“I Won’t Talk About the Holocaust. I’ll Do Something About It”

By COLlive reporter

Mrs. Miriam Fellig, who recently passed away at the age of 89, was one of the many people interviewed to the USC Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education.

The nonprofit organization, founded by film director Steven Spielberg, is dedicated to making audio-visual interviews with survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust and other genocides, a compelling voice for education and action.

But in her interview, Mrs. Fellig said she refused to cry and “talk about the holocaust.” Instead, she told of her decision to “do something” positive about it.

Mrs. Fellig was born in the 1930s to a well-to-do Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland. With the onset of the Second World War, she was sent to the Jewish Ghetto with her parents and brother. She survived by spending her days in hiding in a space between the floors of her apartment and the apartment below.

After years of terror, she was finally sent to move in with a non-Jewish woman who had been their family’s devoted nanny. Overcoming many challenges, she survived the war. She was left without her parents, grandparents, and the rest of her family.

She was then sent to live in a Jewish orphanage in France and later immigrated to Canada at the age of 16. In Canada, she met her husband R’ Yosef Fellig, and they settled in Montreal.

It was then that she vowed “to do to Hitler what he did to me.” Her decision was to give birth to as many children as possible and name them after family members who perished in the Holocaust.

“I am going to have living monuments,” stated Mrs. Fellig, who was known for her energetic, feisty, and resilient nature. She succeeded in being a devoted mother and grandmother to a large Chabad family.

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