A Survivor's Holocaust Story, And World Sites That Help Us 'Never Forget'

In a truly special 50th episode of Places I Remember, Holocaust survivor Allan Hall tells his frightening, harrowing story as a child caught up in horror. We follow Allan and his parents from their comfortable life in Krakow, Poland, out-manuevering the Nazis in Lvov and Warsaw, and hiding in plain sight throughout the war.  Lea  prefaces his story with a few sites, memorials, and museums around the world where you can travel, to bear witness.

Allan's tale includes uprooting from Krakow to Lvov, to the ghetto in Warsaw ; near death experience in a children's pogram; changing appearances and identities; avoiding a last-minute train to Treblinka extermination camp; hiding in a closet with his mother for 10 hours a day in a Nazi-headquarters building in Warsaw for two years; the birth of a brother in the middle of the horror; and carrying- - as an 11-year-old -- that two-year-old brother  across Europe, to get to freedom, and reunite with his parents.

With a combination of brilliant moves, risky endeavors, bravery, hope, resilience and luck, the family survived the Holocaust.

Allan Hall tells his story with grace and detail, holding back nothing. And he ends with a memory of irony and hope.
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Holocaust survivor Allan Hall is a retired attorney. He is a docent at the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial, and is available as a speaker, in-person or on Zoom. If you are interested in contacting Allan, please notify Lea at one of her links below.

As a gift to you to celebrate our 50th episode, and because Allan Hall wants you to never forget, you can click on this link to read Allan's memoir, "Hidden In Plain Sight."
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Podcast host Lea Lane blogs at forbes.com, has traveled to over 100 countries, written nine books, including Places I Remember, and contributed to many travel guidebooks. She's @lealane on Twitter; PlacesIRememberLeaLane on Insta; on  Facebook, it's Places I Remember with Lea Lane. Website: placesirememberlealane.com.  Please follow, rate and review this award-winning travel podcast. We drop new episodes every other week, on Tuesdays.

Transcript

*Transcript edited for clarity.

Lea Lane  0:04  
Hi, I'm Lea Lane, an award-winning travel writer and author of Places I Remember: Tales, Truths, Delights from 100 Countries. On this podcast we share conversations with travelers about fascinating destinations and memorable experiences around the world.

Lea Lane  0:20  
At Places I Remember, we talk about destinations, travel stories, and themes. Today we'll be combining all three in a memorable episode. United Nations General Assembly designated January 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz Birkenau, as international Holocaust Remembrance Day. The UN urges us to honor the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust in Europe, and millions of other victims of Naziism in the 1930s and '40s, and to develop educational programs to help prevent future genocides. Our podcast is Places I Remember. So to heed their call, we'll first discuss a few of the most important of the many sights, museums and memorials to honor those who suffered, and then the very special second part of the podcast, we'll talk to Allan Hall, who survived the Holocaust as a child, hiding with his family in Poland. 

Lea Lane  1:15  
It's so important to educate ourselves about what happened during this time, and during other genocides before and since, to understand so that we can avoid the horrors in the future, as well as honor the victim. You can read about the Holocaust and see photos and films, but traveling to sites, museums and memorials is the ultimate way to bear witness. Here are a few you might consider visiting. In 1965, 20 years after the concentration camps were liberated. I traveled to Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich, Germany. Germans who had lived through the war were walking by the photos in a new museum there, shaking their heads in seeming disbelief. I've also been to the Buchenwald concentration camp outside of Weimar Germany, and to the most famous and most awful site of all, Auschwitz near Krakow, Poland. Auschwitz I was the building holding political prisoners. Auschwitz Birkenau was a combination of a concentration camp and an extermination camp which held predominantly Jews, as well as homosexuals and Gypsies. The scale of the camp is huge, with a long train track upon arrival, and remaining structures scattered over a vast area. An organized tour will include an expert guide with transfers between different parts of the camp. At Auschwitz Birkenau, most of the infamous gas chambers were destroyed by the Nazis when they learned that they had lost the war. And the crematoria are mostly piles of rubble. Other parts remained intact, such as a barracks with stacked wooden shelves where people slept three on a shelf. Auschwitz also features exhibitions of inmates' possessions, such as hair and millions of shoes. At Auschwitz [_____], a separate site, much less has been destroyed. This is located within suburban Krakow, overlooking flats and residential homes. 

