Holocaust survivor tells story through virtual reality at Skokie museum

SKOKIE, Ill. (WLS) — Marion Deichmann, 90, has spent most of her life repressing her memories of the Holocaust.

Now, she’s determined to not let hers or her mother’s story die, with a book published in 2012 and a virtual reality film produced in conjunction with the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

“My mother was taken away on the 16th of July 1942, 81 years ago,” Deichmann said.

Traveling back to the Paris apartment she last shared with both her mother and grandmother, the film starts at the beginning, recounting her family’s escape, first from their native Germany, then Luxembourg.

“They took them in railroad cars, and she went to Auschwitz,” Deichmann said. “They used to have these trains of about 1,000 people. Nobody came back.”

Following her mother’s arrest, Deichmann and her grandmother were separated as they went into hiding with help from the French resistance.

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“Some people in Normandy offered to take children. And so I went to Normandy,” Deichmann said.

Deichmann’s story is one of three recently produced in 360 video by the Illinois Holocaust Museum, with the aim of preserving survivors’ stories long after they are gone.

“They take place in different geographies. They’re about different experiences. But they are connected. They all are about young women, and their stories are a little different than the standard ones you might hear,” said Noah Cruickshank, with the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

For Deichmann, the return to the sites of such trauma was part of a process she continues to live, even all these years later.

“She was my everything. She still is. Believe it or not, the old lady that I am,” Deichmann said.

Deichmann’s story will premiere at the Venice Film Festival in early September and then be available to view at the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie starting Oct. 1.