as children of survivors, grew up with intense heaviness in our lives.” Sheryl Bronkesh, like Friebaum, is the child of Holocaust survivors. Both her parents came from Poland, but from different circumstances during the Holocaust. Her father, Sam, was in a work camp, living in the ghetto. He then lived in the woods for two years as a Partisan,
fighting with the Russians, stealing food and bombing train tracks. “That is how my father survived,” she said. “I didn’t realize how lucky he was that he lived. The vast majority of Partisans were killed.” Bronia, her mother, fled to Kiev, Russia, with her sister when the Nazis came into her town, ending up in Armenia and attending medical school. “They met after the war in a homeless shelter,” Bronkesh said, in Lublin, Poland in 1945. The couple came to the United States in June 1947. Bronkesh grew up in New Jersey on a chicken farm. At a young age she was aware of her parents’ experiences. “When I was young, the only other people my parents interacted with were other Holocaust survivors that were on different farms,” she said. Bronia spoke about the Holocaust, whereas Sam only spoke Yiddish and wasn’t very talkative. “My mother talked about the war all the
time. I don’t remember not knowing about her experiences,” Bronkesh said. As for her father’s story, she said, “I heard stuff, but I never believed what he told me because it was so different than other survivors, many of whom had been in concentration camps and had numbers on their arms.” Bronkesh said her upbringing was different from her American friends. “First of all being Jewish, I was already different than everybody else,” she said. “My parents were so overprotective.” She wasn’t allowed to date non-Jews and felt that she had to be a good child because her parents had suffered such traumas. “It was a burden to be so good.” It was later, when she visited Israel, and began to do research that she understood that her father was a hero, having saved his brothers’ lives. “My mother was a hero as well, because she got her parents to leave. She got them to see the light.” As a member of Generations After, Bronkesh said, “It’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long time. At least at GA I have other people that feel like I do. So it’s pretty nice.” For more information visit www. jcfphoenix.org.
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