- [Narrator] Coming up on "One Detroit."

Our destination Detroit series focuses on Holocaust survivors who made Michigan their home.

Survivor and author Irene Miller shares her story of tragic loss and remarkable resilience.

Plus, children of Holocaust survivors learn how to keep their parents' histories alive for generations to come.

And we'll talk about the 100th anniversary of the Detroit Civil Rights case involving Dr.

Ossian Sweet.

It's all coming up next on "One Detroit."

- [Narrator] Across our MASCO family of companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

MASCO, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities we serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.

(inspiring music) - As part of our ongoing destination "Detroit Series," one Detroit is sharing the stories of Holocaust survivors who settled in Michigan.

There were about 4,000 survivors who came to the state after World War II to rebuild their lives.

First up, we hear from Irene Miller.

She spoke to "One Detroit" contributor Sarah Zientarski about survival, loss, and strength during and after the Holocaust.

(inspiring music) (uplifting music) - Not only am I fortunate that I survive, but I am more fortunate that I was able to create a very meaningful life and significantly contribute to my community.

Why did I start talking?

I tell them- In my case, it was my personal tragedy.

The death of my daughter Naomi.

She always asked me to tell her my story and I never wanted to do it.

- [Narrator] Now, Irene Miller shares what she endured during the Holocaust through public talks and in her memoir.

- Writing the book was an emotional journey that I needed.

I wrote the book as me telling the story to Naomi that I didn't tell in her lifetime.

Speaking throughout the United States is a mission for me to let the world know what hate and prejudice did, and what hate and prejudice can do again, unless we learn from it.

My extended family was close to 100 members.

Not a single one of them survived.

When I speak, I'm their voice as well.

- [Narrator] Miller is among the thousands of Holocaust survivors who have made Michigan home.

- I came to live permanently in Michigan, 1970, but I have lived for brief periods of time too.

I married in Israel when I just turned 18 to a man from Detroit.

And originally, this is what brought us to Detroit.

- Here is Katie Chaka Parks, Director of Education at the Zekelman Holocaust Center.

She reflects on the lasting impact Holocaust survivors have had on Michigan's communities.

- After the war, about 100,000 Holocaust survivors come to the United States, and about 4,000 of them settle here in Michigan.

So they're actually the ones that are responsible for creating this entire museum.

They really wanted to be able to memorialize their loved ones that were murdered, and all the experiences that they had had.

Before the war, I mean, Michigan had a very thriving Jewish community.

We always have.

We were very integral even during the Holocaust, trying to send aid and help to those in Europe.

And so for many people, they knew that coming to Michigan, they would have help when they came here afterwards.

- The Zekelman Holocaust Center keeps survivor voices alive through public talks by survivors themselves, second generation speakers, and educational programs that pass their stories on to future generations.

Irene Miller is one of those survivors who speaks at the center to share her story.

- When I tell my story, I convey the emotions that comes with it.

We started hearing that Soviet soldier were coming in the middle of the night taking away all the young men.

So my mother took the train to the city where dad worked to warn him not to come back until he hears from her, but she missed the last train coming back to us.

And that night, when my sister and I were alone, Soviet soldier kicked in the door of the cabins.

They gave us a few minutes to scoop up whatever we could, and they marched just to a train station, where there was a long line of kettle cars, and they would shove in as many people as they could in each of those box cars.

This was meant for transportation of cows, horses, and so on.

No light, no windows.

Once a day, they will let everyone under the train to relieve themselves.

Everyone goes simultaneously.

Doesn't take long, you forget about the notion of privacy.

Our food was most of the time a cup of soup for the day.

That was it.

We were on that train.

Somewhere between six and eight weeks with the doors closed.

They delivered us to a labor camp in the Siberian Taiga.

Bears would come to the door front.

At night, we heard Siberians wolf howling.

If you were outside, any part of your skin exposed wouldn't take more than a few minutes, it would get frostbitten.

We didn't have clothing for that kind of a climate.

In Uzbekistan, we almost starved to death.

My mother would go into the field, pick up anything that was grown wildly, boil it, drink it first herself to see how it affected.

If she was okay, she would give it to us as well.

I never thought of a diet, never.

And you know, if anything, it's difficult for me to say what powers we are born with of, you know, what contributes to survival as opposed to not.

But there one thing that I feel helped me, not just in the Holocaust, but in difficulties and traumatic difficulties in lives that are had after the Holocaust.

In the most difficult situations, find one grain of positivity, water it, nurture it, and clink to it.

There is not a situation, no matter how painful it is, that you cannot find one little grain of something.

