To Auschwitz and Back

This is a seven minute interview with my mother, Ruth Bindefeld Neray. As you watch the video, and see the wisdom that comes with years of living, picture a younger woman not even 20 years old, caught up in horrific world events she cannot understand. You may have friends of that age, or friends with kids of that age. Picture them — or yourself — at that age. 

My mother told me that of all the photos of herself as a younger woman, the one that haunts her the most is the one shown here. She is 19 years old in this picture, and she has just returned to France after a year in Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. When she looks at this picture of herself, she sees a young woman who, behind her eyes, still holds the horrifying images witnessed in the camps. In her mind’s eye, she’s still there.