Born in Aschaffenburg, Germany in 1928, Charlotte was the youngest daughter of Fritz and Lucie Levy. Her family belonged to the local Jewish congregation where her father, a menswear salesman and World War I veteran, was the treasurer. Charlotte remembers having a happy childhood.
This began to change when the Nazi Party came to power in 1933. Hitler Youth paraded down the street, singing songs, and some Jewish students in Aschaffenburg were attacked. The ideals of the Nazi Party began to invade everyday life.
It wasn’t until the arrest of Charlotte’s father in 1936, however , that her happy childhood screeched to a halt. After the Nazi Party sent notice that all synagogue funds would be confiscated, Charlotte’s father distributed all of the money to the poorest members of the congregation and burned the books. The incident, and his subsequent arrest, convinced him that the time for Jews to live in Germany had ended.
While her father looked for a sponsor so they could immigrate to the United States, Charlotte and her sister were sent to the Esslingen Jewish Orphanage, run by a family friend. Very frightened, she realized that there are some things even parents do not have control over: “I had to take care of myself; I realized I am the only person who is always going to be with me.”
In 1938, the family secured sponsorship from a relative that had earlier immigrated to the U.S. On their way to leave the country, they stopped in Koblenz to see her grandfather. On the night of November 9th, their grandfather’s home was vandalized in what would later be known as Kristallnacht. While reporting this crime to the police, her father was arrested again. He was released when he showed proof they were leaving the country.
On December 25th, 1938, Charlotte and her family arrived in New York, where she spent the rest of her childhood. She raised three sons with her first husband Harry Sprung and second husband Norbert Wollheim (the two were also Holocaust survivors who had met in Auschwitz). In 1988 Charlotte met Holocaust educator Vladka Meed and became her assistant. They organized summer trips to Poland for teachers to learn about the Holocaust. In 2000, Charlotte moved to Seattle to be closer to her son Jeff. She now volunteers to read with elementary school children, and is an active member of the Holocaust Center Speakers Bureau.
Carla Peperzak was born in Amsterdam in 1923 to a Jewish family. Although Carla's mother was not born Jewish, she had been adopted by a Jewish family, and as a teen and adult came to embrace the faith. Carla was a typical youth of the time. She played field hockey, skated on Amsterdam’s canals, and went to parties. She also attended synagogue and Hebrew school where one of her fellow students was Margot Frank, the older sister of Anne Frank. In 1940, the year Carla graduated from high school, Germany invaded the Netherlands. By 1941 the Nazis forced Dutch Jews to register with the state, and they were issued identification papers marke d with a “J.” Thanks to a sympathetic SS member, and perhaps due to Carla's mother's background, Carla's father arranged to have her papers changed to remove the J.
That year, at the age of 18, Carla joined the Dutch resistance. She helped save her aunt, uncle, and two cousins, hiding them at a farmhouse in the Dutch countryside. Later, disguised as a German nurse, Carla rescued her young cousin from a train bound for Westerbork, a transit camp for Dutch Jews who were then sent to killing center s in Nazi-occupied Poland. Throughout the war, she continued to secure hiding places for Jews, published an underground newspaper, and created fake identification papers and ration cards. While Carla and her immediate family survived the Holocaust, 18 members of her family did not. In the aftermath of the war, she met her husband Paul, a Dutch Catholic. In the ensuing decades, Carla lived and traveled across the world with her husband, who worked for the United Nations. In 2004 she moved to Spokane and has been actively engaged in sharing her story as part of the Holocaust Center for Humanity's Speakers Bureau.
“I was 18, 19, 20. I was not married. I did not have any responsibility–only for myself–and that made a big difference...I felt I could help. I had the opportunity.” - Carla Peperzak
Survivor Encyclopedia: Washington State - Carla Peperzak. Read more about Carla, view photos of Carla and her family, and watch video clips.
Granddaughter of Hungarian Auschwitz survivor Vera Frank Federman, Breeze Dahlberg shares her grandmother's story.
Beverley Silver shares the story of both of her parents, Jewish Holocaust survivors Johanna Stern Moss and Malcolm Moss.
Beverley’s mother Johanna was born in Germany in 1925. As the Nazis came to power, her grandmother, Anna Stern, feared for her granddaughter’s life and made arrangements for Johanna to escape Germany on a Kindertransport.
Leaving her father, grandmother, and extended family, Johanna sailed to England in 1939, where she and 24 other refugee girls lived in a hostel sponsored by a Jewish refugee committee in the town of Middlesbrough. Johanna’s father managed to escape to the United States shortly before World War II broke out. It was too dangerous during wartime, however, for Johanna to travel across the Atlantic Ocean to join him. Instead, Johanna remained in Middlesbrough living with a loving and generous English family, the Levys. Finally, in 1946 she arrived in the United States and was reunited with her father, but tragically, many of her relatives were killed in the Holocaust.
Beverley’s father Malcolm was born Moizesz Moskiewicz in Poland in 1912 to a large Jewish family. He graduated from the Vienna Academy of Design with an ambition to become a clothing designer. Fearful of an impending German invasion of Poland, Malcolm fled to Switzerland in 1938, where, after World War II began, he was interned in a labor camp for Jewish refugees. Malcolm immigrated to the United States in 1945 and joined his brother, his only relative who survived the Holocaust.
Johanna and Malcolm met and married in New York in 1946. Malcolm continued his career as a clothing designer in the United States, and he and Johanna raised three children in New York and Illinois before retiring to San Diego. Malcolm passed away in 1986 and Johanna in 2019.
Beverley Silver spent her career as an art educator, working extensively in K-12 public and private schools, museum, and university settings. Beverley retired in 2021 from Seattle University, where she directed the Job Placement Office in the College of Education. She enjoys spending time with her children and grandchildren, and became a member of the Holocaust Center Speakers Bureau in 2022 with the hope of keeping her parents’ legacy of survival alive.