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Local Holocaust survivor pens memoir
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Let’s take a trip back to the past. You are a young child living in Kiev, Ukraine and the year is 1942. A terrible world war is raging all around you.
The ruthless German army is expected to soon infiltrate your neighborhood.
No one knows what will happen to you next.
This scenario depicts the reality of millions of lost life stories. So many people were touched by this tragedy and to this day, nearly 63 years after the conclusion of the war that shook the world, they remain nameless.
Recently, Lorissa Wilfong Holt, of Emmett, Idaho illuminated the world with the tale of a once anonymous young girl from Kiev who survived the genocide that occurred in Europe during World War II.
Holt was finally able to experience freedom from the shadows of her obscurely painful past existence by sharing with the world this touching story of strength, hope and forgiveness.
Today, one more victim of the Holocaust is given a name and recognized for their trials, “I Remember .” is Holt’s self-published, emotional recount of a few of her childhood years spent in a Nazi holding facility.
“I was reluctant to begin writing this book because I feared it would start the agony I had buried more than 50 years ago,” Holt said.
As a more mature woman, she eventually realized what was best. “Finally, I accepted that my story was one that needed to be told
and that only I could tell [it],” Holt said.
That story begins when Holt, at 8-years-old, and her mother were abducted by a band of Nazis near their home in 1942. They were then forced into cattle cars, and then to a concentration camp near Grajevo, Poland, where they would inanimately exist for the next two years.
Both Holt and her mother were eventually transferred to Dachau, an infamous death camp in Germany, where they endured unimaginable hardships that brought them near death.
The two women were finally freed in 1945, when the Americans took the Dachau stronghold, but their lives would never be the same.
After the war, the mother-daughter couple spent several years in Germany, living in a displaced-persons camp before moving to the Gem State in 1950 through the support of a local church group.
After experiencing horrors that most people are thankfully spared from, Holt’s attitude is truly inspirational.
Instead of harboring harsh emotions toward the evil actions she witnessed and bore, she preaches forgiveness of all and remembrance of those that were lost.
“I feel a profound sorrow in my heart for what I witnessed and experienced. So, in addition to documenting the horrors, it is my wish that this book will also communicate the deep-seated sense of hope and forgiveness that may have been the key to my survival,” Holt said.
Over the past 58 years, Holt has been able to build a life of her own in Emmett, yet thoughts of her destructive past linger with her daily. She appreciates the memories these thoughts evoke; they help her lead the best life she can.
“We must never forget nor allow future generations to forget these historical facts,” Holt said. “Though survivor’s guilt haunts me to this day, I am grateful to be alive. Perhaps, in the telling of my story, the voices of those who perished will now be heard."
KAYLA CHRISTOPHERSON
Culture Writer
