88-year-old Holocaust survivor fulfils life-long dream of getting diploma

By MiNDFOOD

88-year-old Holocaust survivor fulfils life-long dream of getting diploma
Miriam Schreiber's education was stolen from her when WWII broke out. Eighty years later, she's fulfilled a life-long dream.

Miriam Schreiber was just seven years old when she was captured and brought to a slave labour camp, where she spent the next five years trying to survive.

Now 88-years-old and living in Connecticut, US, the Holocaust survivor has fulfilled a life-long dream: to get her high school diploma.

Schreiber’s education was cut short in 1939 when WWII broke out in Poland. She and her family her captured brought to a camp in Siberia.

“My entire life was disrupted within minutes,” she told The Washington Post. “It’s hard to describe the suffering,” she said, recalling how she watched family members freeze to death. “It was worse than you could imagine.”

She was 14 years-old when she was liberated in 1946, a year after the war ended. She and her family went to a displaced persons camp in Germany, where they faced further anti-Semitism.

It was in the camp where she met her husband and they moved to the US in 1960.

With her education cut short, Schreiber was never able to get a high school education, as she and her husband had to focus on making money to look after their family. “It has been a profound regret of mine, all my life,” she said.

Decades later, Erica Kapiloff, a social worker at a Jewish Family Services in Hartford, Connecticut, found out about Schreiber’s unfulfilled dream and wanted to help.

“From the first time I met Miriam, she told me how disappointed she was to have never had a formal education,” said Kapiloff. They reached out to the New England Jewish Academy, who presented Schreiber with an honorary diploma.

On 16 August, Schreiber took part in a socially-distanced ceremony, where she donned a cap and gown and was handed her long-awaited diploma.

“When I finally got the diploma, I kissed it,” she said. “I just couldn’t believe it was mine.”

“I am offered an honorary degree to recognise that my life, learning and experiences are worthy of that honour.”

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