Only 10% of Jewish children survived.

Almost all of them gone by now, but those of us who survived become the voices of those who didn't live to tell their story.

- [Narrator] Chaka Parks explains sharing survivor stories isn't just about preserving history, It's about helping people understand the real human costs of hate, and why remembrance is essential to preventing it from ever happening again.

- We always say that when you hear a survivor's testimony, you become witness to that testimony as well.

When you hear next generation speakers and survivors talk, you take those stories and you pay it forward by telling someone about your experience and what you learned.

Because it's that educational component that I think is so important that makes us a better community, a better place to live, that we all understand the humanity in one another.

- [Narrator] Let's turn now to the descendants of Holocaust survivors.

- "One Detroit" contributor Sarah Zientarski continues her "Destination Detroit" reports with a look at how the children of Holocaust survivors are preserving their family stories and carrying on their legacies.

She visited a storytelling workshop for second and third generation children of survivors at the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills.

(inspiring music) - Basically, "Schindler's List" is my father's story.

- [Narrator] For Gail Offen, the film seems like a reflection of her father's lived reality.

The brutality and quiet endurance all mirrored what he went through during the Holocaust.

- My father was in a camp with my uncle called Gusen, and it was a rock quarry, and their job was to take rocks, big rocks, and break them into smaller rocks, but not just standing still, this quarry has 186 steps, and I know this because I've been there and I counted the steps.

And their job was to take big heavy rocks and go run up and down these steps all day long carrying these rocks, and I mean run, you know?

Hot weather, cold weather, you didn't have shoes, you were sick, you still had to run, because if you didn't run, the guards would shoot at you.

And as my father said, "Once in a while, they missed."

So this was one of the horrible camps my father and my uncle were in.

And of the 500 men that were in this camp, only five or six men survived.

And my father and my uncle were two of the lucky ones.

- [Narrator] Growing up, Offen was shielded from the horrors of what her father went through.

- I didn't learn about the Holocaust till much later in life, probably when I was in what we now call middle school, because at the time, parents didn't think it was a good idea to talk to their kids about the Holocaust.

It would be too traumatic, too upsetting.

Even as an adult, I didn't know all the details till my father, not till age 60, was he able to talk about it in public.

The rabbi who started the Holocaust Center, Rabbi Rosensweig, of blessed memory, he persuaded some of the survivors to talk.

My father was one of the first, and my father started speaking at the Holocaust Center, and it was very cathartic for him, and it really became his life's work.

- [Narrator] Offen has been sharing her father's story since he first opened up about it.

Her father passed away in 2012, but it wasn't until 2021 when Offen officially started speaking at the Zekelman Holocaust Center.

The museum estimates there are approximately 400 to 450 first generation Holocaust survivors still alive in Michigan today.

Earlier this year, second and third generations gathered at the museum for a special workshop led by writer and performer David Labi, learning new ways to carry their relative stories forward for generations to come.

- I felt like this was a good opportunity to work with people on the stories they tell themselves about their parents and grandparents.

So I offered this to the Secondment Holocaust Center as a workshop, working with second generation and third generation children of survivors, looking at different ways that they can approach the stories of their ancestors.

- This workshop, the minute I saw it come through in my email, I instantly signed up because look, I've done a lot of storytelling.

Everybody's stories can get better.

How do you connect with people in your audience?

You need to have your story resonate with them.

- I feel a responsibility to work with people, to listen to people, to engage with their stories after they've heard mine.

My father was born in Tripoli, Libya in 1938, and he was taken by the Nazis with his mother and his sister in 1943.

The thing is, he had a British passport, so from his father.

His father was put in prison by the fascist authorities, and he would eventually catch typhus and die.

But because of the British passport, my father and his mother and his sister, they had value, they had perceived value for the Nazis, and they were taken across the sea with a small group of Jews.

It's a story not many people know about, actually.

So he was only four years old when he went into the concentration camp.

So he had very little memory of the details of what had happened to him.

- [Narrator] After his father's death, Labi felt a deep need to better understand the man he lost.

He began reaching out to those who knew his father, who saw different sides of him, hoping their memories might fill in the gaps and offer a fuller picture than what he had as his son.

- For me, growing up, my father was like a symbol, but talking to his best friend, his sister, and all of these interviews contributed to being able to think about my father in a different way and change my conception of him completely.

- [Narrator] He gathered those words and turned his father's story into a one man stage show called "Pieces of a Man."

- This is a story about me and my father, Musci Marcello Labi, known to most people as Marcello, and known to us as Ab, Hebrew for Father.

