Toronto students learn about Holocaust from late survivor - thanks to his daughter.His sorrow is something she carries with her. Once Litwin's father, Nate Leipciger, started sharing his story publicly and published his memoir The Weight of Freedom, Litwin said she realized the cloud over her father's life stemmed from horrific things he survived in the concentration camps, including sexual abuse and extreme starvation. That's hard as a daughter because, you know, we're both very strong people and we definitely butt heads." "I never want to do something that's going to be hurtful to him. "It breaks my heart to know what he went through and I never want to break his heart," Litwin said. Although her father embraced life and didn't share his trauma with Litwin or her sisters, she said he had nightmares and she knew a darkness existed in his past. "We knew, even if they didn't tell us the stories, we knew something terrible had happened to them and we wanted to protect them." Arla LitwinĪrla Litwin grew up knowing that her father survived something horrific, and felt that she had to be good and not cause him additional trouble. Most children don't protect their parents," she said. It was a very, in some ways, unusual situation. The pressure of that as a child, though, was heavy. Sinclair also said that growing up she tried hard to do her part to be happy around her father, to never complain about anything, and to try to always be grateful. "So, I have just made it my goal to try and teach as many people as possible about the Holocaust, particularly students." "I probably think about the Holocaust, in one way or another, every single day," she said. His family left Poland after surviving the Holocaust now Michael Rubenfeld wants to find healing in his art.Educators are using the stories of Holocaust survivors to foster empathy and counter hate.And she is collaborating on Ontario's new Grade 6 curriculum around teaching about the Holocaust. Sinclair also founded Liberation 75 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp, which has evolved into ongoing educational initiatives. She is heavily involved with Toronto's Neuberger Holocaust Education Centre. Sinclair credits her childhood as being a huge part of why she's devoted much of her life to Holocaust education. "So children of Holocaust survivors actually live with memories of events that never happened to them, which is really unusual because other people ask, you know, 'Do you have your parents' memories?' And, no, but you do absorb those memories as if you lived through the trauma." "What happens when you're a child of somebody who has experienced such tremendous trauma is that those memories become yours," she said. Sinclair said although her father tried not to burden her with the horrors of his past, she was aware of his deep sadness at having lost most of his family. Children of Holocaust survivors are affected by their parents' experiences, she said, and can 'absorb those memories as if you lived through the trauma.' (Ousama Farag/CBC) Marilyn Sinclair stands in front of her childhood home in Toronto. "When I was younger and it was hard to make sense out of all of it, I would dream that I was in the camps," she said. The revelation scarred Sinclair, who said she herself has nightmares of being apprehended by Nazis. He described how he was forced to watch Jews being pushed into a pit to be murdered. It was only many years later that Sinclair's father told her his nightmares were set in Auschwitz when he was a prisoner there during the Second World War. "I would always ask my father, 'What is it? What did you dream about last night? What was your nightmare?' And he'd always say, 'Oh, I don't ever remember my dreams. "You never actually get used to that, being awoken by somebody shouting," Sinclair said. Marilyn Sinclair's father, Ernie Weiss, was a Holocaust survivor whose nightmares left him screaming in his sleep every night. Several children of Holocaust survivors spoke to CBC News about the impact their parents' experiences have had on their own lives. The world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan 27. In recent years, as more people have started talking and writing about it, organizations have sprung up to help secondary victims share their stories. The trauma of Holocaust survivors has been widely studied and documented, but the impact their experiences have had on their children hasn't received as much attention. WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
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