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Full documentary: Watch ‘Always Remember Your Name’ about a Sacramento Holocaust survivor

Andra and Tatiana Bucci were 4 and 6 when they were deported with their mother from Italy to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Our documentary tells the unlikely story of their survival and of their mission 80 years later to lead "memory trips" of school children from Italy to Auschwitz to fight issues like Holocaust misinformation.

Full documentary: Watch ‘Always Remember Your Name’ about a Sacramento Holocaust survivor

Andra and Tatiana Bucci were 4 and 6 when they were deported with their mother from Italy to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Our documentary tells the unlikely story of their survival and of their mission 80 years later to lead "memory trips" of school children from Italy to Auschwitz to fight issues like Holocaust misinformation.

- My name is Andra Bucci. My sister Tati and I, we are two of the youngest Holocaust survivor from Italy. - [Sonia] So everywhere she goes, she takes the rocks. And then now that she lives in America, she brings them from where she lives. - I saw a stone. I take not only in Sacramento, in San Francisco, and everywhere. - That's why I do it. I don't know if that's why my mom does it, but when we went to my grandmother's grave, that's what we did. We had the stones and we did it because we want her part of us now to be there with her. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] You've done so many of these memory trips. - I think almost 40. - [Deirdre] 40 trips. That's a lot of students. - Yes. - [Deirdre] Why is it so important to do them? They're not easy. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - It wasn't such a huge leap of the imagination for Italians to also join in and participate in the persecution of Jews. - [Sonia] It was sophisticated and planned and industrialized. - [Deirdre] How did children survive? - I don't know. Maybe I was more strong. - We become the witnesses. (Andra speaking in foreign language) You know, when you're here with me, you are doing it with me. But when I'm gone, then you're doing it for me. - Seeing it in real life is much more impactful than just setting it in the book. So I really wanted to come here and experience it for myself. - Oh my God. Every time she tells her story, there's new things. There's something you've never heard before. - Whether you're at Auschwitz or another camp, you became a number, you became a thing. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] Your mother seemed to know why they would put a tattoo on you and refer to you by number. And she told you something very important about your own name. What is it she told you? - Yes. Always remember your name. - So we just wait for that to come back. - [Host] Repeat after me. I hereby declare, on oath- - I, on oath- - Yeah, we applied at the beginning of August and then she had her test- - In December 9. - By December 9. She was nervous for that one too. (Andra laughing) - This obligation freely, without- - Oh, I'm super excited. - Super. Oh, yes, yes. I sleep very poco- - Little. - Lima. - Little. She didn't sleep last night. - Little, little sleep this night because I was very excited. (group cheers and applauds) - [Sonia] (laughs) She's complaining her picture- - [Interviewer] What, she didn't get a nice photo? - [Andra] It's like a picture- - She looks like an inmate picture. - It's terrible. It's terrible picture. I don't think I am a normal person, I think. - She thinks she's a normal person and not special. - Yeah, not special. - [Interviewer] A lot of people would disagree with that, I think. - Yeah, maybe, maybe. I don't know. But for me, everything is normal. (dramatic music) - I'm gonna go ahead and throw this on you. We can put it right here. Since you have a sweater, I don't have to get- - Andra and her sister Tatiana have dedicated their lives to sharing their story in Auschwitz. - Dominic, Win is here, Jade. Is Jade here? Yay, I'm glad you're back. Anytime you can have someone that was there who's experienced it, speaking about their experience is always gonna have more power than a book or a movie. Always. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - This is Ms. Andra Bucci. She is a Holocaust survivor. She's going to tell us about her story through her daughter Tatiana. - I knew about my mom's story forever. Like Sonia, we knew it because, you know, they have the number on the arm, you ask. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - I've always been interested in the Holocaust dutifully during school because we never really had much time to go over that lesson. That lesson was always maybe a day, an afternoon, an hour, maybe just a reading about it. And I always wanted to go more into it. My name is Joshua Edwards, and I did my high school senior project on the life of a Holocaust survivor. She was in the Holocaust when she was four years old with her sister, who was six years old, and they survived the Holocaust only because they were believed to be twins. So this is a book by Andra and Tatiana Bucci, "Always Remember Your Name: A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz." "Ours is a long story, and it begins far away. Our parents met under a clock tower in Fiume, the way young people did in those days and as perhaps they still do today." (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra laughing) - Tati, Tati, Tati. - This one is 1940. - All of these are before? - These all are before. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Sonia] Yeah. These are all before. - Zero hour strikes. (alarm blaring) The first shots of the New World War are fired at Westerplatte. (fire hissing) (cannon booms) (artillery blasting) Daily Berlin's Blitzkrieg spreads death and destruction from the skies. (explosion booming) (audience cheers and applauds) (Adolf speaking in foreign language) (audience cheers and applauds) - You know, our real challenge is to carry these stories forward and inspire students to make the stories their own. Carrying these stories of the survivors onto their children and grandchildren. When the war begins on September 1st, 1939, and they quickly march into Poland, very soon, they put restrictions on Jews. - What we do know, right, is that in this first stage of the war that we had been speaking about, there was no policy of ethnic cleansing. My name is Shira Klein. This is my 12th year at Chapman University. I'm chair of the history department. And so the idea being that sort of, if you could go back in time and change one little thing, it would probably have a very big effect, right? (Mussolini speaking in foreign language) (crowd cheering) - There are some misconceptions about Italian Jews. There are a bunch of them, but probably the most common one was that Italian Jews were treated really well in Italy and more generally, that Italy is seen as sort of this oxymoron, like a bit of a paradox. (Mussolini speaking in foreign language) - Mussolini had come to power in 1922 and Italy was a dictatorship, and so any executive decision was by the fascist regime, and this was no different. Mussolini had racial theorists who put together these laws. Some of them were inspired by the German race laws 'cause Germany had passed its Nuremberg laws in 1935, 3 years earlier. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - "Aunt Gisella, who that summer had come to Fiume with our cousin Sergio, decided not to return to Naples, since her husband wasn't there anyway. So we became a single nuclear family without the two sailors, our father and uncle, who were imprisoned far away." (announcer speaking in foreign language) - The Nazis will send the SS Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads, into the Ukraine and other areas. It's one bullet per person is, you know, not efficient and you've got your killers not wanting to get up in the morning and go kill more people. And the best way to do that, the most efficient, the least upsetting for the killers is to use either carbon monoxide, or then in Auschwitz, they will come up with the idea of using something they already have used in the camps as a pesticide, Zyklon B was in use as a pesticide in a lot of different places, that they can do that in a way that is very efficient. (Hitler speaking in foreign language) - One night, the fascist and the German came to get them. It was night, it was dark, and there was a lot of noise. They knocked the door, they came in. My family was scared. Just imagine, she was four years old. How would you feel at four years old if somebody comes shouting in your house? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Joshua] "They take us to the rice mill, the big rice-husking factory built in the late 19th century in the Trieste neighborhood of San Sabba. Certainly the eight of us are all together. And we stay together in the cell that is assigned to us." - [Shira] As soon as Germans came into Italy in September of '43, they started to round up Jews in every major city and load them onto freight cars and send them northwards to Auschwitz. - [Narrator] Auschwitz, the symbol of Hitler tycoon. Here, the Germans had set up an immense experimental laboratory of fascism, a factory of death. (gentle music) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - We organize every year the travel for the memory, or Viaggio Della Memoria in Italian. It means to travel for the memory. - [Deirdre] You've done so many of these memory trips. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - I think almost 40. - [Interviewer] So is this dressing for Italy right here or is this everything? - No, this is for all Italy and Poland. - This is what my mother does. She puts everything in little baggies because she says that when you press the bags, it takes less room in the luggage. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - Listening to somebody telling them their story, only you hear them speaking or whatever, but it's emotional 'cause you feel their emotion. You feel the anger, the fear, the sadness. You feel all of it. - [Deirdre] 40 trips. That's a lot of students. - Yes. - [Deirdre] Why is it so important to do them? They're not easy. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (plane engine whirring) (gentle music) - They're impressive. Dinner at 8:00 and ready in the lobby at 6:00. (chuckles) - It's Deirdre. - Buongiorno. - Buongiorno (speaking Italian). We do two kisses here. (Deirdre laughing) - How are you? - Good. (gentle music) - All the trips start in Rome. Everybody meets in Rome usually? - No. This one, yes. Then the one in Tuscany starts in Florence. - So every year, more than almost 20 years that we have been organizing this kind of travelings. - [Deirdre] So tell us who's here. - So this is my aunt, Tatiana. - Tatiana. - Hello. - Nice to meet you. - Victor. - And the purpose is to bring the students as an agreement between the Union of Jewish communities in Italy with the Ministry of Education and to bring them directly to the places where the horrifying events of the Shoah happened. (gentle music) - The Jewish ghetto is a very vibrant beautiful place. People love to visit here. Why do people like to come to the ghetto here? - Because it's full of life. True life. There is a real life of Rome. It's the character of the Roman people. Not so easy to destroy our Jewish community in Rome and in Italy also. - Perfect. - [Sonia] She has a lot of memories and a lot of ideas and it's all mixing together. She's excited about you guys being here. She couldn't relax. - I suppose you have another shoes for Birkenau? - Boots? Yeah. - Oh, okay. (all laughing) - He'll need warm things, won't he? Yes, I know. (lively music) - They normally check in all together, right? Like a big group. But I don't know what they're doing now. That's when their diva comes into place. - [Deirdre] Tell us a little bit about diva. - When they do these trips, they transform into this little diva, this diva thing that it's all about them. So they had to, you know, the center of the things. So they have certain expectation. They have to sit in the front of the bus. They have to be the first one in and out of the bus. They have to be the first one be sitting at the restaurant, be served. It's like this small little silly stuff that they have to do. It's funny. - What is the impact of having Andra and Tatiana leading these tours? - Hearing their story, they were very, very little by then. They were four and six. And it's very, very, very, very rare that someone can survive because children were used for experiments. So they are the exception that survived somehow. - It takes a while before they decide. Not only are they going to mark them, they're gonna move them into designated areas of the big cities, especially big ones initially like Warsaw. - [Deirdre] And so the first day, you went to the Krakow ghetto? - Yeah, we went today. Yeah. - [Deirdre] And what were your thoughts as you walked through the ghetto? - It's very different picturing, as I said before, things in books and then walking along those streets in real life. Imagining that people just like us experienced those lives before. And you kind of feel the snow and the cold and you try to rank it up like 40 times more. It's really like, it really hits you. - [Deirdre] What is it like to see the Bucci sisters in person? You have studied stories like theirs. What is it like to actually see them? - It's kind of strange, because in these times we didn't even imagine that we would live anything like they lived. