A Woman Retraces Her Grandmother's Story Of Survival And Escape From The Nazis

14:42

December 03, 2019

Andrea Asuaje

Hana (left) on one of her foster farms in Denmark in the early 1940s. Her granddaughter, Rachael Cerrotti (right) in 2017 on the farm in Denmark that she moved to in order to follow her grandmother’s story. (Courtesy of the "We Share The Same Sky" archive)

Rachael Cerrotti spent the last decade obsessing over her family history. Rachael's grandmother, Hana Dubova, was the only person in her Jewish Czech family to survive the Holocaust.

During WWII, the Danish government agreed to take in a few Jewish Czech children to go to live and work on foster farms in Denmark. Hana was one of those children. At age 14, she left home. In the years following her departure, her entire family was murdered in Nazi concentration camps.

Hana Dubova in the 1990s. (Courtesy of the "We Share The Same Sky" archive)

After Hana died in 2010, at the age of 85, Rachael found a mass of diaries, letters, and photographs. That discovery sparked her determination to uncover the past. She traveled to the same Danish farm that sheltered her grandmother all those years ago and shared her journey on Kind World in an award-winning series called "Beyond Sides Of History."

With the help of the USC Shoah Foundation, Hana's story has been turned into an educational plan for teachers - a lesson on the atrocities of hate and genocide. A recent study found that 22% of millennials say they've never even heard of the Holocaust.

Rachael's story and family history are now the subject of the podcast "We Share The Same Sky."