Holocaust survivors, descendants join forces on social media

BERLIN (AP) — Assia Gorban was 7 years old when the Germans occupied her hometown of Mogilev-Podolsky in Ukraine. The Jewish girl and her family were first imprisoned in a ghetto on the outskirts of town and later forced onto a cattle car that took them to the Pechora concentration camp in 1941.

After a few failed attempts, Gorban, her mother, and younger brother managed to escape in 1942, and spent the rest of World War II living under false identities until they were liberated in 1944.

Sitting in her apartment in Berlin, where she still lives on her own at age 89, Gorban vividly remembers the horrendous details of her time in the camp and during hiding from the Nazis who wanted to kill her only because she was Jewish.

She likes to share her memories with her granddaughter, 19-year-old Ruth Gorban, a university student, who also lives in Berlin and visits her frequently at home.

“My grandmother is amazing,” said Ruth, sitting next to Gorban on the couch. “I even invited her to my school, so that everyone in my class could hear from her personally about the Holocaust."

Both Assia and Ruth also participated in the new digital campaign called “Our Holocaust Story: A Pledge to Remember,” which was launched Tuesday by the New York-based Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, also referred to as the Claims Conference.

Six million Jews and people from other groups were murdered by the Nazis and their henchmen during the Holocaust and people worldwide commemorate the victims on Tuesday — which is Holocaust Remembrance Day, or Yom HaShoah as it is called in Israel.

Today, approximately 240,000 survivors are still alive, living in Europe, Israel, the U.S. and...