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - It really hits you. It really feels like people actually did it. People actually experienced it. It really was bad. They really face the consequences. It's not like a story with a good ending. They don't all survive. - One morning, it was Saturday morning, 16 October 1943, the Nazi closed all the door, all the street, all around and they went in the homes and they took all the Jews. - [Joshua] "Our arrival is mostly noise. It's April 4th, 1944. The train stops outside the camp we're being taken to, which we later found out is Birkenau, the giant death factory in the concentration camp system of Auschwitz." - Even though we studied the Holocaust a lot and our schools really put a lot of importance on it- (Andra speaking in foreign language) - Seeing it in real life is much more impactful than just setting it in the books. So I really wanted to come here and experience it for myself. (audience applauds) - What do you think about tomorrow? What are your thoughts? - Well, I think it's gonna be a very emotional experience. I don't really know how most of us will react to it emotionally, because maybe it won't even hit us like immediately. And then reflecting back onto it later through the day, it's gonna settle in more in our brains. (train whistle trumpets) (train rumbling) (Tati speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) (bell tolling) - [Joshua] "There are cries of fear as well, because dogs are barking and growling, because orders are given in German and almost no one understands it. There's tremendous confusion, in a ghostly scene of chaos." - [Marilyn] At Sobibor, Treblinka, there was no selection. At least when you arrived at Auschwitz, you had a chance, right? If you did look like you could work, you might be spared. - [Deirdre] How were you dressed, the two girls? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - This moment of complete horror and unpredictability, one had a sense to try to look stronger and younger. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (bells tolling) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] Where would Andra have arrived? - [Sonia] The train tracks didn't arrive here yet when she arrives. So the train tracks are about two left that way, two kilometers that way. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Joshua] "Our barrack is near the entrance of the camp. We enter and our immediate impression is that it's huge. It's rectangular in shape, like the ones that can still be seen today at Birkenau." (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - This is not my area. My area was another place. And we have not the barrack. Because my barrack was in the wood not (speaking in foreign language) brick. - Not bricks. - Brick. And it was destroyed? - Yeah. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - You just walk through I guess the gates of hell. Somebody can say, I don't know, but it's just so different, heavy, and to me, even gets colder. - She's always cold. A hundred degrees outside and she has a sweater on. The cold is being sucked into her. I don't think that the cold will ever get out of her bones. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] What were days like for the very few children at Auschwitz? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Sonia] Which is the building that last night she was talking about where she got- - The number. - disinfected and where she got her number tattoo. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - Whether you were at Auschwitz or another camp, you became a number, you became a thing. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] Your mother seemed to know why they would put a tattoo on you and refer to you by number. And she told you something very important about your own name. What is it she told you? - Yes. Always remember your name. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] One day your mother stopped visiting. What did you think? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - So this is my great-grandfather's cooking book that he got to help him learn how to cook as a prisoner of war. So my senior project, originally I wanted to do a cooking video or cooking lesson or something like that. My name is Joshua Edwards, and I'm Andra Bucci's grandson. I kind of wanted to be in her shoes, understand what she had gone through. So what I wanted to do was kind of live a week in her life as a Holocaust survivor. And then the biggest part was that my grandmother was my blockova. - [Deirdre] The blockova took a liking to you and your sister. How did you know that? (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] But you saw some blockovas do some pretty awful things. And I remember when we were at the camp, you talked about bricks. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - The ground had little gravels and that's where the blockova put women in punishment. They would have to kneel and they would have to hold a brick on each end and kneel as long as the blockova wanted to. - [Deirdre] And your cousin Sergio was with you in this barracks too. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - There was a time where the blockova told them, "Tomorrow they're gonna ask you if you wanna go see your mom. You have to say no. And don't tell anybody what I told you." If you guys remember, I told you Sergio was their cousin who was six years old, was in the barracks with them. So they told him, this is what's gonna happen tomorrow. You need to say no. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] The late army just saved lives of millions of concentration camp inmates. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] For five years, Europe was a vast prison, yet nothing equaled the atrocities of Auschwitz, Oswiecim concentration camp. - Rooting light of a candle and showed laying down on the floor. - [Deirdre] How do you select the students who will be a part of this experience? - So this special project is how we study the Shoah through a project of art. - Like, this is mine. - It's beautiful. - It was like the part of the book of Primo Levi, you know? And my part was when they were in the wagon, you know, it was night, so one of the refugees like, lit up again a candle. - It really stirs you up on the inside and you don't really even know what you're feeling right then and there. But yeah, it's something that I'll probably always remember. - [Interviewer] What was it like interacting with them where they had been at once? - It was always, always interesting to hear their stories. I kind of felt like crying a bit because it really is hurtful to know all they went through. - I think we're at an interesting juncture in terms of where we get our knowledge from and what weight we attribute to it. On the one hand, I tend to be very optimistic about knowledge, including historical knowledge, but just sort of how informed people are because knowledge has been democratized like never before. - [Content Creator] The Holocaust is not what happened. Let's look at the facts of that. And Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities. - I don't believe in the 6 million number. I don't believe in the gas chambers thing. - It's when work isn't peer-reviewed that we start getting distortions. And unfortunately, again with AI, those distortions sort of blow out of proportion because they are forked in so many different places. So I think it's not so much the source that worries me, it's whether people have the capacity to question those sources. (Tatiana speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - I teach seventh and eighth, and I've taught eighth grade for the last 10 years here. - Her father was Italian and he was a sailor. My grandmother was a seamstress. - In Italy, they teach specifically the Holocaust. Do you think we do enough? I don't think we teach history enough, whether it's a genocide or not. We're thinking about our actions critically. We just don't. - Technically, again, it's not in our state standard so it's not something we're required to teach but we added in as part of what we teach. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - To know that this person stood in front of Dr. Josef Mengele and at any time he could have said, off to the crematoria, it's chilling, it's special. It changes it because this is someone who is part of history and they survived that history. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Tati speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] So these students are all 12, 13 years old? - Yes, 13 years old. - [Deirdre] At this age, what is your goal with Holocaust education? What do you want them to learn? - To socialize. We want either respect. They learn to respect each other and others, of course. And to know what the real life is around them. It's not only the reality they see on the social. (Tati speaking in foreign language) - Gracias. (staff speaking in foreign language) - What is it like to have the children stare so intently at you as you're talking? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - She appreciates that they're quiet and listen. She appreciates the question because they mean they listen and they wanna know more. - You can tell that they're listening, can't you? - Why didn't you pretend to not be a Jew? - Before this all happened, all Jews had to register. So everybody that was going to the synagogue had to register. So they knew them. They knew their name. They knew who they were. - [Attendee] Do you think the conditions that she experienced in the camps had like lasting effects on her body? - Absolutely, yes. Not so much of the body, but her food. She will not eat certain food. She eats the portion of a bird. I mean, her relationship with food is really bad. (Tati speaking in foreign language) (attendee speaking in foreign language) (Tati speaking in foreign language) - "It should be recognized that in Germany, very serious attention is paid to the story of Nazism." (speaking in foreign language) - [Joshua] "Greater attention is paid there than in Italy, where, with a few exceptions, it's concentrated mainly in the week of Holocaust Remembrance Day." (attendee speaking in foreign language) (Giuseppe speaking in foreign language) (Tati speaking in foreign language) (audience applauds) - [Tatiana] So my aunt just asked him the same thing that she asked him the year before that Italy needs to admit that they were on the wrong side. And she's hoping that before she dies, Italy would apologize to her and tell her they were on the wrong side. - [Deirdre] You've talked about some of the myths that are associated with Italy's role with World War II and the treatment of the Jewish people in Italy. One of the myths is the good Italian. What is the good Italian? - It has different variations, but in one variation, it's that Italians never really wanted the war. They never really wanted any racism. And it was Germany who dragged Italy into it. - [Deirdre] German leaders have apologized- - They did it. Italian people, no. - Why? - I don't know. I don't know. Because they think the Italian people is like good people, but they are good and no good like everybody in the world. - And historians like me who have looked at the persecution of Jews in Italy and have shown just how brutal it was. So it's a myth. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny, but it does exist. (Mussolini speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] Do you think you will ever get the apology? - I hope, but it's very difficult to, I don't know. - [Interviewer] When he was saying Italy still hasn't apologized, do you think it's our duty to right the wrongs that were sort of made in the past or at least learn from them and- - Oh my gosh, million dollar question. The quick answer is yes. Is it our duty? Absolutely. It's our duty to speak up about what has gone wrong. It's hard because then you're taking away part of history. Like, should Jefferson be, you know, seen as a great president or because he had slaves and you know, do we give him grace because that was the times? Do we give people grace because the Holocaust was part of the times? No. So, who decides? (crowd member speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - That's where it started. It ended for some people, but it started for some people, right? - [Deirdre] You brought rocks from Sacramento? - Yeah, for the park, Sacramento River. Every corner when I go to work, I saw a stone, I take. Not only in Sacramento, in San Francisco, and everywhere. - We all do it. We all do it. Even my son Joshua, if he sees a pretty stone, we'll pick it up and put it in a Ziploc bag so when next time we go to Europe, we have it. Sometimes when she goes to Auschwitz, she brings her stone from here and puts them in Auschwitz too. (crowd member speaking in foreign language) - Because it's Jewish tradition, when you go in the cemetery, you put in the tomb- - In the tomb. - the stone. This is (speaking in foreign language). You leave your presence. Your visit. And the stone, (speaking in foreign language). - They don't disappear like flowers. They don't die. They stay there. Going there to me was closing the circle and bringing, you know, the stones from here is bringing a little part of me there to be with whoever is there. (gentle wistful music) - [Narrator] Among the 2,819 liberating Auschwitz inmates, there were 180 children, 52 of them were under eight years of age. How could they survive this hell? - I mean, how did children survive? - I don't know. I don't know why. Maybe I was more lucky than others. Maybe I was more strong and lucky. I have the star for the protection. - [Narrator] The plan of the camp, the situation plan of the crematoria. From 10 to 12,000 bodies were burnt daily in the five crematorium. - [Interviewer] There was a lot of damage done toward the end of the war just in panic on the Nazis part too, right? - Absolutely, and trying to burn, you know, for one hand they were meticulous record keepers, and then on the other hand, they tried to destroy as much as they could. - [Narrator] Masses of terror were packed in sacks. 20 kilos, 22 kilos. Dentist torn out dentures from corps' mouth to get hold of those teeth. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - It's the first time that they were felt safe there. She doesn't remember the languages anymore, but she has a little song that she learned while she was in the orphanage. (Andra singing in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Joshua] "In Lingfield we began to live again. There we finally recovered our childhood, which had been lost and stolen. It was wonderful and indelible memory, one of those memories that stays with you and make you nostalgic but are also very comforting." - I think it saved my mom life. Going there is what gave her some stability and gave her time to get back into society, right? So the way they wash them, the way they have people, you know, care about them. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - After all this time, she can tell that Lingfield was happiness and it's still happiness. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] In September of 1946, Alice Goldberger called you to her office to tell you something. - [Narrator] "Dear Alice, thank you very much for the photos of the Bucci children. They will be passed on to their parents. I enclose here with a photo which ought to be given to the children. Sincerely, A.M. Lagner, Jewish Refugees Committee." (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - [Narrator] "Dear Ms. Alice, I am writing a few words to thank you for all your kindness. Your dear letter comforts me a great deal. I am really still in pain because I don't know when I will have the pleasure to see my dear daughters. Yours sincerely, Mira Bucci." - [Deirdre] That trip back to Italy, what do you remember about that? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Interviewer] Is that the train station to the right there of you and your sister? - Yes. This is in Victoria Station in London. - [Interviewer] Is that on your way back to Italy? Oh, that's the bonnet and the dolls. - This is my doll and this is... - [Interviewer] Wow. And you still have them after all these years? - Good night. - This is 1942. This is before. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - So the Italian Jews that came back, they oftentimes found people occupying their houses. They oftentimes found their property had been sold or had been confiscated by the state. And there was a painful process to start to pick up the pieces and to pick up where they'd left off. - That is also the decisions and actions that were taken by the Fascist regime. And this is a specific responsibility that we are working on in Italy. - They were making these comparisons whereby Italy emerged, you know, in a far rosier light. And so I think that is also what was happening in the postwar that led Italian Jews to be a part of what propels forward the myth of a good Italian. - [Deirdre] All of these names are people who were deported to Auschwitz. - Yes, yes. For example, in front of this door, you can see how many people. The Jewish ghetto until 1870 was this part, you see? Now, this is new, but this part, the great synagogue, this building who is a school was the Jewish ghetto. The Jewish ghetto was very small. And this ghetto, there were from 3,000 to 10,000 people. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - I was over there for a summer vacation in elementary school. I was there and I first got like a little like, digital camera and I was really excited about it. I was taking pictures of everything and noticed that she had her numbers tattooed on her arm. And I think I've always noticed them, but this is like having the camera and wanting to actually like focus on it. Created this back and forth conversation with me and her and asking like, where do these tattoos come from? - I think there were survivors who did tell their stories and wanted to tell their stories. There were those who tried and found that there just was no connector. - It's too easy for people to forget. To put it under the rug and say, "Ah, not touch it." Because they don't want to think about something that is hurtful for people. They just wanna say, "Yeah, it happened, but not really. It wasn't that bad." It's too easy. - [Deirdre] How well-known is the Bucci sister's story in Italy? - Of Tatiana? All the people know Tatiana and the sister. - [Deirdre] And why is their story so important to people here? - Because they were children and they survive. Listen, from Rome, not from Italy, only from Rome, 200 children died in Auschwitz, 200. And you know, to find after the war two Italian children from the north of Italy still alive was a miracle. - The survivors themselves, as we can understand, you know, it's like when you go through a cancer surgery or something, the last thing you want is to keep yourself focused on it and keep thinking about it. You want to embrace life and what's good in life. And, you know, most survivors did. (speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - That doesn't mean they didn't have ongoing trauma, screaming, and nightmares at night they couldn't control. You know, sometimes bouts of anger, violence, and they didn't have the systems to help that we have now. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Sonia speaking in foreign language) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Interviewer] What was it like walking back through Birkenau? (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) (Andra continues speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] So everything from the girls being dressed the same, mistaken for twins, sequential tattoo numbers, the blockova liking the two sisters, a mother who says remember your name, sent to Lingfield house, restoring a stolen childhood, both parents surviving the camps, reunited as a family, and then going on to have what you all described as a relatively normal happy life. How? - I have no clue. I always say it's a series of little coincidence or a little act that saved my mom and my aunt. Like for example, did my grandmother knew that by having her kiss that picture every night, she was making a difference later on in life? No, right? Did she knew telling them to remember their name, right, was, I mean, she knew and she didn't know, right? So all this little thing that happened, having them wearing matching clothes, like you say, all these little events that happened are moments of faith. You know, faith made happen something, right? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - 20 kids, 10 female, 10 male. - [Deirdre] Sergio is the hardest part of telling your story, isn't it? (pensive music) - So the kids came forward, they were put on a cart and they were sent to Hamburg, to another camp. I'm sorry, I always get emotional here. - [Interviewer] When did you find out what happened to Sergio? (Andra speaking in foreign language) - 1945, on the night of April 20, SS men murdered 20 Jewish children in the school basement. - There was this place where the children were taken, this doctor, one with the children, wanted to make experiments on how tuberculosis spreads. They were injected tuberculosis. They did a bunch of stuff. And then the day before the Americans freed the camp, the doctor- - In April, 1945. - The doctor came and- (Andra speaking in foreign language) - Came and killed them all. He hanged them. But most of the children were so thin that they were not dying. They were not. So a soldier was going around and pulling them down. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Tatiana] As I said, 20 kids died this way. And now in Germany, every 20th of April, there's a ceremony to remember these children. (bells tolling) - Tomorrow we go to (speaking in foreign language) to give the memory to the Tuscany school for the student. When I speak, it's difficult for me because everything come another time so quickly. So it's not easy to remember because sometime (speaking in foreign language). - [Sonia] She feels like she's back there. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - We've studied these kinds of things. People have taught us the value of memories and the value of remembering these events and not taking them lightly. So we recognize the importance of what we were seeing. (Andra speaking in foreign language) - Families were looking for their relatives, mostly children. - [Sonia] I don't want the story to die. Not the story, I'm sorry, history to die. - What I would like and I think I saw the Bucci sisters saying this very thing and I was just so thrilled 'cause this is like, this is my dream. My dream is not that we get rid of sources like Wikipedia. My hope for humanity is that we learn to critically evaluate those sources. - I think, unfortunately, for whatever reason, a lot of younger people hear the word history and think boring and think of it in terms of chronology, which is not what history is. History is story. - "Speaking about our experience, testifying about it, is crucial for us, because we hope that it will be useful to the young. Our conviction is that, even if one of those students has really understood, it'll be right to have given our testimony." - [Deirdre] You started so many lives in Fiume and Birkenau and Czechoslovakia and Lingfield, back to Trieste, and now you live here, in Northern California. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (group cheers and applauds) (Andra speaking in foreign language) - [Host] Way to go. We got 12380. - I used to go run on Wednesday night and she would complain that I was, you know, leaving every Wednesday night and be gone for so long and somebody said, "Well, just take her with us." - [Deirdre] It's funny how you can be in a big group of people like you were in the marathon that day with your mom running and everybody is kind of suffering, but you don't really know what the person next to you has been through or what they're all about. (whisk whirring) When you're out and about here in Elk Grove or you know, you're shopping, you're doing whatever, people just met your mom. They ever have any idea what her background is? - They would know. But most people, nah, they don't. (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Joshua speaking in foreign language) - [Deirdre] How long will you continue these memory trips? (Andra speaking in foreign language) (gentle pensive music) - I suppose you have another shoes for Birkenau? - Ah, boots? Yes. - Okay. (all laughing) - [Staff] I'm just gonna get you getting ready to set up. (Andra laughing) - [Staff] What do you think, Bob? (Andra speaking in foreign language) (Tati speaking in foreign language) - I was told to change position. - Why is that? - Who knows? I just follow orders. You see what happened when I don't follow orders. When you don't follow orders. - [Interviewer] Andra, do you get excited when you come back to Italy 'cause you get Italian food? - (laughs) Yes. (Sonia speaking in foreign language) (Andra and friend singing in foreign language)
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Full documentary: Watch ‘Always Remember Your Name’ about a Sacramento Holocaust survivor