Lea Lane  2:59  
I had worked as a ghost writer with an Auschwitz survivor in the 1980s and went to pay respects by visiting the barracks where she had lived in 1995, 50 years after the liberation. I walked alone in Auschwitz on a late afternoon, and could feel the presence of the lost millions of murdered innocent men, women and children. Many museums and memorials around the world are for exhibits. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC is one, and my son Cary curates exhibits at the Kupferberg Holocaust Center in Queens, New York. At the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. thousands of concrete slabs over six feet high and positioned like dominoes at different levels give perspective to the turbulence and uncertainty of those times. The memorial is a place of contemplation, remembrance, and also warning. Some of you may have seen the movie Schindler's List. Oscar Schindler was a German businessman living in Krakow, Poland. You can visit the factory where he employed Jews, offering them protection from the Nazi party's hunt. The Nazis actually knew that he was employing them, but he had a good relationship with the SS and claimed he needed them because they cost less for their labor, and were necessary for the German war effort. As a result, thousands upon thousands of Jews who worked in his factory avoided being transported to extermination camps, and the factory has been turned into a museum. In Jerusalem, you'll find Yad Vashem which translates 'the hand of God.' It's a living tribute and memorial to the victims of the Holocaust who did not receive a burial. The exhibits feature photographic accounts written and spoken by victims, remains from survivors, art installations, and information panels. And there's a site dedicated to children of the Holocaust, which is completely in the dark. Ghettos were segregated areas where Jewish people were forced to live under Nazi occupation. Warsaw in Poland was home to the largest and deadliest Nazi cultivated ghetto in Europe. At its highest capacity, it housed almost 400,000 people, which works out to about eight people per room. This was the site of the Warsaw Uprising, when Jews fought the Nazis in a desperate and futile attempt to overthrow them. Today, you can visit the site and the Footbridge of Memory the bridge which links to smaller ghettos. Pictures of the victims are displayed on the buildings as you walk the streets

Lea Lane  5:13  
In the heart of Amsterdam, Anne Frank's house is where the now legendary Anne and her family lived in hiding during World War II to avoid persecution. Living with them, there was a family called the Van Pels, and later a dentist named Pfeffer. Anne Frank's now famous diary, written during her time in hiding, documents her thoughts and feelings as a budding teenager, a time surprisingly, and endearingly, hopeful. Tragically, the group was betrayed and transferred to concentration camps, and died in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, just days after she found her sister Margot had died of disease, and near the war's end. Her diary was discovered and published by her father Otto, the only member of the group who survived the Holocaust. Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam is now a hugely popular museum. Visitors are able to see the bookcase where they lived behind, walk through the cramped secret annex, and the museum has collected objects and photographs which belonged to the family. And Anne Frank's original diary is on display. I remember visiting in 1965, before the modern building that houses artifacts was constructed, and before the crowds. We could walk right up the stairs to the secret annex and walk into the premises in silence. 

Like Anne Frank, our guest Allan Hall was a child, hiding with his family during the Holocaust. His is a remarkable story of resourcefulness, bravery, and luck. And we are honored and grateful that he joins us to share his story. Welcome, Allan, to Places I Remember. 

Allan Hall  6:42  
It's good to be with you. 

Lea Lane  6:44  
So Allan, you were born in Krakow, Poland in 1935, and as you wrote, you let a charmed life until the Nazis marched into Poland. Before we talk about what you endured for years, please first share with us some memories of your life as a child in Krakow before the troubles began.

Allan Hall  7:01  
I remember we lived in a very nice apartment. On the same block down the street, my grandparents lived, and my aunt, and I was the prince. i was the firstborn child, I was the only child, I was the only grandchild, I was the only nephew. And whatever I wanted, I could have, and life was good. My mother was a professional musician, and my dad was a insurance executive. We lived a very nice upper-middle class life.

Lea Lane  7:31  
Now you were six years old in June 1941, when the Germans attacked the Soviets and occupied Eastern Poland. Soon you were forced to wear a yellow star on your clothing, publicly declaring you were Jews. Please give us a brief idea of what happened to your family when the horrors first began. And when did you first feel it?

