PICATINNY ARSENAL, N.J. - Picatinny Arsenal officials held a Holocaust Remembrance event in coordination with the Jewish Federation of Greater MetroWest Holocaust Survivors Speakers program on May 8.
The event, hosted by the installation's Naval Surface Warfare Center, Indian Head Division's (NSWC IHD) Picatinny Detachment, was held in the Lindner Conference Center and broadcast live to the workforce via MS Teams.
Born in Poland in 1936, Hanna Wechsler was a baby when World War II began. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Wechsler and her family hid for six weeks in the cellar of a barn with the help of a Polish family. Eventually, neighbors became suspicious, and Wechsler’s family was taken by Nazis and sent to the Kraków ghetto, one of five ghettos constructed to intern Polish Jews. Her mother, who looked "Aryan" was able to sneak out of the ghetto to get falsified documents that could help save Wechsler’s family.
Wechsler and her family escaped and made their way to Romania.
They were eventually arrested and deported to Hungary and then to back to Poland where they were sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Wechsler was one of the youngest inmates at the camp and witnessed its liberation in 1945.
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