96-Year-Old Holocaust Survivor's LAST WARNING to you

[0:00]hello my name is Hannah and I am 96 years old I watch young people today and they tell me they're depressed I don't dismiss them because pain is pain but I do tell them this you have more power than you think I was 14 years old and in one afternoon I lost my entire family my mother my father my two younger brothers my sister and I were the only ones left before I run out of time I need to tell you something something most people don't understand until it's too late the things you're worried about right now they don't matter not in the way you think they do I know this because I've lived through the worst thing human beings can do to each other and I'm still here still breathing still finding reasons to smile and I'm going to tell you how in 1944 the soldiers came to our village in Poland we had heard rumors whispers about camps about trains that took people away and never brought them back but my father said we would be fine we just needed to keep our heads down wait it out we didn't wait it out three days later we were packed into cattle cars 120 people in a space meant for 40 no food no water just bodies pressed against bodies the smell of fear children crying old people collapsing and the train kept moving for three days and three nights that train moved when the doors finally opened I saw something I had never seen before dogs barking guards shouting in German and smoke thick black smoke coming from chimneys my mother grabbed my hand she looked at me and said stay close no matter what happens stay close those were the last words she ever said to me they separated us immediately men to one side women to the other then they separated again young and strong to the left old sick children to the right my mother had gray hair she was 52 they sent her to the right I tried to follow a guard hit me with his rifle I watched her walk away she turned back once just once and she smiled at me I didn't know that smile was goodbye I didn't know the right line was the line to the gas chambers I found out three hours later when I asked where she was a woman in my barracks laughed not a happy laugh a broken laugh you see that that's where your mother is now they shaved our heads gave us numbers mine was tattooed on my left arm I can still see it when I look down that was my name now not a person a number we worked 14 hours a day if you were too slow they shot you if you were too weak they sent you to the gas if you got sick you disappeared there were no second chances my sister worked in a different part of the camp I only saw her twice in 11 months the first time she looked thin but alive she told me to hold on the second time she could barely stand she died two weeks before the Americans arrived typhus two weeks before freedom there was a woman in my barracks her name was Marta she was maybe 40 maybe 50 starvation ages you it was hard to tell she had lost her husband and four children in the first week watch them all go to the gas chambers all of them at once and every morning after that Marta would wake up and she would sing quietly so the guards wouldn't hear old folk songs from her village lullabies she used to sing to her children at first I thought the grief had broken her mind I thought she had simply gone somewhere else inside herself somewhere the rest of us couldn't follow but one night I asked her how can you sing after everything and she looked at me with these empty eyes and said because if I stop singing I stop being human and I won't give them that Marta died three weeks later typhus but I never forgot what she said she chose to hold on to her humanity when everything around her was inhumane that's power real power not the power to control what happens to you the power to control yourself I think about Marta often more than anyone else from those 11 months because she taught me something no philosophy book ever could that the last freedom the one they can never take is the freedom to decide who you are inside what is happening to you they took everything from her and she still chose to be human that choice cost her nothing and it was worth everything when the Americans came in April 1945 I weighed 68 pounds I couldn't walk I couldn't speak I just lay there and watched the soldiers cry grown men soldiers who had seen war and they cried when they saw us that's when I knew how bad it really was they asked me if I had family I said no they asked me where I wanted to go I said I don't know I had no home no parents no country that wanted me I was 15 years old and I had nothing not even a name just a number on my arm I spent two years in a displaced person's camp waiting everyone around me was broken some people never spoke again some just stared at the wall until they died I decided I wasn't going to let them win the Nazis wanted to erase us and I thought if I give up now they won so I didn't give up in 1947 I got on a boat to America I had $3 in my pocket I spoke no English I knew no one but I was alive and that was enough I worked in a factory for 11 years sewing buttons on coats 12 hours a day six days a week I taught myself English by reading newspapers I found in the trash I met a man another survivor he had lost everyone too we understood each other in a way no one else could we got married in 1952 had three children built a life in 1953 they put my first daughter in my arms I cried for three hours the nurses thought something was wrong but nothing was wrong everything was right I was holding new life life that came from me me who was supposed to die in a gas chamber me who they tried to erase and here I was creating something they could never destroy it felt like the biggest act of Defiance I had ever known I named her Sarah after my mother and I made her a promise that day I would never be too busy I would never postpone time with her I would never assume there would be more time later because I knew better than anyone there isn't always more time later but for years I was still carrying something heavy guilt survivor's guilt they call it now then we had no name for it we just lived inside it I would wake up in my bed