92-Year-Old Tells What It Was Like To Live Through The Holocaust

Renate Neeman shared her harrowing Holocaust survival story with an audience in Lawrenceburg.

Renate Neeman shared her harrowing Holocaust survival story in at Ivy Tech Community College in Lawrenceburg on Tuesday, April 24. Photo by Mike Perleberg, Eagle Country 99.3.

(Lawrenceburg, Ind.) – A room of nearly 200 people were gripped as they listened to Dr. Renate Neeman recall her experience living through one of the worst human tragedies in history.

Neeman is a survivor of the Jewish Holocaust. Born in Hildeshiem, Germany in 1926, she is one of only about 400,000 survivors worldwide still living.

The 92-year-old spoke Tuesday at Ivy Tech Community College in Lawrenceburg. She shared the story of fleeing Nazi Germany as a girl with her family to the Netherlands.

As German power expanded across Europe, Neeman’s family was forced into hiding. With aid from the Dutch resistance in Amsterdam, the family was split up in order to avoid detection. 

“My father had 11 brothers and sisters. Many of them did not make it,” she said.

Following the war, Neeman’s family reunited and immigrated to America. She went on to become an occupational therapist. Today, Neeman lives in Cincinnati.

In 2001, Neeman discovered her mother’s unfinished memoirs from their time in hiding. She completed the memoirs and published “Memoirs of Life Underground: A Jewish Woman from the Village of Berne in Hiding in Amsterdam, 1943-1945” in 2010.

Responding to an audience member’s question, Neeman commented that she sees similarities between what she witnessed in Germany leading up to World War II and the political climate today in the United States.

“If you think about it, this kind of thing has been going on for millenia. Man is a very slow learner,” she warned.

An audience member gives Dr. Renate Neeman a hug following her presentation in Lawrenceburg. Photo by Mike Perleberg, Eagle Country 99.3.