bronia at operation breakthrough

A couple of weeks ago I was at Operation Breakthrough working on a project, and I struck up a conversation with three young women about my various photographic series. They were really interested in my work; we ended up going to the computer lab and looking at my website. They asked great questions and were so interested in what I do. What proved to be the most fascinating to them was "Among the Ashes." After looking at that work, we started talking about the Holocaust. When I told these thirteen and fourteen year olds that I could arrange for them to meet someone who had actually survived the Holocaust, they could hardly believe it. One thing led to the next, and today I took my friend Bronia to Operation Breakthrough to speak to a group of about 20 young teens. The three young women who inspired the event are pictured here with her. Since they are approximately the same age that Bronia was when she was rounded up by the Nazis and sent to a labor camp, I think they were especially moved.


This is how I introduced Bronia.

"Bronia was born eighty-three years ago in the small town of Turek, Poland. She was named Brucha, which means 'blessing' in Hebrew.

When Bronia was a young girl, she lived in a neatly kept brick house with her parents and brothers and sisters. She played the violin, liked to ride her bike, make up plays, help in the garden and in the winter ride on a sleigh pulled by her Russian husky dog.

All pretty normal things in a pretty normal life.

She and her family had lots of friends, both Jewish and non-Jewish. They spoke Russian, Polish, German and a little French. Bronia’s mother was a kind woman who made food for the needy and never spanked her children.

Bronia doesn’t have any pictures of her mother and cannot remember her face. But, of course, she thinks about her – and the rest of her family – every day.

When she was thirteen, the Germans marched into her small town and eventually forced all the Jewish people out. Two years later, after living in horrible conditions in a ghetto, Bronia volunteered to take her sister’s place when the Germans came to the house to select people to go to work in a labor camp. For the next two years, Bronia lived in a barn with 150 other women and had to clear swamps and work on farms. She was sent to three different concentration camps, the last of which was Auschwitz-Birkenau.

After being there a year, she was loaded onto a truck that was taking its cargo to the gas chamber. She escaped…. by jumping off the back of the truck and landing in a snow covered ditch. She returned to the barracks at the concentration camp and was kicked - nearly to death - for what she had done. Later that year she was sent to another labor camp. Finally, Bronia was forced to go on a death march and was one of only 19 women from Auschwitz to survive and be liberated.

Bronia never saw any of her family again, except for one cousin.

She left Europe and came to Kansas City in 1947 where she trained as a nurse. She chose Missouri because of Harry Truman. She and her husband eventually opened the M & M Bakery at 31st and Woodland. She has three daughters, a son and several grandchildren.

Bronia doesn’t hate anyone for what happened to her. She has devoted her life to spreading the message that what matters most in the world is that we respect each other’s differences and that we love and take care of one another."