Andra and Tatiana Bucci were 4 and 6 when they were deported with their mother from Italy to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Our documentary tells the unlikely story of their survival and of their mission 80 years later to lead "memory trips" of school children from Italy to Auschwitz to fight issues like Holocaust misinformation.

The world marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 2025. It's likely to be the last big gathering of survivors. Also on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, KCRA 3 released a feature-length version of our documentary "Always Remember Your Name." The documentary focuses on Andra Bucci, a survivor of Auschwitz who now lives in Sacramento. Bucci became a United States citizen in 2023 at the Placer County Fairgrounds in Northern California. The newly naturalized Italian American said she slept very little ahead of the ceremony out of sheer excitement. She clapped and laughed as she marked the start of a new chapter in her life. When asked if she got a nice picture, she responded by saying her naturalization ID photo looked more like a picture an inmate would take. Andra would know. She and her sister Tatiana Bucci survived the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of 6 million Jewish people during World War II.The sisters were young children when they were placed into Birkenau, the portion of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex that focused on exterminating Jews. Andra was 4 years old, and Tatiana was 6. Surviving filled Andra's life with purpose. Andra, now 85, has spent her life educating others about the Holocaust to make sure that history is not lost to time. She's returned to Auschwitz nearly 40 times on "memory trips" with students.KCRA 3 spent five years learning about Andra and Tatiana Bucci's tale of survival, which involved a mother's genius, the luck of being mistaken for twins, the kindness shown by someone who was cruel to others and the daughter of Sigmund Freud. Our documentary "Always Remember Your Name" also shines a light on Italy's lesser-known involvement during the Holocaust in persecuting Jews. Watch the new, feature-length version of the documentary in the video at the top of this story. App users, click here for the best digital presentation of this article. Below, you'll find photos shared by the Bucci family, interactive maps and graphics detailing Italy's history during World War II and resources to continue learning about the Holocaust.Remembering Italy as an Axis PowerItaly's connections to WWII and the Holocaust go back to 1922, well before the displacements and killings of Jewish people began. This was the year Benito Mussolini and his Fascist followers marched on the city of Rome to gain power. This led King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy to appoint him prime minister of the country.In 1933, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of the German government. After this, Italy, under the leadership of Mussolini, would align closer with Germany's antisemitic stances under the Third Reich.Beginning in 1938, Italy's Fascist government took multiple actions against Jewish people. It first published what is called the "Manifesto of Race" on July 14, setting the stage for a series of antisemitic laws to follow. On Aug. 22, the country held a "Special Census of the Jewish Population." This was explained as a way to keep track of immigrant Jews but ultimately it would help keep track of Italian Jewish people and lead to property confiscations, arrests and more.At the start of September, the Italian Council of Ministers approved the first set of anti-Jewish provisions in the country and approved another set of anti-Jewish provisions in early October.These provisions were heavily inspired by Germany's own restrictions, better known as the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.This led to many restrictions for Jewish people in Italy, according to Shira Klein, the department chair of history and chair of the history department at Chapman University. Some of those restrictions included not being allowed to go to the seaside and not being allowed to advertise or publish. They also could not marry non-Jewish Italians. They were restricted from certain jobs and faced limits on property ownership. "You name the restriction — it probably existed," Klein said.By June 10, 1940, Italy had joined the Axis Powers of Germany and Japan in World War II, months after Germany began rounding up Jewish people throughout German-controlled territories.See a full timeline below of WWII and the Holocaust as it relates to the Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Can't see it? Click here.On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was dismissed from office and arrested after the Allies took control of southern Italy. But with the help of Germany, he retook control of northern Italy in mid-September of that year and created a Fascist government called the Repubblica Sociale Italiana.Later that year on Oct. 16, German SS officers, along with Italian police, began rounding up Jewish people in Rome, with a focus on those living in the Jewish ghetto. Troops rounded up more than 1,000 Jews in all.The Nazis searched every car and home and ordered people to take their luggage and valuables with them. At the time, Fiume, located in modern-day Croatia, was part of Italy. That is where the Bucci family was when the Germans came for them as well.Andra's grandmother pleaded with the Nazis to leave the children and take her instead. They did not listen and took the family to a cell in a rice-husking factory.On Nov. 30, 1943, Italian police were tasked with rounding up Jews and delivering them to the Germans. From there, Germany would deport them to Auschwitz.Dispelling the myth of the "good Italian"Despite Italy's role in the deaths of millions, the country is often seen as a victim.Klein explained that there is a belief that Italy was a neutral area and that Germany dragged Italy to war.There is also the myth of a "good Italian," the notion that Italians were different from the other Axis states in both their policies and treatment of Jewish people.Klein said that view is illustrated in the 1997 Italian movie "Life Is Beautiful."Even after the Allies liberated Axis-controlled areas, coming back to Italy was a difficult process for Jewish people. Klein said they would often come back to people occupying their houses or even worse, their property either sold or confiscated by the state.Andra and Tatiana Bucci experienced the treatment firsthand as young children. Before the family was arrested, their mother Mira Bucci turned to others, pleading for help in hiding them. She even turned to their paternal grandmother, who was Catholic. She and others would not help them. The family also believed they were reported to Nazi officers by a man who worked in their synagogue but who was not Jewish himself.In the present day, the Italian government funds the Bucci sisters' trips and tours to Europe. Winners of an annual school art contest to honor the memory of the Holocaust are invited to the presidential palace each International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Still, Italy has never apologized for its role in the Holocaust. During a recent visit to the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow, Poland, Tatiana confronted the Italian minister of education."Italy needs to admit that they were on the wrong side," said Sonia Edwards, who was translating for her aunt Tatiana.When asked if she thinks she will ever get that apology, Tatiana said she does not know but hopes she gets the apology before she dies. Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said part of the blame and responsibility is not just from Germany and the Fascists, but also from indifferent Italians.According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, 7,680 out of 44,500 Italian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.| MORE LIKE THIS | A deeper dive into what happened to the Jews of Italy during the HolocaustMeanwhile, the German government has either made one-time payments or paid pensions to survivors of the Holocaust. They have also apologized for their role in the Holocaust.The train to BirkenauIn 2022, the Bucci sisters published their survival story as a book titled "Always Remember Your Name: A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz." The sisters in the book described traveling in a crowded train after the Nazis arrested them and other family members on March 29, 1944.Sometime during the train ride, the sisters observed their mother writing a note with their names on it and throwing it outside the train. At the time, the sisters did not know how that would come to later help them.The family arrived at Auschwitz on April 4 of that year only to learn that they were being taken specifically to Birkenau.What followed is what happened at many concentration camps established by the Nazis: being beaten, degraded, forced into labor and for many, death."There are cries of fear as well because dogs are barking and growling because orders are given in German and almost no one understands them," an excerpt from the book reads. "There’s tremendous confusion, in a ghostly scene of chaos." Marilyn Harran, a historian at Chapman University, said that while the Nazis would often shoot Jewish people to kill them, they preferred other ways that could kill multiple people at once. Those methods included gas chambers, using carbon monoxide or a cyanide-based pesticide called Zyklon B.Harran said there are stories of prisoners recalling how the German guards would speak to their dogs as if they were human, giving them loving terms. But when it came to speaking to Jewish people, the guards would speak to them as if they were the dogs.Ultimately, the Germans had the goal of making their prisoners feel like they had no identity. They did not refer to them by name, rather identifying them by a number that was typically tattooed onto them at Auschwitz. (Not all concentration camps used tattoos, but those still used a numbering system for the prisoners.)"Whether you were tattooed or not ... you became a number," Harran said. "You became a thing." Andra Bucci's number was 76483, and Tatiana's was 76484. Despite the Nazis' best efforts of making them forget their actual names, they would not. The sisters credit their mother, Mira, for this. She would often visit her daughters and have them make an effort to always remember their names."You could, as a child, you could forget your name," Andra Bucci said. "It seems a strange thing, but if no one calls you , you forget."One day their mother told them she wouldn't be coming anymore. When she did not arrive the next evening, the sisters thought she had died.Crossing paths with the 'Angel of Death'The Bucci sisters and their 6-year-old cousin Sergio were the only Italian children in the camp, and being a child in a concentration camp did not guarantee any safety. In fact, they were at the mercy of many experiments, most of them conducted under Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted genetic research that would end in the deaths of his subjects. During the Holocaust, Mengele received the nickname the "Angel of Death," and he had a preference for experimenting on twins.He also would experiment on children they deemed mentally or physically disabled. Mengele would explore different ways to kill them, such as injection, gas experiments and starvation. Andra said she remembers Mengele coming into the barracks and selecting children. This struck fear in the barracks, who while young, understood that once they were chosen, they would never return.Because Andra and Tatiana were dressed the same, the Nazis mistook them for twins. The sisters believed this saved them from at least the first selection of children to kill because most children were killed immediately at Auschwitz.Instead, the guards took the sisters and Mira to a room to get tattooed and showered. They also completely cut off the hair of their mother and aunt.Unexpected help also saved their livesAt the camps, there were female inmates known as Blockovas who were in charge of a residential "block" in Auschwitz. Because they had to carry out the will of the Nazis, they were often cruel.Yet, for some reason, the Blockova overseeing the sisters was kind to them and only them. She would feed them and give them warm clothing. They saw her as a guardian.But then it came time for Mengele to want more test subjects — more victims. Being aware of this, the Blockova gave the sisters a warning.The Nazis were going to ask the children if they wanted to see their parents. When asked this, say no and do not come forward. The Blockova also told the sisters to not tell anybody what she told them.Andra and Tatiana listened and did not come forward, but their cousin did not listen. He was among the 20 children who fell for the trick. The group left on Nov. 29, Sergio's birthday, never to be seen again. In the 1980s, two German journalists helped uncover what happened to Sergio. The group of 20 children were sent to another concentration camp in Hamburg, Germany, and were victims of medical experiments conducted by a colleague of Josef Mengele’s. The Nazis then murdered Sergio and the other children by hanging two days after the Allies began a battle to capture Hamburg.To this day, it's unclear to the sisters why Mengele had a particular focus on twins. When they visited Miwok Middle School in Sacramento to speak of their experiences, someone asked them the question of why the focus on the twins.Tatiana called them "stupid experiments.""He (Mengele) would inject them with venom to see who would die first," Tatiana said.