Reference Type: Audiovisual Material
Author: Yad Vashem
Year: 1996
Title: Torchlighters at Yadvashem, 1996 - Miriam Hirschler
Type: Documentary, Short Film
Size/Length: 30'
Keywords: Jewish minority, Holocaust, Documentary, Short Film
Abstract: Nine-year-old Miriam Hirschler and her four-year-old sister Fritzi were orphaned during the German invasion of Russia in June 1941. The sisters, who had been separated, reached Transnistria along with thousands of other Jews who survived the massacres. En route, Miriam contracted typhus. She found shelter with an elderly couple who saved her life and helped her locate her aunt. In the Mogilev Ghetto, Miriam was reunited with her sister and they were placed in an orphanage. In 1944, they were among the orphans waiting to be transported to Bucharest. Miriam and her sister stood on the railway platform waiting for their names to be called. Fritzi, whose name was on the list, boarded the train in tears, anticipating their final separation. But then fate intervened: Miriam, noticing that the name 'Josephina Shtutnantal' had gone unanswered, took her place on the train, and the sisters were reunited. After the war Miriam went to Transylvania, where she joined a kibbutz. The boat she boarded for Eretz Israel in 1946 was intercepted by the British off the coast of Eretz Israel and rerouted to the detention camps in Cyprus, where 52,000 survivors of the Nazi regime again found themselves behind barbed wire. In 1947, Miriam finally immigrated to Eretz Israel, and raised a family.
URL: http://db.yadvashem.org/films/item.html?language=en&itemId=63739
Access Date: 30.09.2014
Name of Database: The Visual Center - Online Film Database
Database Provider: http://db.yadvashem.org
Language: Hebrew