I had intended it as a podcast project, then it became a kind of book idea, then it became a film idea, and then finally it became a stage show.

I went to Israel twice.

I went to Rome, I went to London.

I spoke with family and friends.

And as I got a fuller picture of my father's life, I started to realize that with my wondering, adventuring, self-destructive behavior that me and my father weren't so different after all.

My show "Pieces of a Man," it's about my father's legacy as a Holocaust survivor.

And I felt that I had to tell the story publicly, because I believe that it has a universal aspect to it, that in a way, not just for Holocaust survivors or for people who've experienced something like that, everybody has complex relationships with their parents.

My friends all thought he was a mafia boss.

You can see why.

He had this big belly, a goatee beard, he smoked these huge cigars, and his manly eruptions could be heard from miles around the house.

Some of his burps were picked up by Japanese seismologists.

(audience laughs) Telling the story as a comedy, it makes it accessible to more people so people can come and they can engage with the topics, and without perhaps being frightened off by the heavy heaviness of the topic matter.

- [Narrator] Using humor to tell such a painful story deeply moved workshop participant Jeffrey Cymerint.

It offered a new lens to reflect on his own father's experience as a Holocaust survivor.

- I liked the way he presented his story.

He wanted to interject humor to keep the audience participation going.

- And I was originally incorporating my father at the beginning of the show.

You know, doing his kind of belly, his slow walk around, and his burping.

- That's the bigger thing I got from the workshop, is how to make it compelling and keep the audience's attention.

- [Narrator] Like others, Cymerint learned more from his father as time passed.

- It was brought up in phases almost.

So there were times where he wouldn't talk about it.

As he got older, he would talk about it more than when I was younger.

So we would walk, he would talk, or he would tell me something I didn't hear before, and then it just, it hit me.

But he'd say to me on some of these walks, he'd go, "Jeffrey, you could write a story about my life."

So I am, my father was a Holocaust survivor, and from Ostrava to then Stella Visa, Poland, Germany invaded Poland, started the war.

And after that they were moved to, they were, they were moved out to the Stella Visa Ghetto, which was an, it was a chemical and pharmaceutical plant.

And him and his brothers worked at the plant with my grandfather.

And what they did is they created opioids, but instead of testing 'em on, on animals, they tested 'em on the Jews in the camp.

They were there from 39 to 41.

41, they closed down the camp, and then he was taken by cattle car to Auschwitz.

My aunt at that point, Paula, she had a 4-year-old baby boy.

They miraculously made it to Auschwitz.

And they were separated at that point.

And my aunt was holding onto the baby.

They were trying to take the baby away from my aunt, and she was holding on the baby with all her might, and she didn't see the other car come and shoot 'em both.

After that, my grandmother, grandfather, and the youngest uncle I had, Morris, were told to take a refreshing shower, which killed them.

- [Narrator] Cymerint explains, telling his father's story was something that had to happen.

- I knew I had to do it, like I had to say it.

I had to tell people.

What I want other generations of my family to remember is the kind of person he was, what he went through, what he went through, and how he treated people, with kindness and respect.

- Following the war, many Holocaust survivors found ways to move to the United States, and Michigan became a new home for thousands.

The Zekelman Holocaust Center's Director of Education Katie Chaka Parks said about 4,000 Holocaust survivors settled in the state.

- Many Holocaust survivors are drawn, or were drawn to Michigan because the industry, because they had family members here.

For so many after the Holocaust, a third uncle twice removed, anybody that was family was somebody that you were going to try to become in contact with.

- My uncle's family was here, my uncle Simon, Aunt Lucia, my cousin Johnny, though, they were here, he was born in '51, I think in Germany, and they came here.

And then my dad met him here in '56, married, met my mom in '58, got married in '58, lived 47 years.

That's how my father got here.

But I had like a fairytale childhood.

You know, there was a great neighborhood, great kids.

I'm still friends with the kids that I grew up with.

It was a wonderful childhood.

And in that part of it, you know, didn't necessarily make it less wonderful.

I was able to do stuff with my father that he never did.

My dad didn't have a bar mitzva 'cause the war.

So he had it with me.

- Often explains how her family also ended up in Michigan.

- But before the war, my father remembered that his grandmother used to write letters to cousins in Detroit asking for help.

Well, after the war, they were in London and they thought they were trying to think of the name, they weren't sure, and they sent a letter to and put on it, Hirschman, that was the name they remembered, Detroit, Michigan.

That's it.

And they just put the letter in the mail.