| MORE | In their own words: How Andra and Tatiana Bucci described their experience in their memoirThen came the liberationOn Jan. 27, 1945, about half a year after the Allies' D-Day operation in France, the Russian army entered Auschwitz. There, they found only those unable to make the long marches out of the camps. Those were known as "death marches."The people left behind were either too old, too sick, or they were children.Upon liberating the camp, the Russians would feed those left behind, but Harran explained that it would be too late for some because too many of the people were either too malnourished or too sick to improve.Andra and Tatiana were among those liberated. This is when they began noticing things were becoming different."In particular, I remember this Russian soldier who was sitting on the hood of his car and had a small wooden tablet on his knees and he cut salami for the children," Andra recalled. "We were around his car and he was feeding us. The salami. For me, therefore, from these things ... I understood that it (the war) was over and that it had changed."After being liberated and examined by Russian doctors, the sisters were taken to Prague, the capital city of what is known today as the Czech Republic. There, they spent some time at an orphanage and began learning how to speak Czech.Because their stay there was brief, Andra said she was not able to retain much of the language. However, she still remembers a song she learned.The Sigmund Freud connectionIn April 1946, the sisters were asked if they were Jewish. Having spent some time out of the concentration camp, they were not afraid to answer that.This led to them being part of a group of Jewish children taken by plane to a town in the United Kingdom called Lingfield in Surrey. What awaited them was a facility overseen by Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud. Anna's goal was simple: Seek out Jewish children who survived the Holocaust and help them heal. Her center's director was a child psychiatrist named Alice Goldberger."At Lingfield, we began to live again," an excerpt from the sisters' book read. "There, we finally recovered our childhood, which had been lost and stolen. It’s a wonderful and indelible memory, one of those memories that stay with you and make you nostalgic but are also very comforting."The sentiment rings true to Andra today. She still possesses a doll that was made for her. On it is the letter "A," but Andra said the letter is not for her name; it's for Alice Goldberger, the person she attributes greatly to her being able to overcome her trauma.The sisters also received some welcome news. Their mother and father, whom they thought dead, were still alive and searching for her daughters, wanting to pick life back up in Italy. After writing letters to each other, the family reunited.The same numbers that the Nazis had tattooed on Jews in an attempt to make them lose their identity are what helped Mira track down her daughters. Because the numbers are assigned sequentially, Mira asked the orphanage in Prague if it had a record of her daughters staying there, which it did. From there, she learned of the sisters living in the United Kingdom.And going back to the note Mira threw out the train while on the way to Auschwitz also led to some good news. A nearby Italian police officer found the note and happened to recognize the names.The policeman notified family members on the sisters' father's side, who then went to the Bucci's house. For the entirety of the war, they hid all of their belongings while other families were not so fortunate, losing all of their possessions.The Bucci sisters shared some of the photos with KCRA 3.You can see the photos in the slideshow below.Viaggio Della MemoriaFor many, returning to the site of great trauma could be overwhelming. But for Andra and Tatiana, it means everything to come back to Auschwitz.They would embark on a Viaggio Della Memoria, which means "to travel for the memory," and take large tours with them. On one tour KCRA 3 joined, about 75 Italian school kids were in attendance.The sisters either fly, if in the winter, or take a train from Rome or Florence, ultimately ending up in Poland. While touring the death camp, they describe their experiences and how their lives were at the mercy of Nazi Germany. "It really hits you," one student said during the tour. "Thousands of people actually died. Thousands of people actually experienced it. It really was bad. They really faced the consequences that there isn’t a good ending. They don’t all survive."Another student also spoke on how intense it is to stand in Auschwitz, the largest of 40,000 concentration camps across Europe during the war. "You look at them (the sisters) and you just see two regular people and two very wholesome and nice wonderful people and you think back on the fact that they lived in such horrid conditions and this barren place and the fact that it was both so empty and yet so full of people," the student said.There is another element to the Bucci sisters' Viaggio Della Memoria, and that involves stones. No matter where they are, whether it's the American River in the Sacramento area or in San Francisco, they will pick up stones and take the stones to Europe, where they lay them in the camps."They don't disappear like flowers," said Andra's daughter, Sonia Edwards. "They stay there."Both Sonia and her son Joshua Edwards also participate in the stone collecting, as one of their ways to support the struggles Andra and Tatiana endured.For the sisters to have the courage to return to Auschwitz for the sake of education and preserving history means everything to the family. "Because to me, that's where it started: My mom walking out of the camp, that's where our our life started," Sonia said. "If that moment would have never happened, I probably wouldn't be here. Right? And so going there to me was closing the circle and bringing, you know, the stones from here is bringing a little part of me there to be with whoever is there."Joshua Edwards, also being moved by his grandmother's mission, dedicated his senior project in her honor. For one week, he tried living like a Holocaust survivor. He ate only broth soup and slept in the garage during the winter.Holocaust history in educationIn Italy, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities has had an agreement for the past two decades with the Ministry of Education to teach students about the Holocaust from the fifth grade through high school.Each year in September, all schools are encouraged to produce a project, especially by using art. Hundreds of thousands of students have participated in the annual contest over the past 20 years, Di Segni said.The goal is to preserve the memory of the Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.| RELATED | How Italian students remember the Shoah through artThings are different in California, where there is a mandate to teach about the Holocaust and genocides but an inconsistency with how that happens in practice. This becomes evident when the Bucci sisters visit schools and hear varying degrees of knowledge students have about the Holocaust. That will soon change.Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 28, 2024, signed Senate Bill 1277. This will require Holocaust and genocide education to become part of the state's core curriculum.This could hopefully be a change in the right direction in preserving history.See an interactive graphic showing how the Holocaust is taught in Italy, the U.S. and California below. Can't see it? Click here.Misinformation is another challenge. Klein said technology is helping keep Holocaust history alive, but not everything that is online is accurate. Klein believes misinformation has become endemic because there is a lot of Holocaust information easily accessible, but not all of it is correct."So I think it's not so much the source that worries me," Klein said. "It's whether people have the capacity to question those sources."As the staff of Miwok Middle School in Sacramento explains, there is no better source than a firsthand one."Any time you can have someone that was there who's experienced it, speaking about their experiences, always going to have more power than a book or a movie, always," one teacher said.The sisters say they will continue to host tours for as long as they are able to, having hosted their first trip almost 20 years ago."I don't want the story to die," Tatiana said. "It's too easy for people to forget. To put it under the rug and say, 'I'll not touch it' because they don't want to think about something that is hurtful, hurtful, hurtful for people. They just want to say, 'Yeah, it happened, but not really. It wasn't that bad.'"Another challenge with preserving the history is time itself.| RELATED | Books children and young adults can read to learn about the HolocaustThe Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization with worldwide offices that secures compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world, has done research on the knowledge people have of the Holocaust in all 50 states. The research focuses on millennials and those from Generation Z.Nationally, 36% of those surveyed thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The actual number of Jews killed is about 6 million. Millions of others were killed. The national survey also found that 48% couldn't name a single concentration camp, killing camp or ghetto even though 40,000 of them existed across Europe during World War II.Learn more about the survey here.KCRA 3 is allowing classrooms to use the "Always Remember Your Name" documentary for Holocaust and genocide education and we've created a curriculum guide to assist with those efforts. Find that curriculum, which meets common core standards, here.Find more data in the interactive graphic below. Can't see it? Click here.Resources to learn more about the HolocaustBelow are some resources to learn more about the Holocaust. Many offer online exhibits and teaching guides for educators as well. (This is not a definitive list.)Yad VashemEchoes & ReflectionsUnited States Holocaust Memorial MuseumUSC Shoah FoundationJewish Family and Children’s Services Holocaust CenterEuropean Holocaust Research Infrastructure - Country ReportsInternational Holocaust Remembrance Alliance - Museum Database