in America safe warm fed and I would feel guilty that I survived when my family didn't guilty that I was building a life when millions were ash guilty every time I laughed every time I felt happy every time I let myself enjoy a single moment the guilt was worse than the hunger ever was because hunger ends guilt has no bottom in 1955 I went to a survivors group 10 years of carrying this weight there was a rabbi there he had survived Treblinka lost everyone just like me and he said something that changed my life he said the dead don't want your guilt they want your joy they want you to live the life they couldn't live that's how you honor them so I made another decision I decided to live for all of them for my mother who never got to see her grandchildren for my sister who never got married for my brothers who never grew up for the millions who never got a chance I would find joy not despite what happened but because of it people ask me all the time how do you move on from something like that and I tell them the truth you don't move on you move forward there's a difference moving on means forgetting I will never forget I see my mother's face every single day I carry all of it with me but I don't let it stop me from living for years though even in America I still lived small afraid to travel afraid to trust afraid to be happy because happiness could be taken away until one day my daughter Sarah she was maybe 40 said something to me she said mom they took your childhood don't let them take your life too she was right I had survived the Holocaust but I wasn't really living I was existing going through the motions afraid to feel too much afraid to want too much afraid to be happy because happiness could be taken away I had escaped the camp but I had built a smaller one inside myself made of fear made of waiting for the next terrible thing so at 67 years old I made one more choice I chose to stop being afraid my husband and I took a trip to Israel first time on a plane first time leaving the country since I came to America I was terrified but I went anyway and standing at the Western Wall in Jerusalem surrounded by Jews who were free who were thriving who were alive I understood something we won Hitler wanted to destroy us and we're still here not just surviving thriving that is the ultimate answer to evil living well I'm 96 years old now I've buried my husband I've buried friends I've buried children yes children my son died in a car accident when he was 52 and I thought that would be the thing that finally broke me but I survived that too you want to know the secret there is no secret you just keep going one day at a time one breath at a time you wake up you put your feet on the floor you make a choice to live that day and then you do it again the next day people think strength is about not feeling pain it's not strength is feeling the pain and living anyway I feel everything I cry I grieve I rage at the unfairness of it all but I don't let it stop me I never let it stop me that is the whole lesson that is the only lesson you feel it and then you keep going I have seven great grandchildren the youngest is 3 she calls me Bubby she doesn't know about Auschwitz yet she just knows I'm old and I give her cookies and that's okay she'll learn when she's ready the older ones they know they've seen the number on my arm and I tell them everything not to scare them but because the world needs to remember there are people today who say the Holocaust never happened they say it's exaggerated made up and when I hear that I want to show them my arm but I don't scream I just tell my story over and over to anyone who will listen because once my generation is gone there will be no more witnesses no more survivors to say I was there I saw it it happened and that terrifies me so here is what I need you to understand you have a choice in how you respond to pain you can let it destroy you or you can let it shape you into something stronger something more alive you think you can't survive a loss I lost my entire family and found love again you think you can't start over I started over at 15 with nothing not even a language not even a name every morning I wake up at 5:30 my body doesn't sleep much anymore too many memories too many nightmares that never went away but I get up I make my coffee I sit by the window and I watch the sunrise every single sunrise feels like a miracle to me because there was a time when I thought I'd never see another one there was a time when I counted sunrises wondering which one would be my last standing in that camp freezing starving I used to look at the sky through the fence and think someone on the other side of this fence is watching the same sunrise and doesn't even notice it they will rush past it they will look at their feet they will think about what they have to do today and they won't see it and I would have given everything I had left just to be them just to be someone whose biggest problem was a busy morning now I get to see those sunrises every single day a gift I don't deserve but I'm grateful for anyway so let me leave you with this the most important thing I've learned in 96 years life is not about what happens to you it's about what you do with what happens to you terrible things will happen to you to people you love things you didn't earn and didn't deserve you can't control that nobody can but you can control your response you can choose bitterness or gratitude you can choose to be destroyed by your past or defined by how you rose from it I chose to rise not because it was easy not because I'm strong but because the alternative was letting evil win and I'll be damned if I let that happen I'm 96 years old I'm a survivor not just of the Holocaust but of 82 years of living after it and I'm telling you it's worth it all of it the pain the struggle the rebuilding it's all worth it because you get to be here you get to see sunrises you get to love people you get to matter don't waste it don't waste it on fear on regret on waiting live fully gratefully now that's everything I know condensed into one truth choose to live the clock is ticking for all of us make it count