Millie Zuckerman
Mina Zuckerman, known as Millie, was born on September 25, 1925 in Humniska, a small village in Southeastern Poland, to Abraham and Sabina Mark. Her father ran a grocery store that was patronized by the village’s Polish residents in addition to the local Jewish population (a minority of approximately 20 out of 500 families). Millie and her older sister Ann were raised in a traditional Jewish home and attended public school until the Nazis invaded Poland in the fall of 1939.
For the next three years, Millie and her family were required to wear identifying armbands and forced to perform slave labor, carrying heavy stones for road work. In 1942, all of the village’s Jews were sent to the nearby town of Brzozów and not long after that, it was announced that they would be sent to a labor camp. At this point, the family fled back to their hometown, where they were hidden by Michalina Kedra, whose daughter, Helena, was a school friend of Millie's. For two years, the Mark family hid in the Kedras' attic and stable. Michalena Kedra was honored as a Righteous Among the Nations by Yad Vashem in 1988.
Brzozów was liberated by the Russians in August 1944. In the fall, Millie's family traveled by train to a Displaced Persons (DP) camp in Budapest, Hungary, and in May 1945, they relocated to Bindermichl, a DP camp in Linz, Austria. Millie met and married her husband, Abraham Zuckerman, there in 1947. They remained in the DP camp until 1949, when they emigrated to the United States.
The Zuckermans settled in Hillside, New Jersey, where they launched a successful real estate business, became involved in various Jewish causes and were instrumental in the establishment of several institutions dedicated to Holocaust commemoration. They were married for 66 years until Abraham’s death in 2013. They had three children, Ann, Ruth and Wayne; 12 grandchildren, including Heschel parent and Holocaust Commemoration Committee member Hillary Katz; and five great grandchildren, including Heschel students Alexandra Walters Reed and Harrison Davis Reed. Millie passed away on August 9, 2020 at the age of 94. She documented her life story in a memoir, A Second Chance at Life, published in 2010.
