Zvi Schwartzman who specializes in Internet technologies has been working with the Tel- Aviv based Engineering College on a project that students are trying to find lost relatives of Holocaust survivors by blogs on the Google search engine.
The students will publish details about the survivors in the net in blogs and Google will automatically match between the details to the same topics of interest.
The students will make an interview with the survivor and write his details on the clog. The students will learn easily how the Google search engine is working. The student that is in charge of the clog will be able to get new messages when there is a new connection.
Schwartzman asked the Education Ministry to make the project part of the study program so that the number of blogs can increase. It is important because today pupils are not involved enough with the Holocaust.
Debrecen (Hungarian) is the second town, after Budapest with an impressive land, nearly from the 90's. It is a center of many tourists which are impressed from the big and rousing parks and from the natural wells. Debrecen is located east of Budapest. In the past before World War this city was the capital of Hungary. The city numerates 300 thousand people these days. There are 10 different Universities but in "Debrecen University" there is English education. Therefore it's attractive in particular for students from Israel and the USA.
In World War II, Debrecen was almost destroyed by the Germans. 50% of its buildings were completely destroyed. There was an important combat in October 1994 near the city which called "Debrecen combat".
After the war, the people wanted to rehabilitate the city and started to build and innovate. But the Communists decided to take the institutions and property to the ownership of the public. It caused a big damage. In 1952 two villages were established on parts of the town. In 1981 the village nearby was appended. The apartment's buildings were used by people who lost their home in the war.
Famous and known places at Debrecen: *The Big Protestant Church. * Dree museum. * Festival of flowers of Debrecen city. * The urban park. * The city placed near a national Park Hortobágy, known as his wild nature and his traditional agriculture. The countries Ukraine and Romania are located next to Debrecen. This fact influences the development of the city and developed this city to a commercial and transport center, important internationally.
Miriam Gottdiner was born on 10th Jun 1927 in Debrecen in Hungary.
The Gottdiner family included parents Rachel (Schindler) and Israel (Gottdiner) and their 15 children: Pnina, Matke', Miriam, Yoel, Golda, Shevah, Lea, Yehuda, Edna, Eliezer, Shoshanna, Haim, Sara, Moshe and Hanna.
Miriam said in her testimony: "We were a big family, 65 people and because of that we were intended it be exterminated by the Germans. We had a wine business in Hungary that the Germans took control of.
Our house was nearby the synagogue. My mother took care of the house which was always arranged. In addition, the education issue was very important to my parents, that's why my brothers and I had studied in OrthodoxSchool in our jewish quarter.
When I was 16 years old (1938) the Nazis invaded Hungary. We were transported from Hungary to Poland trough Slovakia with a train. The atmosphere in the train was difficult: density, warmth, instating, and no water of food at all. While we were on the train my father got a heart attack. My mother shouted to the German soldier "There is no water! Help me! Someone!" and my father survived it with no help. Suddenly the train had stopped- the Germans divided us to two groups. Half of the people were sent to Auschwitz to be exterminated and the rest were sent to work camp like my family and I. We all took care of each other and we tried to be positive as much as we could in order to stay sane. In the work camp, my father got another heart attack and he did not survive it and he died. Today he is buried in Israel.
After a few selections we were sent on a train to Bergen-Belsen in Poland until the end of the war. Bergen-Belsen is located south of the small towns of Bergen and Belsen, about 11 miles north of Celle, Germany.We survived the Selections, but many prisoners from Bergen Belsen were transferred to Auschwitz. Between1943 and 1945, an estimated 50,000 people died in Bergen Belsen, up to 35,000 of them dying of Typhus in the first few months of 1945. While we were in Bergen-Belsen, a soldier from the Red Cross gave us food. Unfortunately, we lost two brothers because we were starving.
On April 15 1945, British and Canadian forces liberated Bergen-Belsen camp. They found thousands of bodies unburied and forced the remaining SS personal to bury the bodies. Many dying prisoners were found in the camp. The British forces gave us food. Although the British prevented the entrance to Palestine in 1945, we were organized in immigration groups of teenagers .We arrived to Palestine, and Eliezer and I settled in Kibutz Yavne. We joined the army, I was in the Air Force like my sister, Sara. My brothers served in underground organizations. My Mother arrived later to Palestine and settled in Petah Tikve. She worked in immigration office. I got married in January 1951, to a Holocaust survivor too. We have children and grandsons. "
