Bronia Brandman was just eight years old when World Two broke out, beginning her fight for survival as the Nazis began the extermination of Jews in Europe.
"Really, I don't know whether hearing it, whether the mind can absorb the dehumanization. The daily fear of being picked for the gas chamber," said Bronia Brandman, Holocaust Survivor.
Brandman grew up in Poland just nine miles from the Auschwitz Concentration camp, where more than one million Jews were murdered.
Her parents and four siblings among them were part of the six million Jews killed in all by the Nazis. One of her brothers survived. She says there were multiple occasions where she could have died, including a death march to Germany towards the end of the war. She was rescued by a stranger as she grew weak from typhus.
"When she saw the gun being readied for me to be shot because I was slowing up, she grabbed me and carried me. And unbelievable, she risked her life,” said Brandman.
The story of Auschwitz is told in this exhibit at The Museum of Jewish heritage in Lower Manhattan, which includes a train car outside used to transport Jews to the camps.
President and CEO Jack Kliger says with a rise of anti-Semitic incidents in the city and beyond, the museum's educational message has become if not more important than the commemorative message.
"Hate doesn't start as violence; it starts with ignorance, fear and then marginalization of people,” said Jack Kliger, President and CEO, The Museum of Jewish Heritage.
And Bronia Brandman, who came to Brooklyn in 1946 after somehow surviving the horrors of Auschwitz and became a public school teacher, says educating young people about what happened and why hate is wrong, is priority number one.
"We have the children for so many years in school, why aren't we teaching the lesson that racism hurts, that racism kills, and why we are wasting our time, not teaching the right things, we are allowing lies to be perpetrated. We are wasting our time,” Brandman said.
Bronia’s story is just one of the many you can hear at the Aushwitz exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage on display through August.