‘If you survive, tell our story… so it will never happen again’

Holocaust survivor Sophia Veffer spoke at UB to discuss prejudice, racism and repairing the world

April 17 at an event hosted by the Jewish Student Union. After working as a special education teacher for 25 years, Veffer now tours area schools to share her story of survival. Her key message: when something is wrong, speak out.

“When the war was over and the gates opened, we thought, ‘The world will see, and will see this can never happen again,’” Veffer said. “But we are still having genocides. That does not mean we should stop talking — we should be talking more.”

Veffer recalls starvation and fear — but perhaps most of all, boredom. With no radio and no access to a library, she read whatever she could find.

“If you had married in a Catholic church, the married couple would always get a Bible from the church. And so wherever I went into hiding, there was a Bible,” Veffer said. “So I read the Bible from page one to page 500 — it was something to read.”

Once, a woman in the resistance brought Veffer to see her grandparents. When she arrived, her 83-year-old grandmother was waiting with a small black bag. The bag was packed with food, “in case they [Nazis] picked her up right there.”

Sophia Veffer was 11 years old when Nazi soldiers knocked on her front door. The agents took everything — her father’s business, her family’s furniture and heirlooms, even her piggy bank.

Veffer and her family — and thousands of other Jewish people — thought they would be safe in Amsterdam. Now, with no other options, Veffer’s family entrusted her to strangers and sent her into hiding. She hid for four years and moved 12 times before the war ended. Others were less lucky: few had the money to go into hiding, and many who did were betrayed