Story #9 Holocaust Survivor: René Hammond
Monday, November 27, 2017
November 27, 2017 - In honor of the 25th Anniversary of The Florida Holocaust Museum (The FHM), this oral history series shares the stories of twenty-five Holocaust Survivors. Each Survivor brings to the series an individual voice that enlivens our understanding of the Holocaust; the war’s effects on individuals, families, and communities dispersed across the world; and its reverberations into the present moment. René Hammond (née Koenigsberg) was born in 1925 in Uzhhorod. She was 91 years old when she shared her testimony with us at her home in Pinellas Park. Once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and today part of Ukraine, René’s native town of Uzhhorod had been annexed to the Republic of Czechoslovakia after World War I, and became part of Hungary after the First Vienna Award in 1938. Jews had been an important presence in Uzhhorod since at least the 16th century. Around the time of René’s birth, Uzhhorod’s approximately 7,500 Jews made up more than a quarter of the total population of approximately 26,000. By 1941, the Jewish population would number 9,576, of whom only a few hundred would survive the war. Visit www.flholocaustmuseum.org for full story.
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