Allan Hall  7:50  
We didn't understand what was happening, and the Germans were very good at not letting people know. For example, we got a little three by five card saying that we have to leave our apartment and everything in it, and go and move to another apartment. We could only take one suitcase with us, one small suitcase. When we got to the other apartment, we were so surprised, there was another family there. Shortly thereafter, a third family moved in. We had no idea we actually voluntarily, or under duress, moved into the ghetto. We did not know, we never heard of a ghetto. So that gives you some idea of how things went. Once in the ghetto, the horrors started immediately. Abuse on the street, people dying in the street, no food. My dad was able to maintain a shop. So he'd come and go. And we were able to get a little bit of food on the black market.

Lea Lane  8:47  
When you were under siege by local anti-semitic laws, as you mentioned, and seeking safety, you write that you walked over 200 miles to Lvov, Poland, is that correct?

Allan Hall  8:58  
Yes, that is correct. 

Lea Lane  8:59  
What happened there? 

Allan Hall  9:01  
Well, that's where we, that was 1939. And, the first thing that breaks down in a war zone is public transportation. There was no buses, no trains, no aeroplanes. And so we had the only choice that we had to do to get away from the Germans is to go off, walk across the country, and find a ferry across the river. None of us could swim. And we wandered out by sheer happenstance, to Lvov which was under Soviet control. That bought us 20 months of life.

Lea Lane  9:36  
Now you write that you were the first child picked up in a children's pogram there. Could you tell us more about that, please?

Allan Hall  9:43  
Yes, I was very, very lucky. My dad was forewarned by a police officer that there was going to be a children's pogram. We never heard of such thing. I was on my way to a safe house out in the country. And the street was closed of,f blocked off, right in front us. Since I was on the street on the sidewalk, I was the low hanging fruit. And I was the first one apprehended by the Nazis, put in the back of a truck. They fanned out into the apartment blocks, wrestled children away from their parents. You can imagine the crying and screaming, brought them on down to a truck, and when truck was full, they took us to a concentration camp. All of those children except for myself, I suspect, died. My dad walked right in there, spoke brilliant German. He was educated in Vienna. And like a pedophile, said, "How much for one of these children," not identifying me. He was given a price. He went back, gathered the amount of jewelry, diamonds and gold that was requested, came back and literally bought me, and we walked out of there. I am sure to this day that I'm one of the only one of those maybe two or 300 children that's alive.

Lea Lane  11:00  
Well, so the Germans took the jewelry, let you go. Where did you go after that?

Allan Hall  11:06  
I rejoined my parents and immediately we started hiding, at first within the ghetto, in an attic above a theater, subsequently in the basement below a factory. Subsequently, we realized there is no safety in the ghetto. And my parents got false ID papers showing that we were Christians rather the Jews. We snuck out of the ghetto and starting hiding on the Christian side of the community.

Lea Lane  11:32  
And what happened then?

Allan Hall  11:34  
Well, life was not easy. One of our landladies turned us in an policeman came and took us to the Gestapo headquarters. The Germans were not even interested to find out whether or not I was Jewish. They could have easily found out just checking whether I was circumcised. Only Jews were circumcising their boy babies, and they just said, take them across the street to the, what would they call it? ____________, which was the railroad station across the street from Warsaw, our ghetto, Warsaw's ghetto. From there, the trains went to Treblinka. I was very lucky because I was so active and the place was so busy. They took me out of there and took me to an orphanage in the Warsaw ghetto. 

How long were you there? 

About three weeks, and a man showed up wearing a uniform. I didn't trust anybody, least of all someone in uniform, and he said, I'm here to take you to your parents. There was no way in the world that I was going to go with him. But he spoke to the adults in the orphanage. And they literally took me outside, locked the door behind, and I was stuck outside with this man I didn't trust. He put a cap on my head, pulled the brim way down, said whatever you do, don't look up. Don't let go of my hand, and don't say a word. We walk right up to the German station where they're guarding the ghetto. And the guard said, Who are you? What are you doing here? He said, "I'm a trolley car conductor. Look at my uniform. And I'm here to show, I want you to spot my son, to show him what the Jews look like." And they say, "You're stupid. It's almost curfew, run home because they catch you on the street after curfew, they shoot on sight, and pray that you can get home in time."  And that's how I got out of Warsaw ghetto. He delivered me to my parents. Until this day, I would like to say thank you to him for saving my life. He was obviously a Christian, but I never could find him, did not know who he was.

Lea Lane  13:40  
That you're honoring him today, we can think of him with honor. Now, your father changed his appearance as one of the ways to hide in plain sight. You were reunited with your family. And he did something very bold. First of all, how did he change his appearance? What did he have to do?

