By Dr. Ettie Zilber
April 2026
In November of 2025, the Phoenix Holocaust Association sponsored an extraordinary event – perhaps even unprecedented. And I was honored with the task of facilitating an interview between two incredible women. These two were born to two different cultural groups, they are 15 years apart in age, they lived on two different continents and suffered as a result of two different government policies. They both survived fractured and traumatic childhoods yet rose to become very strong and active women. These two extraordinary women are Dr. Ramona Klein and Hanna Zack Miley, whose life stories will both outrage you – and inspire you.
At the tender age of 7 – both Ramona and Hanna were separated from their parents, their families, their friends and their homes and sent away to an unknown and uncertain future. Ramona was sent by bus from her people – the Turtle Mountain Band of the Chippewa – to the Fort Totten Indian Boarding School in the state of North Dakota where she was aggressively forced to abandon her culture & heritage. Hanna was sent by train and boat from Cologne/Koln, Germany to London, England on what was known as the Kindertransport, which saved 10,000 Jewish children from the clutches of the Nazis. And she, too, had to abandon her language, her culture and her religion to survive in this unfamiliar English-speaking Christian society, at a time when all Germans were suspect, yet at the same time, they agreed to save the lives of Jewish German children.
Each of their parents faced what Holocaust historian Lawrence Langer called “choiceless choices” – Ramona’s parents were forced to send her away to save her from abject poverty and starvation and Hanna’s parents to rescue her from the Nazi’s war of annihilation against the Jews. No parent should ever have to face such decisions – and no child should have to experience the aftermath. Both women have the same memory on their brain– as they still – to this day- recall their parents’ tears as they strained to see them through the window of the bus and train. For Hanna, it would be the last time she would ever see her parents.
Each little girl had different confusions, fears, deprivations and in one case, physical and sexual abuses. One might wonder how their 7-year-old minds dealt with the traumas, their survival mechanisms, the aftermath of their experiences, and how those experiences shaped their future perspectives, their careers, and their later activism.
And, how active they both are to this day – at 93 and 78 years old!!! Both are activists and work tirelessly to educate the world about what they and hundreds of thousands of other children had to endure. Both are committed to telling their stories worldwide and documenting this history through books, talks, testimonies, films, non-profit associations and political lobbying. And, interestingly, each one trained and became a teacher.
Before I moderated this public discussion between them, I introduced these two strangers to each other via Zoom, and I enjoyed observing as the proverbial “fly on the wall.” Their immediate bond, their excitement and their understanding of the pain of each other’s experiences was palpable. They spoke with mutual excitement for well over 1 hour and only scratched the surface.
Each one is a very experienced teacher and storyteller. They are each very articulate as they captivate their audiences and dominate the stage as they tell their difficult stories with very clear memories and missions.
The recording of this interview is available on the website of the Phoenix Holocaust Association [unfortunately the recording volume is very low, but there is closed captioning]
I would love to hear your thoughts
- about this recorded interview https://phxha.com/gallery/#video-gallery
