My name is Eve Rosenzweig Kugler, nee Kanner. I am a child survivor of the Holocaust.

This Web Site is the outgrowth of a book I wrote with my mother, Mia Amalia Kanner, titled Shattered Crystals, published in 1997 by CIS Publishers, Lakewood, New Jersey, as part of its Holocaust Diaries series.

Since the book's publication, important questions about the effects of our Holocaust experience have been raised by readers and at book readings and talks I have been privileged to give. On this Web site I want to try to answer questions and to explore the effect of the Holocaust on child survivors at the time and in adulthood, based on my life as a child survivor and the experiences of child survivors, including individuals I first met in France between 1940 and 1941, and others whom I met subsequently.

Shattered Crystals recounts the history of the escape of my mother, Mia, my father, Sal, and my two sisters Ruth and Lea, from Nazi Germany after Crystal Night in November 1938 and how we defied the odds and survived in France before and after German occupation until liberation. During this period, husband and wife were forced apart, children were separated from parents and sisters from each other. For some of this time, my sisters and I were sheltered, along with other homeless Jewish children, by the Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants [OSE], who became vital to the family's survival.

Some significant matters could not be covered in the book, because they did not lend themselves to the first person format required by the publisher. Foremost in this category is the question of how I and other children coped during the Holocaust and afterwards. In dealing with this issue, I have been able to draw on the experiences of OSE children who settled in America and who have shared their attitudes, feelings and fears. As the OSE is largely unknown except to those whom it benefited, I provide some details of the history of the organization that was so important to our survival.

Until the appearance of Shattered Crystals school and college classmates, professional colleagues and many friends were unaware of my background. For decades, many survivors found it impossible to reveal their Holocaust history. The trauma of the ordeal, the guilt of survival and not wanting to be seen as different from one's contemporaries are among factors that played a part in our silence. Nearing the 21st century, survivors have been persuaded that the Holocaust must be remembered, understood and documented. Camp survivors have courageously relived their horrific years of incarceration. Others who suffered and survived under the Nazis, though only briefly incarcerated or not at all, are also relating their experiences now. My family and my OSE friends are in this group. So the events I recount in my book and on this Web site do not constitute a "camp story," but are also part of the history of the Holocaust.

As an author, I am grateful that this Web Site gives me a second bite of the apple, by making it possible not only to answer readers' questions, but also to rectify omissions in the book they pointed out. They expressed a wish for a map to follow the routes the family was forced to travel, particularly my father's walks clear across France with the dual aim of escaping the Nazis and finding his family. Readers also suggested family trees (coming soon) to keep track of our relatives who populate the book. Finally, many wondered if more pictures could have been reproduced in the book, so additional black and white 1940s snapshots and several contemporary photographs (soon) are included. For those people who do not hold to the fantasy that a writer need merely mail her Manuscript to a publisher and it will appear in major bookstores, a section details how I found my publisher and what was required of the author before and after publication.

I welcome your comments and want to answer your questions.  Please do not hesitate to send me an email.

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- Eve Rosenzweig Kugler, 1999