Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
According to the archives of the Yad Vashem center in Israel, Ann Preis Green “perished,” one name among 6 million who died at the hands of the Nazis during World War II.
But Ann Preis Green, her blue eyes sparkling, is very much alive, the victim only of a record-keeping mistake.
“It doesn’t matter to me,” she said with a wry smile. “But my son doesn’t like it.”
Howard Green, a Palm Beach Gardens dermatologist, found the error on the website of Yad Vashem, the international Holocaust memorial, which includes a search site for relatives seeking lost loved ones or tracing their lineage. Green filed a request for a change in his mother’s records, and is still waiting to hear from Yad Vashem.
So if there is such a thing as a happy story for International Holocaust Remembrance Day, as recognized by the United Nations today, it might be Ann Green’s.
“I don’t live in the past,” said Green, who divides her time between New Jersey and her Singer Island home.
Her granddaughter, Sophie Green, had to coax her to sit still for an interview about her experiences during the Holocaust, which resulted in a short film that won awards while she was a student at Dreyfoos School of the Arts in West Palm Beach.
Sophie, who is home from New York University, is now a freshman studying filmmaking. She sat quietly on a couch near her grandmother, as the 85-year-old told her story. Sometimes she added a fact or a clarification of her grandmother’s story.
Like most survivors, Ann Green has identified the twist of fate that probably saved her life. She was destined for death at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death camp in eastern Poland. Because she could speak German, the Austrian teenager was part of a group of 3,000 women transported hundreds of miles west to a munitions factory in Salzwedel, in northwestern Germany.
“We had soup and bread,” Green said. “The soup was better than in Birkenau. As long as you were capable of work, you were safe.”
Today, Green is one of only 40 or so of the original 3,000 women still alive.
“Didn’t you steal potato skins?” asked Sophie Green.
“Never!” the grandmother shot back. “People did steal food, but that I never did.”
Green’s work camp was liberated by Gen. George Patton’s Third Army in 1945.
Ann Preis Green is correctly listed as alive in the records of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial and Museum.
“In order for there not to be those kinds of mistakes, we encourage survivors and families to register with us,” said Dr. Lisa Yavnai, director of the Holocaust Survivors and Victims Resource Center in Washington. The center provides free assistance in navigating its documents, Yavnai said.
The center receives 1,000 requests for information every month. Its researchers have access to more than 120 million digital images of documents relating to 17.5 million victims of Nazi persecution, she said.
Every survivor has to decide what to tell the children, and when.
When Green’s children were toddlers, they asked why she had a number tattooed on her arm.
“I told them it was my telephone number, in case I got lost,” Green said. “What do you tell a 3-year-old?”
For information about survivors, visit www.yadvashem.org and www.ushmm.org
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