Alyssa's Experience Meeting Renee

I was very excited and nervous to meet Renee, but nervous more because I knew I would have so many questions. I have been very fortunate to have met several survivors before and am always grateful to hear a new story. Each story is so unique and unimaginable that I find being in a survivor's presence to be surreal, even when it is someone related to me.
Upon hearing Renee's talk I did not know very much about her other than that she was an Auschwitz survivor and had been involved with Holocaust memoriam for quite a while. She spoke very eloquently and honestly in front of a group of strangers no less. For the first few minutes she spoke about the war and I was surprised to hear how aware her and her family and neighbors were of what was going on. Granted by the time she went to the camps the war had been waging for over five years, it was still difficult to imagine being a teenager living life and knowing that it was only a matter of time.
When Renee began to describe her journey to the camp and her arrival I was in awe of her. The fact that she was greeted by Dr. Mengele, one of the most evil and famous figure from the Holocaust, and stood up to him and then survived was mesmerizing. Renee told us that she was about twenty years old when she arrived at Auschwitz. She was at her prime and looked quite Aryan, hence she was directed to the right immediately. But her sister was a few years younger with brown hair and brown eyes, so Mengele had a tougher decision. Renee ran back and grabbed her sister, which typically would have been grounds for immediate death. Miraculously, Renee survived three different encounters with Mengele through the duration of the war.
Every time I hear a survivor story I am amazed at how many miracles and coincidences they experience, and Renee was no exception. I was particularly curious about her liberation experience and what happened in the years following the war. Sadly, Renee lost almost her entire family, but while wandering through Europe in the months following D-Day, she ran into her brother. Renee ended up moving to the United States and went on to get married, raise a family, and have a successful fashion design career. Unlike many survivors, Renee did not experience any nightmares or felt haunted by her experience until thirty years later when she was asked to speak about her experience. She said she had not really ever spoken about it and that that night she had her first nightmare. Since then she had made a career out of sharing her story and has dedicated her life to never allowing others to forget.
I felt so honored just to be in her presence and get to ask questions in an intimate setting. After leaving the museum that day I felt so grateful that she and so many others survived so that we get the opportunity to hear the personal stories first hand. In a few generations that will not be possible as the last remaining survivors pass on. I also left that day feeling grateful to the survivors that they did survive so that today, I am free to be Jewish publicly. I feel that in large part because they survived, I get to be free today.