Holocaust survivor Erna Gorman recounts harrowing story of survival and the power of sharing memories to heal
Holocaust survivor Erna Gorman endured a harrowing and horrifying journey to escape death at the hands of the Nazis. Along the way she lost family, her ability to speak, her ability to walk, and eventually her mental health, until a psychiatrist helped her see how recording and sharing her memories could unlock her healing.
Gorman, who was born and raised in France, was about eight years old when her life changed forever.
"Sounds like a fairytale, or made up, even to me at this point," she said. "It couldn't be true."
In 1939, Gorman, her sister Suzanne, their Polish father Leib and Ukranian mother Malka, all traveled to Poland from France to attend a wedding, just as Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party rose to power in Germany and invaded the neighboring country.
The family couldn't return home. Her father was later taken by a Nazi mobile killing unit to dig a mass grave for executions.
"And they were shot, one after another, including my wonderful grandfather that I adored because he would cuddle me," she recounted, fighting back tears.
Her father survived. In 1943, the family made their way to Ukraine. There, they received the kindness of a Christian farmer, who hid them in a very small hayloft for 18 months. Gorman said he would bring them three buckets each day.
"One bucket with drinking water, one bucket for elimination purposes and one bucket for whatever he could spare to feed us," Gorman said.
The tiny hayloft would later become infested with lice and vermin.
"We couldn't wash," she recalled. "We didn't have any extra clothes."
Gorman spoke only in a whisper, never moving. Eventually, she lost her ability to walk and talk.
"If they didn't know you existed, you had a chance to survive," she said.
In 1945, the Russian warfront started moving through the area. The farmer told the family they had to leave. After a year and a half with no movement, all had lost the ability to walk.
"He had to carry us down, one by one on his shoulder, including my parents," Gorman recalled.
They crawled on tehri hands and knees to the side of a road during winter. Then gunfire and bombs lit up the night sky. Gorman's mother was hit.
"All I could see is all this blood," she said.
Malka Gorman was taken to an infirmary for care, but instead young Erna heard caregivers whispering that her mother was Jewish. In the end, there was no help.
"We stood around and watched her die because they never ever cleaned her up from her lice and vermin," Gorman said. "Maybe she had to die anyhow."
Gorman made a vow to herself at the age of 10: "Hatred will never be a part of me. I knew what it was. I suffered for it."
Gorman said she, her father and her sister eventually made their way through Europe to France, then to Detroit, Michigan, where they could live with family in America. She found work in a sweatshop and later at an estate jewelry wholesaler, then as a realtor.
She met and later fell in love with her husband Herb. They were married for 55 years until Herb died in 2012. Erna moved to Chicago in 2019.
The couple had two sons, Mark and Bob. She never spoke of her past, not even to her own children.
"I couldn't put hatred into my children's heart," she said.
Keeping those incredibly painful memories inside her heart for decades, she said, caused her to suffer a nervous breakdown in the 1970s.
"I wanted to die," she recalled. "I was to the point where I couldn't bear the pain. It was just flowing in, too much."
Gorman saw a psychiatrist for three years. At his direction, she spent time tape recording every memory.
"I can attribute a lot to this wonderful psychiatrist," she said.
One day, she finally shared those memories with her family.
"She's one of the last people around that experienced this that's still alive to be able to tell this in person," said her son Bob Gorman. "So, I guess we're all blessed to have them with us."
"I decided that it's time for me to get involved and not be a bystander," Erna said. "It was extremely important for me to do that."
Since 1992, Erna Gorman has spoken publicly about what she's endured. Now 91 years old her talks number in the thousands. She has shared her story with groups around the country, and wrote a memoir called "While Other Children Played," referring to what she couldn't do while hiding for survival in a Ukranian hayloft.
"We would hear the children playing," she recalled. "The farmer's children."
Reflecting on that time, Gorman remembers the young girl who struggled, and wo is now a woman determined to make sure her story endures forever and that, through her work, history is not forgotten."