As part of our online Yom HaShoah observance, starting April 21, 2020, the museum wrote about the Holocaust survivors featured in our photography installation Eyewitness.
Bronia Brandman was born into a family of six children in Jaworzno, Poland. She was eight years old when World War II broke out. Her family members experienced confinement in ghettos, enslavement in labor camps, deportation and murder. Ms. Brandman narrowly escaped the gas chambers at Auschwitz by running away from her assigned line upon arrival and joining one of her sisters in another line. Ms. Brandman remained at Auschwitz until January 1945, when she began a forced death march to Germany. Ms. Brandman was liberated from the Neustadt-Gleve camp by the American and Russian armies in May 1945. Today, she is a retired public school teacher, volunteering her time as a member of the Speakers Bureau of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust.
The video below is a short interview with Bronia made by HBO.