I remember how, during the Passover seders, after we finished our meal, my father and I would try to set up the 16-millimeter projector, threading the film of a 1953 episode of "This Is Your Life" to watch my very young-looking mother become the first Holocaust survivor to appear on national television. As it played, my mother, Hanna Bloch Kohner, would stay in the kitchen doing dishes. I guess she didn't want to watch it. But for me, it was part of our annual ritual: When Ralph Edwards said, "....upon arriving at Auschwitz, they handed you soap, and you went to the showers. Your shower had water, others were not as fortunate, like your mother, father and your husband, Carl. They all lost their lives in Auschwitz."
In a strange way, I think I just took the idea of this for granted.
I don't know when I learned about it, but by the time I was a teen I knew that my mother had had an abortion in Auschwitz in order to survive. Her first husband, Carl Benjamin, was killed upon arrival, but, miraculously, my Uncle Friedl was a doctor in the camps and arranged for her procedure, which saved my mother's life. However, she was told that she would never be able to carry a child again. That didn't stop her from trying, however: After eight miscarriages and months of bed rest, I was born on July 4, 1955.