Allan Hall  13:58  
Well, he went to see a physician, a doctor. Those days, they still carried the little black bag. And he pointed to his nose. He said, This is my Death Warrent. Give me a rhinoplasty, a nose job. Doctor said, You know I can't take you to the hospital. The Jews are forbidden from any hospital. And so my dad said, "Why don't you just do it at home, get your little black bag." He said, "I can't do that. I don't have an assistant, I don't have anesthetic. I don't have a full array of tools." My dad then said, "You know my wife is solely dependent upon me. And if I die, she will die also>" or The doctor said,  "You know me, you know I would like to do it, but I can't." And then my dad placed his ace card. He said I've got a seven year old son, I was seven by then. And if you don't do it, my son has no chance to live. All that was true. And so finally the doctor kind of wavered and gave up, to come to my house, and so that night my dad came to his house with a half a bottle of vodka, that was his sole anesthetic. And he literally assisted the physician and the rhinoplasty on his nose. And the job was brilliant, because while it was not a pretty outcome, and he never looked Jewish, he looked more like a retired boxer. With a flat nose. No bridge on the nose at all.

Lea Lane  15:22  
And they got him through, another person who helped get you through.

Allan Hall  15:25  
Also he dyed his hair blonde, and since he spoke brilliant German, high German, he could socialize with the Nazis and nobody suspected.

Lea Lane  15:34  
Well, he did something extremely bold and risky, at the epicenter of the Nazis. Tell us about that.

Allan Hall  15:42  
Yes. Well, once while I assume they were having beers, they were socializing. A German was complaining that he had an office in a Nazi headquarters building, the tallest building in Poland, the second tallest building in Europe. And he was just paying rent for an office he could not use. Well, my father almost jumped out of his shoes. And he said, "Well, I've got a little [_____] problem. You said space, how much you want for it?"  A price was established, and my dad sublet that office in a Nazi headquarters building. We climbed up the 13 flights of stairs up to that, because we would not use the elevator, since these were manual elevators, run by operators. And so we climbed up the backstairs, got into the office, and for next two years, my mother and I were hidden in a back closet, in the back off the private office, in the Nazi headquarters building in Warsaw. 

Lea Lane  16:43  
Tell me about the closet. 

Allan Hall  16:46  
Well, the closet was about two feet, two and a half feet wide, or deep, I should say. And about maybe four and a half to five feet wide. My mother and I sat on the floor facing each other, and we each had a pillow on our lap. So that because there are people working all around us, so if we had to cough, sneeze, or anything, we would bury our heads in a pillow. The only other things that we had in the closet was a potty for personal needs. And lastly, a little bit of white string like a baker string. And we would play cat in the cradle for hour after hour after hour. And that's the way we spent about nine to 10 hours each day, five days a week. And even on Saturday, Sundays, when we came out of the closet, we could never rise above the bottom of the window so that nobody would see us.

Lea Lane  17:37  
How many years did you have to do this? 

Allan Hall  17:41  
Two years. But for us, for us this was heaven. Because nobody apprehended us. And this was two years of safety. In fact, for us it didn't get any better.

Lea Lane  17:52  
How did you eat? What did you eat?

Allan Hall  17:54  
My dad would come and go. And he would buy food on the black market. And occasionally, when that was not possible, the top two floors were occupied by Nazis, Air Force headquarters for the country of Poland. That was a 24/7 operation. They would sometimes throw food out that they didn't like, they would throw potato peelings that they didn't like, and even some rotten potatoes. And that was one of the principal food sources for us.

Lea Lane  18:24  
You write something I can't forget. You wrote that you were only a child, but from mid-1941 until mid-1945, you don't remember crying, not even once. Is that because you were afraid?

Allan Hall  18:37  
Right. Well, because crying does, there's two things about crying. It makes noise. People don't look at you. And people notice somebody's crying. And I passed for those four years by not being noticed, by not being seen. So crying was off limits. No matter how bad I felt, how much pain I experienced, crying was off limits.

Lea Lane  18:59  
Now in the midst of all this, to get money to buy food, your mother created something very exceptional. What did she figure to do?

