Helga Melmed, a 97-year-old Holocaust survivor, captivated more than 400 University of Florida students and Gainesville community members at the Chabad UF Student Center Monday evening with her powerful testimony of survival, resilience and love amidst captivity in Auschwitz and two other German camps.
The event, held on Holocaust Remembrance Day, opened with a string performance of the Schindler’s List theme and Melmed’s account of her most cherish childhood birthday gift: an onion, which her mother gave her in the Łódź Ghetto in Poland in 1941.
For Melmed, the onion was a symbol of hope — a long-dreamed-of topping for her mother’s makeshift potato peel and coffee ground patties, scraps her father scavenged from German soldiers.
But the joy was short-lived. German soldiers’ killed Melmed’s father during “target practice,” and her mother, increasingly ill and sacrificing her own food for her daughter, passed away the morning after Melmed’s birthday.
“It was the saddest time,” Melmed said. “She gave her life for me.”
This was just the beginning of the nightmare Melmed lived. She summarized her years of oppression in less than 90 minutes.
After her mother’s death, German soldiers then imprisoned Melmed in Auschwitz, shaved her head and held her in an overcrowded stable. She was later transferred twice before British and American soldiers freed her from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945, when she was a teenager.
At rescue, she weighed just 46 pounds and was suffering from typhus, typhoid fever and lung disease.
“I was nothing but skin and bones,” she said.
Following liberation, Melmed rebuilt her life. After spending a few years with a host family in Sweden, she immigrated to the United States, where she lived with her aunt, taught herself English and pursued nursing school. She went on to marry and raise four children.
“Love is always better than hate,” Melmed said. “Keep on loving each other, and hope will not disappear.”
Abby Nadler, a 23-year-old UF data science graduate student whose great-grandparents survived the Holocaust, felt a personal connection to Melmed’s story. Melmed’s experience deeply resonated with her, she said.
“Because of their bravery, I am here today,” Nadler said, adding that stories like Melmed’s are proof that Holocaust denial conspiracy theories are “absurd.”
In an interview with The Alligator, Rabbi Berl Goldman, the director of Chabad UF, stressed the importance of retelling the experiences of Holocaust survivors — especially as that generation fades — as a necessary measure to combat antisemitism and other forms of hate.
“I'm positive that everybody present will carry her message of love, hope and tolerance,” Goldman said. “Living examples of perseverance such as Helga is even more urgent in our day and time as long as there's still holocaust survivors.”
Contact Shaine Davison at sdavison@alligator.org. Follow her on X @shainedavison.
