The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum in downtown Dallas is filled with exhibits that warn of the past, to teach visitors so it is not repeated.
"Our museum features some difficult content," Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum President/CEO Mary Pat Higgins said sitting in the museum's Memorial and Reflection room. "It's important for loved ones to go back to the grave and honor their loved ones every year. Our survivors don't have graves to go back to."
The museum will commemorate International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a ceremony on Sunday, Jan. 28 at 2 p.m.
"Learning from our survivors who lost everything, but managed to go on with their lives and move to North Texas and share their stories with our community is so important," Higgins said.
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"The earliest memory is when I was told not to look because there were atrocities happening just blocks from where we lived," Holocaust survivor Rosian Zerner said. "My parents were actually my first rescuers. They risked their lives to save mine."
Zerner is among the Holocaust's 'hidden children'. Her parents dug a hole under the barbed wire fence of the ghetto in Lithuania where they were being held to allow Zerner to escape.
"My father's secretary was waiting for me in the shadows there, and I was out of the ghetto," Zerner recalled. "I didn't know what was happening. I was scared. I was alone. I was totally...it was a time when reality was not reality anymore."
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Six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust. Many families never saw their loved ones again. Zerner said it was a miracle that she was later reunited her her parents.
"I'm 88, my mother lived to be 101, my father to 96, I have two sons, they have two children each...and Hitler lost," Zerner said with a smile and gleam in her eyes. "I keep saying my life is full of miracles, and I'm here to prove it."
The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum will offer free admission this Saturday and Sunday. Visitors are encouraged to reserve a free ticket online.