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PBS News Hour - Segments

Holocaust survivor’s family searches for answers while retracing her steps at Auschwitz

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 24 January 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. One of the youngest survivors was an eight-year-old Polish girl named Rutka. She moved to Canada after the war and took the name Rachel Hyams. Decades later, she died by suicide. Rachel’s daughter has been retracing her mother’s steps and allowed Malcolm Brabant to come along on the emotional journey. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

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0:00.0

This coming Monday marks the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Burkenau extermination camp.

0:07.0

An estimated 1,100,000 people, mainly Jews, were murdered there during the Holocaust.

0:13.0

One of the youngest survivors was an eight-year-old Polish girl named Rutka.

0:17.0

She moved to Canada after the war and took the name Rachel Hayams.

0:22.1

Decades later, she died by suicide. And now Rachel's daughter has been retracing her mother's

0:27.2

steps and allowed special correspondent Malcolm Brabant to come along on the emotional journey.

0:32.6

Oh my god. Take a deep breath. This place has dominated my whole life.

0:43.3

This place destroyed my family.

0:47.3

And the echoes of this place continue to destroy my family.

0:52.3

Audrey Hayam's Romoff has spent a lifetime resisting the compulsion to come here.

0:58.0

That station looks completely intact.

1:02.0

No different than it did over 80 years ago.

1:05.0

Now, supported by her daughter Lindsay, Audrey has travelled from Toronto

1:10.0

to try to find answers to two unresolved family

1:13.1

mysteries. Why was her grandfather Aran killed during a fight in a cattle car on the way to

1:20.4

Auschwitz Birkenau? But more importantly, what drove her mother Rachel to suicide?

1:26.4

63 years after she and her mother, Regina,

1:29.6

survived this, the worst of all the Nazi extermination camps.

1:34.0

Rachel was just eight years old when she entered the gate of death.

1:38.6

Most people transported here from across occupied Europe,

1:42.4

went straight to the gas chambers.

1:44.5

But Rachel and her mother did not, as she told the show of Foundation 28 years ago.

...

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