The world marked the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz on Jan. 27, 2025. It's likely to be the last big gathering of survivors.

Also on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, KCRA 3 released a feature-length version of our documentary "Always Remember Your Name." The documentary focuses on Andra Bucci, a survivor of Auschwitz who now lives in Sacramento.

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Bucci became a United States citizen in 2023 at the Placer County Fairgrounds in Northern California. The newly naturalized Italian American said she slept very little ahead of the ceremony out of sheer excitement. She clapped and laughed as she marked the start of a new chapter in her life. When asked if she got a nice picture, she responded by saying her naturalization ID photo looked more like a picture an inmate would take.

Andra would know. She and her sister Tatiana Bucci survived the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of 6 million Jewish people during World War II.

The sisters were young children when they were placed into Birkenau, the portion of the Auschwitz concentration camp complex that focused on exterminating Jews. Andra was 4 years old, and Tatiana was 6.

Andra Bucci of Elk Grove swears in during a naturalization ceremony to become a U.S. citizen. Bucci regularly leads tours in Europe to educate others about the Holocaust as a survivor herself.
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Andra Bucci of Elk Grove swears in during a naturalization ceremony to become a U.S. citizen. Bucci regularly leads tours in Europe to educate others about the Holocaust as a survivor herself.

Surviving filled Andra's life with purpose. Andra, now 85, has spent her life educating others about the Holocaust to make sure that history is not lost to time. She's returned to Auschwitz nearly 40 times on "memory trips" with students.

KCRA 3 spent five years learning about Andra and Tatiana Bucci's tale of survival, which involved a mother's genius, the luck of being mistaken for twins, the kindness shown by someone who was cruel to others and the daughter of Sigmund Freud. Our documentary "Always Remember Your Name" also shines a light on Italy's lesser-known involvement during the Holocaust in persecuting Jews.

Below, you'll find photos shared by the Bucci family, interactive maps and graphics detailing Italy's history during World War II and resources to continue learning about the Holocaust.

Remembering Italy as an Axis Power

Italy's connections to WWII and the Holocaust go back to 1922, well before the displacements and killings of Jewish people began. This was the year Benito Mussolini and his Fascist followers marched on the city of Rome to gain power. This led King Victor Emmanuel III of Italy to appoint him prime minister of the country.

In 1933, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of the German government. After this, Italy, under the leadership of Mussolini, would align closer with Germany's antisemitic stances under the Third Reich.

Beginning in 1938, Italy's Fascist government took multiple actions against Jewish people. It first published what is called the "Manifesto of Race" on July 14, setting the stage for a series of antisemitic laws to follow. On Aug. 22, the country held a "Special Census of the Jewish Population." This was explained as a way to keep track of immigrant Jews but ultimately it would help keep track of Italian Jewish people and lead to property confiscations, arrests and more.

At the start of September, the Italian Council of Ministers approved the first set of anti-Jewish provisions in the country and approved another set of anti-Jewish provisions in early October.

These provisions were heavily inspired by Germany's own restrictions, better known as the 1935 Nuremberg Laws.

This led to many restrictions for Jewish people in Italy, according to Shira Klein, the department chair of history and chair of the history department at Chapman University. Some of those restrictions included not being allowed to go to the seaside and not being allowed to advertise or publish. They also could not marry non-Jewish Italians. They were restricted from certain jobs and faced limits on property ownership.

Shira Klein is the chair of the history department at Chapman University. Her book "Italy's Jews from Emancipation to Fascism" was selected as a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award.
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Shira Klein is the chair of the history department at Chapman University. Her book "Italy’s Jews from Emancipation to Fascism" was selected as a finalist for the 2018 National Jewish Book Award.

"You name the restriction — it probably existed," Klein said.

By June 10, 1940, Italy had joined the Axis Powers of Germany and Japan in World War II, months after Germany began rounding up Jewish people throughout German-controlled territories.

See a full timeline below of WWII and the Holocaust as it relates to the Andra and Tatiana Bucci. Can't see it? Click here.


On July 25, 1943, Mussolini was dismissed from office and arrested after the Allies took control of southern Italy. But with the help of Germany, he retook control of northern Italy in mid-September of that year and created a Fascist government called the Repubblica Sociale Italiana.

Later that year on Oct. 16, German SS officers, along with Italian police, began rounding up Jewish people in Rome, with a focus on those living in the Jewish ghetto. Troops rounded up more than 1,000 Jews in all.