Allan Hall  19:09  
Well, my dad whittled crochet hooks out of the parquet flooring, and we started knitting shopping bags out of paper string, which Dad created colored in some very pretty colorful ways and we would sell those for maybe $5, $6. And so they were so very readily, if you had a bag full of groceries and these things hold a good bit of weight, they're made out of this paper string that's still available, even here in United States. But if you got caught in the rain, or you know what happens to it to paper when it gets wet, and so we had to be careful not to sell in the same part of Warsaw. So every time he sold, he sold several jobs and once or twice he had a close call.

Lea Lane  19:58  
Right, amazing. Well, tell us about April 1943. What happened then, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising?

Allan Hall  20:07  
Well, we could hear and we could smell the worst of the uprising. But our windows, understand we were in the 13th floor of this high rise building, they faced in another direction. And so if we snuck up and just just peeked over the window sills, we could see that 13 floors below, the Nazis forming columns, to go into the ghetto, to kill the Jews. But we could never see anything pertaining to the ghetto fighting itself. And I think, look, in retrospect, that was a blessing, because that was a never ending horror that lasted probably for almost a month. And every day, when we heard the explosions and gunfire, we thought each day, just the fact that they were still fighting was a huge victory. But the end was foreseeable.

Lea Lane  21:03  
Well, this is all tying into what I was talking about in the beginning of the sites we can still visit today. And you're telling us the history which goes behind it, which I'm very thankful that you're here to share these moments with us. Let me just ask you, there was a surprise on September 16, 1944. Can you tell us about that?

Allan Hall  21:25  
Well, that was a big surprise. Big surprise. We were, our middle was swollen because of malnutrition and hunger. And we were forced to go down to the bomb shelter because this was during the Warsaw uprising, the Polish uprising, not the ghettos, this was long after the ghettos was gone. And we, under sniper fire, had to go to another bomb shelter. And there, for the first time, they separated my mother and I. She was maybe only 30 or 40 feet away. And they dropped this sheet between us. And she knew me, I'd be terrified, which I was. And she would reassure me from the outside, and she nevertheless, several hours later, I heard what I thought was a cat screeching. And what I did, I'd never been around babies. What I didn't realize was that these were the birth cries of my baby brother, who was born in 1944, September of 1944. I thought his birth was my death, because now there was no way to go unnoticed. So I was not the happiest person to see him come into this world. I was completely wrong. Because a physician, we had to in order to get out of Warsaw, which by that time was being destroyed by the Germans, were to go through a checkpoint, but we couldn't because we were sitting in the closet for two years previously. And we had no papers. So we weren't being shot on the spot. But a doctor, in order to save this baby, put us in a hospital train, wrapped up my mother's face in bandages, as though she was hit by shrapnel. And we went off thinking that train will go to Germany. But in fact, surprises, surprises. The train went back to Krakow, the very place where we started. So my brother was the cause of our survival. And once we're in KraKow, my dad established a relationship with the Polish underground, and they gave us shelter for the last four months of the war.

Lea Lane  23:33  
Did you realize you were just outside of Auschwitz extermination camp while you were living there?

Allan Hall  23:38  
Absolutely not. The Germans never let anybody know about anything like that. Interestingly, the Allies more knew more about the concentration camps than we did. Every time they took people, they said they're going further east to the place where they could work. So a lot of people got onto these trains willingly. Now, we knew nothing about the concentration camps, all we knew was that once the Germans got you, we never heard from that person again. And that's all we knew. We had no idea about the killings.

Lea Lane  24:12  
Well, on January 19, 1945, you write that your father came home and announced the Russians have liberated Krakow, the Nazis are gone. And when the war ended, your father was arrested. And knowing that children would be used as hostages, your mother instructed you to take the baby and make your way to Palestine. So for months, you write that you were hunted by the Soviets. And you were 11 years old, carrying your baby brother across Europe, trying to get to Italy on a ship to Palestine. Can you tell us a little about that?