And about a month later, the cousins that were in Detroit somehow got the letter, sent them back a letter asking for more details.

And they connected like that.

And they said, if you come to Detroit, you'll have a family.

You'll have all the food you want and please come.

And I think I'm here because of salami, but it was a wonderful family of cousins who were so welcoming.

- [Narrator] For more destination Detroit stories, go to onedetroitpbs.org/destinationde.

Let's turn now to the story and legacy of Dr.

Ossian and Sweet, an African American physician who moved his family into a white neighborhood on Detroit's East Side in 1925.

One night, an angry mob shouting threats and racial slurs through rocks and bottles at his house.

Shots rang out from the home, and one of the attackers was killed.

Their murder trial made civil rights history.

One Detroit contributor, Steven Henderson of American Black Journal, talked about the case with the CEO and founder of the Dr.

OCHN Sweet Foundation, Daniel Baxter.

(inspiring music) - Let's just go through for people who don't know what happened, and I guess what lessons we can draw from it.

- Yeah, so Dr.

Sweet, he graduates from Wilberforce University, then Howard University.

While he's at Wilberforce, he hangs out in Detroit and he recognizes the growing African American community, and the fact that they don't have access to quality healthcare.

So he figures that he should start his practice in Detroit to provide that, and at the same time, make a nice sum of money.

So he moves to Detroit, he falls in love with a young lady by the name of Gladys Sweet.

They get married, he goes over to Europe to study the impact of radiation on the human anatomy under Nobel Peace Prize winning Madam Curie.

He comes back to Detroit and he's living with his in-laws.

The house is crowded because it's not just Dr.

Sweet, it's his two brothers, Henry and Otis that are living there.

He's a physician, a man of prominence.

So he comes across this home that's on sale on the corner of Garland and Charlevoix.

The people who own the house are an interracial couple, the Smiths, the wife is white, the husband is Black, but he's passing.

Nobody ever questions it.

They sell him the house for $18,500, three times the amount of the value because of the color of their skin.

Dr.

Sweet has no problem with that.

He makes a $3,500 deposit on the house, and they decide to move in.

So they move in on September 8th.

Crowds would gather, but not much happens that day.

On September 9th at eight o'clock, all hell breaks out.

The mobs surround their home, they rush the house, shots ring out, and a man is killed.

The Detroit Police Department comes in, they arrest everybody, charged them with first degree murder.

It's not just Dr.

Sweet and his wife.

But there are 11 people in this group.

So the NAACP hires Clarence Darrell.

Darrell comes to Detroit stands before Frank Murphy and affirms a man's home is his castle is his castle whether he's white or Black.

The turning point of the case is when they asked Dr.

Sweet to testify, and the co-council Arthur Garfield Hayes, asked him the poignant question, what did you think when you saw the crowd?

And Dr.

Sweet says, when I opened the door and I saw the mob, I realized that I was facing the same mob that had hounded my people throughout this entire history.

In my mind, I was pretty confident of what I was up against.

I had my back against the wall field with a peculiar fear, the fear of one who knows the history of my race.

I know what mobs had done to my people before.

And with that testimony, he would tell the story of how African Americans have had to struggle with mob violence ever since we've been in this country forever, right?

And that was the first time that all white male jury had an opportunity to take off their rose color glasses and see the world in black and white the same way Black people saw it, and understand the psychology of the defendants when that mob came.

And that was a turning point.

After that case, after that trial, Murphy would turn the case over to the jury, they would come back with no decision.

Murphy would declare it a mistrial, throw the case out.

And then in April, Dr.

Sweet's younger brother Henry would be retried because he's the one who actually testifies that he shot into the mob.

But after two hours, the jury will come back with a not guilty verdict.

- [Narrator] And you can see more of Steven's conversation with Daniel Baxter at onedetroitpbs.org.

That'll do it for this week's "One Detroit."

Thank you for watching.

Head to the "One Detroit" website for all the stories we're working on, follow us on social media, and sign up for our newsletter.

- [Narrator] Across our MASCO family of Companies, our goal is to deliver better living possibilities and make positive changes in the neighborhoods where we live, work, and do business.

MASCO, a Michigan company since 1929.

- [Narrator] Support also provided by the Cynthia & Edsel Ford Fund for journalism at Detroit PBS.

- [Narrator] The DTE Foundation is a proud sponsor of Detroit PBS.

Through our giving, we are committed to meeting the needs of the communities.

We serve statewide to help ensure a bright and thriving future for all.

Learn more at dtefoundation.com.

- [Narrator] Nissan Foundation, and viewers like you.