Daily News | These siblings fled the Holocaust for the U.S. almost 80 years ago. The war in Ukraine hits home.
Images of refugees fleeing war-torn Ukraine feel particularly vivid to Isak Danon, and to his sisters Sarah Meller and Esther Kaidanow.
“It’s something you never forget,” said Meller, who has been telling her Holocaust survivor story for the past 30 years. “Sometimes it feels like it happened yesterday.” The week after Danon’s bar mitzvah, pro-Nazi Italians destroyed the synagogue, looted stores, and beat Jewish people bloody.His father decided that he and Danon should join the resistance fighters, known as partisans, in the mountains. Though he was just 13, Danon was put to work, ferrying messages between groups of partisans, carrying ammunition, detonating hand grenades, working in a machine shop.
Eventually, the Germans began asking too many questions, and the family had to leave. The milk lady’s husband offered to take them to a cousin’s house, on a nearby island, where they stayed for three more months. But when that grew too dangerous, they were put out. “She said, ‘Promise me, you’re going to save yourself and your sister.’ It was the worst day of my life,” said Meller.
“There were so many things to be amazed about,” said Kaidanow. She was 7½; Meller was 13, and Danon, 14.