The Nazis searched every car and home and ordered people to take their luggage and valuables with them.

Nazi Party deputy leader Rudolf Hess (1894 - 1987) inspects a Guard of Honour upon his arrival in Rome, Italy, 29th October 1939. On either side of him are Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano (left) and Italian Fascist leader Achille Starace (1889 - 1945, right). (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)
Keystone
Nazi Party deputy leader Rudolf Hess inspects a Guard of Honour upon his arrival in Rome, Italy, on Oct. 29 1939. On either side of him are Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano (left) and Italian Fascist leader Achille Starace.

At the time, Fiume, located in modern-day Croatia, was part of Italy. That is where the Bucci family was when the Germans came for them as well.

Andra's grandmother pleaded with the Nazis to leave the children and take her instead. They did not listen and took the family to a cell in a rice-husking factory.

On Nov. 30, 1943, Italian police were tasked with rounding up Jews and delivering them to the Germans. From there, Germany would deport them to Auschwitz.

Dispelling the myth of the "good Italian"

Despite Italy's role in the deaths of millions, the country is often seen as a victim.

Klein explained that there is a belief that Italy was a neutral area and that Germany dragged Italy to war.

There is also the myth of a "good Italian," the notion that Italians were different from the other Axis states in both their policies and treatment of Jewish people.

Klein said that view is illustrated in the 1997 Italian movie "Life Is Beautiful."

Even after the Allies liberated Axis-controlled areas, coming back to Italy was a difficult process for Jewish people. Klein said they would often come back to people occupying their houses or even worse, their property either sold or confiscated by the state.

Andra and Tatiana Bucci experienced the treatment firsthand as young children. Before the family was arrested, their mother Mira Bucci turned to others, pleading for help in hiding them. She even turned to their paternal grandmother, who was Catholic. She and others would not help them. The family also believed they were reported to Nazi officers by a man who worked in their synagogue but who was not Jewish himself.

In the present day, the Italian government funds the Bucci sisters' trips and tours to Europe. Winners of an annual school art contest to honor the memory of the Holocaust are invited to the presidential palace each International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Still, Italy has never apologized for its role in the Holocaust.

circa 1945:  A group of children walking in line outside a convent in Rome, where they are cared for. Abandoned or orphaned during World War II, the children are known as &apos&#x3B;The Treasures Of Italy&apos&#x3B;.  (Photo by Slim Aarons/Getty Images)
Slim Aarons
Before 1945: A group of children walking in line outside a convent in Rome, where they are cared for. Abandoned or orphaned during World War II, the children are known as ’The Treasures Of Italy.’

During a recent visit to the Jewish Ghetto in Krakow, Poland, Tatiana confronted the Italian minister of education.

"Italy needs to admit that they were on the wrong side," said Sonia Edwards, who was translating for her aunt Tatiana.

When asked if she thinks she will ever get that apology, Tatiana said she does not know but hopes she gets the apology before she dies.

Noemi Di Segni, president of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, said part of the blame and responsibility is not just from Germany and the Fascists, but also from indifferent Italians.

According to Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, 7,680 out of 44,500 Italian Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

| MORE LIKE THIS | A deeper dive into what happened to the Jews of Italy during the Holocaust

Meanwhile, the German government has either made one-time payments or paid pensions to survivors of the Holocaust. They have also apologized for their role in the Holocaust.

The train to Birkenau

In 2022, the Bucci sisters published their survival story as a book titled "Always Remember Your Name: A True Story of Family and Survival in Auschwitz."

Andra and Tatiana Bucci in 1942
Andra and Tatiana Bucci
Andra and Tatiana Bucci in 1942

The sisters in the book described traveling in a crowded train after the Nazis arrested them and other family members on March 29, 1944.

Sometime during the train ride, the sisters observed their mother writing a note with their names on it and throwing it outside the train. At the time, the sisters did not know how that would come to later help them.

The family arrived at Auschwitz on April 4 of that year only to learn that they were being taken specifically to Birkenau.

What followed is what happened at many concentration camps established by the Nazis: being beaten, degraded, forced into labor and for many, death.

"There are cries of fear as well because dogs are barking and growling because orders are given in German and almost no one understands them," an excerpt from the book reads. "There’s tremendous confusion, in a ghostly scene of chaos."

Marilyn Harran, director of the Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library at Chapman University, oversees the Oskar Schindler Archive, which holds all the materials of the man featured in the Steven Spielberg movie "Schindler's List."
Hearst Owned
Marilyn Haran, director of the Samueli Holocaust Memorial Library at Chapman University, oversees the Oskar Schindler Archive, which holds all the materials of the man featured in the Steven Spielberg movie "Schindler’s List."

Marilyn Harran, a historian at Chapman University, said that while the Nazis would often shoot Jewish people to kill them, they preferred other ways that could kill multiple people at once. Those methods included gas chambers, using carbon monoxide or a cyanide-based pesticide called Zyklon B.

Harran said there are stories of prisoners recalling how the German guards would speak to their dogs as if they were human, giving them loving terms. But when it came to speaking to Jewish people, the guards would speak to them as if they were the dogs.

Ultimately, the Germans had the goal of making their prisoners feel like they had no identity. They did not refer to them by name, rather identifying them by a number that was typically tattooed onto them at Auschwitz. (Not all concentration camps used tattoos, but those still used a numbering system for the prisoners.)

"Whether you were tattooed or not ... you became a number," Harran said. "You became a thing."

View of the barracks of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland is seen on January 25, 2015. Seventy years after it was liberated, 300 Auschwitz survivors -- most now in their nineties -- will on January 27, 2015 return to the former Nazi death camp, the site of the largest single number of murders committed during World War II.     AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGET        (Photo credit should read JOEL SAGET/AFP via Getty Images)
JOEL SAGET
View of the barracks of the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Oswiecim, Poland is seen on January 25, 2015. 

Andra Bucci's number was 76483, and Tatiana's was 76484. Despite the Nazis' best efforts of making them forget their actual names, they would not. The sisters credit their mother, Mira, for this. She would often visit her daughters and have them make an effort to always remember their names.

"You could, as a child, you could forget your name," Andra Bucci said. "It seems [like] a strange thing, but if no one calls you [your name], you forget."

One day their mother told them she wouldn't be coming anymore. When she did not arrive the next evening, the sisters thought she had died.

Crossing paths with the 'Angel of Death'

The Bucci sisters and their 6-year-old cousin Sergio were the only Italian children in the camp, and being a child in a concentration camp did not guarantee any safety.

In fact, they were at the mercy of many experiments, most of them conducted under Dr. Josef Mengele, who conducted genetic research that would end in the deaths of his subjects. During the Holocaust, Mengele received the nickname the "Angel of Death," and he had a preference for experimenting on twins.

He also would experiment on children they deemed mentally or physically disabled. Mengele would explore different ways to kill them, such as injection, gas experiments and starvation.

Andra said she remembers Mengele coming into the barracks and selecting children. This struck fear in the barracks, who while young, understood that once they were chosen, they would never return.

Because Andra and Tatiana were dressed the same, the Nazis mistook them for twins. The sisters believed this saved them from at least the first selection of children to kill because most children were killed immediately at Auschwitz.

Instead, the guards took the sisters and Mira to a room to get tattooed and showered. They also completely cut off the hair of their mother and aunt.

Unexpected help also saved their lives

At the camps, there were female inmates known as Blockovas who were in charge of a residential "block" in Auschwitz. Because they had to carry out the will of the Nazis, they were often cruel.

Yet, for some reason, the Blockova overseeing the sisters was kind to them and only them. She would feed them and give them warm clothing. They saw her as a guardian.

But then it came time for Mengele to want more test subjects — more victims. Being aware of this, the Blockova gave the sisters a warning.

The Nazis were going to ask the children if they wanted to see their parents. When asked this, say no and do not come forward. The Blockova also told the sisters to not tell anybody what she told them.

Andra and Tatiana listened and did not come forward, but their cousin did not listen. He was among the 20 children who fell for the trick. The group left on Nov. 29, Sergio's birthday, never to be seen again.

In the 1980s, two German journalists helped uncover what happened to Sergio. The group of 20 children were sent to another concentration camp in Hamburg, Germany, and were victims of medical experiments conducted by a colleague of Josef Mengele’s. The Nazis then murdered Sergio and the other children by hanging two days after the Allies began a battle to capture Hamburg.

Andra, Tati and their cousin Sergio
Courtesy of Andra Bucci
Andra, Tati and their cousin Sergio

To this day, it's unclear to the sisters why Mengele had a particular focus on twins. When they visited Miwok Middle School in Sacramento to speak of their experiences, someone asked them the question of why the focus on the twins.

