01/26/2023
This photo of Reuven and Gershon Fogel, the two boys in the foreground on the left, captures some of the last moments of their lives. As they waited in the woods, they seemed unaware that their next steps would take them to a gas chamber at Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Decades later, Holocaust survivor Irene (Fogel) Weiss discovered her younger brothers in the photo and, with the help of a magnifying glass, identified her mother, Leah Mermelstein Fogel, seated beside them. The image was part of the Auschwitz Album, a collection of photos taken by a N**i photographer documenting the arrival of Jews from Hungary in the spring of 1944. A former Auschwitz prisoner, Lilly Jacob, found the album in a nightstand while she was recovering in an abandoned SS barracks at another camp, called Dora-Mittelbau, shortly after her liberation there.
For Irene, the album confirmed all of her worst memories.
"All this time, I began to feel it was some kind of nightmare," she said. The album “literally verified my experience."
The day this photo was taken was the last that Irene experienced with her family intact. Of her family of six, only Irene and her older sister, Serena, survived.
Tomorrow on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, join us live on Facebook at 9:30 a.m. ET to hear from Irene and to remember the six million Jews murdered during the Holocaust.
Photo: USHMM, courtesy of Yad Vashem