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International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2023
4 MINUTE READ
January 27, 2023

TESTIMONIAL

Ory Abramowicz’s grandparents survived the Holocaust, but many others in their families perished.

His grandfather Theodore “Teo” Abramowicz was born in Poland in 1901 and moved to Paris as a young man. He worked as a tailor, married and raised a son and a daughter.

In July 1942, the family was deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp. The Nazis separated Teo and his son from Teo’s wife and daughter. Teo never saw his wife or daughter again. When his son became very sick, the Nazis “selected” the boy one morning for the gas chamber.

 

Ory Abramowicz, right, with his father and son, and a picture of his grandfather Teo, who escaped a Nazi concentration camp. (Courtesy of Ory Abramowicz)
Ory Abramowicz, right, with his father and son, and a picture of his grandfather Teo, who escaped a Nazi concentration camp. (Courtesy of Ory Abramowicz)

 

Teo was then sent to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he escaped. He hid in a forest, surviving on tree bark for weeks. A U.S. military regiment eventually found and rescued him. He returned to Paris and eventually led a Holocaust survivors’ association and synagogue and married a fellow survivor.

Ory Abramowicz sought a career in the Foreign Service and honored Teo by giving his own son Teo’s middle name, Dov.

“The memory of the millions murdered in the Holocaust compels me to work each day for a better and more just world,” Abramowicz said.


Read the original story: https://share.america.gov/honoring-holocaust-survivors-via-public-service/