Tatiana called them "stupid experiments."

"He (Mengele) would inject them with venom to see who would die first," Tatiana said.

| MORE | In their own words: How Andra and Tatiana Bucci described their experience in their memoir

Then came the liberation

On Jan. 27, 1945, about half a year after the Allies' D-Day operation in France, the Russian army entered Auschwitz. There, they found only those unable to make the long marches out of the camps. Those were known as "death marches."

The people left behind were either too old, too sick, or they were children.

Upon liberating the camp, the Russians would feed those left behind, but Harran explained that it would be too late for some because too many of the people were either too malnourished or too sick to improve.

Andra and Tatiana were among those liberated. This is when they began noticing things were becoming different.

"In particular, I remember this Russian soldier who was sitting on the hood of his car and had a small wooden tablet on his knees and he cut salami for the children," Andra recalled. "We were around his car and he was feeding us. The salami. For me, therefore, from these things ... I understood that it (the war) was over and that it had changed."

After being liberated and examined by Russian doctors, the sisters were taken to Prague, the capital city of what is known today as the Czech Republic. There, they spent some time at an orphanage and began learning how to speak Czech.

Because their stay there was brief, Andra said she was not able to retain much of the language. However, she still remembers a song she learned.

The Sigmund Freud connection

In April 1946, the sisters were asked if they were Jewish. Having spent some time out of the concentration camp, they were not afraid to answer that.

This led to them being part of a group of Jewish children taken by plane to a town in the United Kingdom called Lingfield in Surrey. What awaited them was a facility overseen by Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud.

Anna's goal was simple: Seek out Jewish children who survived the Holocaust and help them heal. Her center's director was a child psychiatrist named Alice Goldberger.

"At Lingfield, we began to live again," an excerpt from the sisters' book read. "There, we finally recovered our childhood, which had been lost and stolen. It’s a wonderful and indelible memory, one of those memories that stay with you and make you nostalgic but are also very comforting."

The sentiment rings true to Andra today. She still possesses a doll that was made for her. On it is the letter "A," but Andra said the letter is not for her name; it's for Alice Goldberger, the person she attributes greatly to her being able to overcome her trauma.

The sisters also received some welcome news. Their mother and father, whom they thought dead, were still alive and searching for her daughters, wanting to pick life back up in Italy. After writing letters to each other, the family reunited.

The same numbers that the Nazis had tattooed on Jews in an attempt to make them lose their identity are what helped Mira track down her daughters. Because the numbers are assigned sequentially, Mira asked the orphanage in Prague if it had a record of her daughters staying there, which it did. From there, she learned of the sisters living in the United Kingdom.

And going back to the note Mira threw out the train while on the way to Auschwitz also led to some good news. A nearby Italian police officer found the note and happened to recognize the names.

The policeman notified family members on the sisters' father's side, who then went to the Bucci's house. For the entirety of the war, they hid all of their belongings while other families were not so fortunate, losing all of their possessions.

The Bucci sisters shared some of the photos with KCRA 3.

You can see the photos in the slideshow below.


Viaggio Della Memoria

For many, returning to the site of great trauma could be overwhelming. But for Andra and Tatiana, it means everything to come back to Auschwitz.

They would embark on a Viaggio Della Memoria, which means "to travel for the memory," and take large tours with them. On one tour KCRA 3 joined, about 75 Italian school kids were in attendance.

The sisters either fly, if in the winter, or take a train from Rome or Florence, ultimately ending up in Poland. While touring the death camp, they describe their experiences and how their lives were at the mercy of Nazi Germany.

The gate to the main camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau.
Dave Manoucheri
The gate to the main camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

"It really hits you," one student said during the tour. "Thousands of people actually died. Thousands of people actually experienced it. It really was bad. They really faced the consequences that there isn’t a good ending. They don’t all survive."

Another student also spoke on how intense it is to stand in Auschwitz, the largest of 40,000 concentration camps across Europe during the war.

ANKARA, TURKIYE - JANUARY 27: An infographic titled &quot&#x3B;International Holocaust Remembrance Day&quot&#x3B; created in Ankara, Turkiye on January 27, 2023. More than 6 million Jews were wiped out during World War II Of the 1.3 million people sent to the Auschwitz camp in Poland, 1.1 million of them were killed (Photo by Yasin Demirci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)
Anadolu
An infographic titled "International Holocaust Remembrance Day" created in Ankara, Turkiye on January 27, 2023.

"You look at them (the sisters) and you just see two regular people and two very wholesome and nice wonderful people and you think back on the fact that they lived in such horrid conditions and this barren place and the fact that it was both so empty and yet so full of people," the student said.

There is another element to the Bucci sisters' Viaggio Della Memoria, and that involves stones.

No matter where they are, whether it's the American River in the Sacramento area or in San Francisco, they will pick up stones and take the stones to Europe, where they lay them in the camps.

"They don't disappear like flowers," said Andra's daughter, Sonia Edwards. "They stay there."

Both Sonia and her son Joshua Edwards also participate in the stone collecting, as one of their ways to support the struggles Andra and Tatiana endured.

For the sisters to have the courage to return to Auschwitz for the sake of education and preserving history means everything to the family.

Andra Bucci family portrait.
Courtesy of Andra Bucci
Andra Bucci family portrait.

"Because to me, that's where it started: My mom walking out of the camp, that's where our our life started," Sonia said. "If that moment would have never happened, I probably wouldn't be here. Right? And so going there to me was closing the circle and bringing, you know, the stones from here is bringing a little part of me there to be with whoever is there."

Joshua Edwards, also being moved by his grandmother's mission, dedicated his senior project in her honor. For one week, he tried living like a Holocaust survivor. He ate only broth soup and slept in the garage during the winter.

Holocaust history in education

In Italy, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities has had an agreement for the past two decades with the Ministry of Education to teach students about the Holocaust from the fifth grade through high school.

Each year in September, all schools are encouraged to produce a project, especially by using art. Hundreds of thousands of students have participated in the annual contest over the past 20 years, Di Segni said.

The goal is to preserve the memory of the Shoah, the Hebrew word for the Holocaust.

| RELATED | How Italian students remember the Shoah through art

Things are different in California, where there is a mandate to teach about the Holocaust and genocides but an inconsistency with how that happens in practice.

This becomes evident when the Bucci sisters visit schools and hear varying degrees of knowledge students have about the Holocaust.

That will soon change.

Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sept. 28, 2024, signed Senate Bill 1277. This will require Holocaust and genocide education to become part of the state's core curriculum.

This could hopefully be a change in the right direction in preserving history.

See an interactive graphic showing how the Holocaust is taught in Italy, the U.S. and California below. Can't see it? Click here.

Misinformation is another challenge. Klein said technology is helping keep Holocaust history alive, but not everything that is online is accurate.

Klein believes misinformation has become endemic because there is a lot of Holocaust information easily accessible, but not all of it is correct.

"So I think it's not so much the source that worries me," Klein said. "It's whether people have the capacity to question those sources."

As the staff of Miwok Middle School in Sacramento explains, there is no better source than a firsthand one.

"Any time you can have someone that was there who's experienced it, speaking about their experiences, always going to have more power than a book or a movie, always," one teacher said.

The sisters say they will continue to host tours for as long as they are able to, having hosted their first trip almost 20 years ago.

"I don't want the story to die," Tatiana said. "It's too easy for people to forget. To put it under the rug and say, 'I'll not touch it' because they don't want to think about something that is hurtful, hurtful, hurtful for people. They just want to say, 'Yeah, it happened, but not really. It wasn't that bad.'"

Another challenge with preserving the history is time itself.

| RELATED | Books children and young adults can read to learn about the Holocaust

The Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a nonprofit organization with worldwide offices that secures compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world, has done research on the knowledge people have of the Holocaust in all 50 states. The research focuses on millennials and those from Generation Z.

Nationally, 36% of those surveyed thought that 2 million or fewer Jews were killed during the Holocaust. The actual number of Jews killed is about 6 million. Millions of others were killed.

The national survey also found that 48% couldn't name a single concentration camp, killing camp or ghetto even though 40,000 of them existed across Europe during World War II.

Learn more about the survey here.

KCRA 3 is allowing classrooms to use the "Always Remember Your Name" documentary for Holocaust and genocide education and we've created a curriculum guide to assist with those efforts. Find that curriculum, which meets common core standards, here.

Find more data in the interactive graphic below. Can't see it? Click here.

Resources to learn more about the Holocaust

Below are some resources to learn more about the Holocaust. Many offer online exhibits and teaching guides for educators as well. (This is not a definitive list.)