Allan Hall  24:45  
Sure. After the war, we thought that the Soviets were our liberators. They were the good guys. We had no idea what they really were like. My dad was very fortunate. He got a job in the Polish government in a very high position. And he did not understand the conflict between East and West. And so he traveled west to try to establish relationships and insurance companies to bring him into Poland. So as to enhance the economic development of Poland, because after the war, it was devastated. Well, he made too many trips to the west, and one night there was a knock on the door, there was banging on the door. And they came in and arrested my dad and dragged him off to prison. After maybe six weeks, a while, they told him he was being sent to Siberia, which he was. Mom knew that he was going to try to attempt to escape. And she said, my brother at that time was about 20 months old, and they were walking across Europe to Trieste. And from there, the ships went to Palestine to sneak people in. And so with my brother on my back, that's what we did. Usually each day from maybe 10 to 25 miles, walking, sometimes getting a ride. And we went from one DPM to another. And we never went alone, we always had to go with a group. And so we got about as far as [_____], which was just about 40 miles south of Vienna. And then my brother got sick. And he wound up in the hospital. He was there for about a month. Mom and Dad, Dad in fact did escape from the Soviet prison. And my mother joined him, and they went off to Paris. They started looking for us, but by that time I was an expert in evasion. So there were no DP, they were no papers. So in the camp I went and changed my name. And so when they tried to track us down, they couldn't. Finally, the only way they could track us down is by describing two kids traveling together, one about two years old and one 11. And the old one could be a boy or a girl because we had no hair. So I could just slip on a dress, and I could identify as female. And the younger will probably be a boy because he couldn't understand changing genders. Well, they visited a number of pairs of children and finally found us that way.

Lea Lane  27:15  
Well, the story, as I will tell you later, is available on the show notes, so you can hear more about it and read more about it. But I'll just say that in 1947, your family immigrated to the United States, and you were 12 years old and unable to read or write, you say in your book, and you didn't speak a word of English. And you began school. And you went on to graduate from the University of Florida and the University of Florida Law School. And you married and had three daughters and a successful life. But how did it feel when you first came to America?

Allan Hall  27:54  
My first view of America was on an aeroplane. I came out of the darkness of Europe, because Europe pretty much still had very few lights, even after 1946, '47. Actually, we came here in January '47. And so I came out from the darkness. And I looked out the window of the aeroplane and I saw this sea of light. I couldn't believe it.  I'd never seen anything like it, and I was amazed. Of course, what I was looking at was a skyline in New York. And so that was my introduction to America. And we really enjoyed, that was a very nice metaphor. Very nice example of what I experienced here. I came from darkness to light.

Lea Lane  28:37  
Absolutely. In 1993, you revisited Warsaw with your family. What did it feel like returning there?

Allan Hall  28:45  
Well, I visited, we visited several times. The only time I ever broke down was when I revisited with my brother, his family, my family, my mother, my dad had died previously. And we were at the door of the closet of the room where we hid for two years in the closet. And there, for the first time, and the only time, I absolutely lost it. I just, I am teary when I talk to you about it now. I don't know, I can't explain to you. But there was something really terrific about that space. And that is, this was a space for us which, as uncomfortable as it may have been, it was heaven, sitting in a closet and not being apprehended, not being fearful of being apprehended every moment. Even though food was short, all the rest of it, it was still heaven. I revisited that place in 2018, yes, 2018. That same building has been rehabbed completely. It is now the Warszawa, Polish word for Warsaw, Hotel. It is the most plush, the most opulent, the nicest hotel I've ever seen on any continent. That very space where I hid. Of course, it's been totally reconfigured. But now is grand, a grand suite. And, you know, I say this with a smile on my face because it's ironic, but it's  just kind of wonderful for me to not see that space. Fortunately, if we survive COVID, etc, I want to go back to the hotel. And I want to check into that space just to satisfy myself.

Lea Lane  30:34  
Absolutely. Unbelievable. Allan, thank you so very much for sharing your amazing story. There are many stories from many survivors. Each one is unique. Each one teaches us so much. You can click on the link in Allan's bio on this episode's shownotes to download Allan's Holocaust memoir, Hiding in Plain Sight. I highly recommend doing it. And also, if you're on Twitter, please consider following @AuschwitzMuseum. And each day on the birthday of a survivor, you can read about that person and see their photo. And you will realize that they were people just like us, living their lives, like Allan, and we must never forget. So thank you again. I really appreciate your coming.

Allan Hall  31:21  
Thank you. And I just want to point out that the memoir can be downloaded free of charge.

Lea Lane  31:27  
Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Allan Hall  31:30  
It's good to be with you. 

Lea Lane  31:31  
You, too.

Lea Lane  31:37  
Thanks for sharing travel memories with us. My book, Places I Remember, is available on Amazon and at bookstores, in print, on Kindle, and I read the audio version. Please subscribe to this podcast and consider giving us a review. Until next time, join us wherever in the world we're going.