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Update: Man arrested after allegedly setting porch ablaze while trying to start camp fire in Luzerne Borough

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Police searching for men allegedly involved in alcohol theft

<p>WILKES-BARRE &#8212; Elly Miller remembers overhearing the stories when she was young.</p><p>But the family didn&#8217;t tell those stories to the children. They were too horrific for little ears.</p><p>Miller would look at pictures of her grandmother &#8212; her mother&#8217;s mother &#8212; and her family, and ask who the people were.</p><p>&#8220;We were told they were family members who died in the war,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;We knew then not to ask more.&#8221;</p><p>The &#8220;war&#8221; was World War II and the family members Miller inquired about died in concentration camps during the Holocaust.</p><p>&#8220;Eventually, the story came out,&#8221; Miller said. &#8220;We began to talk about it, but the Holocaust was really not talked about much in the 1950s.&#8221;</p><p>As Miller told the story of her family as best she could, she paused, she trembled, and she cried. It&#8217;s a story told by many Jewish families &#8212; an estimated 6 million were killed &#8212; who suffered tremendous losses at the brutal hands of Germany&#8217;s Nazi regime.</p><p>But Miller said she feels her family&#8217;s story must continue to be told generation after generation, because even today there are some who claim the Holocaust never happened.</p><p>Miller said she knows all too well the reality of the murder of millions in concentration camps.</p><p><strong>Dreams of America</strong></p><p>Elly&#8217;s mother, Clara Zorn, grew up in Bursztyn, Poland, part of the Austrian Empire at the time. She dreamed of coming to America where, as many thought, &#8220;the streets were paved with gold.&#8221; She dreamed of marrying an American man and raising a family.</p><p>Clara met and married Rubin Kaufman, who operated a dry cleaning business in Ossining, New York, a quaint town along the Hudson River in Westchester County.</p><p>Clara and Rubin married in 1926 and would have seven children: May, who died in 2014 at age 87; Marty, 86; Burton, 85; Jack, 84; Leon, 79; Elly, 74; and Bruce, 70.</p><p>This family can tell wonderful stories. There are memories of marriages, children and grandchildren. All because Clara Zorn decided to leave her homeland in 1921 at age 18 for a chance at a better life in America.</p><p>Rubin died in 1981 at the age of 73. Clara passed away in 1999. She was 96.</p><p>It&#8217;s a legacy Miller cherishes and talks about whenever she gets the opportunity.</p><p><strong>The story</strong></p><p>Clara&#8217;s younger brother followed her to the U.S., but her parents and five other siblings were unable to leave when the doors of emigration closed as Adolph Hitler rose to power.</p><p>Miller doesn&#8217;t have detailed information, but she has managed to learn some things. She doesn&#8217;t know the date of her grandfather&#8217;s death, but she does know Leib Zorn and his family are included on the List of the Holy Ones who fell at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.</p><p>Miller knows her grandmother, Frieda Zorn, was alive until at least May 31, 1940, because Miller has a postcard sent to her mother from her grandmother &#8212; a family heirloom she clings to when she talks about her family.</p><p>Miller and her siblings have come to believe their grandparents, aunts and uncles were sent to the Nazi death camp at Auschwitz. Although Miller says the accuracy of the information is cloudy, she knows none of her family members were ever heard from again &#8212; a chilling fact supported by records that show residents of Bursztyn were taken to Auschwitz or to an extermination camp at Belzec.</p><p>Whatever the exact circumstances of her family&#8217;s fate, Miller puts it in perspective.</p><p>&#8220;Whether my mother&#8217;s family was sent to Auschwitz or Belzec, or whether they never made it to either of those extermination camps due to the beatings and murders that were suffered by the population of Bursztyn during the occupation, I have very little doubt that the final years, months and days of their lives were fraught with hunger, humiliation and cruelty,&#8221; she said.</p><p><strong>Walking in their footsteps</strong></p><p>In 2004, Miller and her husband, Murray, took a trip. Included were visits to prominent Jewish sites, including the Warsaw ghetto, Oskar Schindler&#8217;s factory, Terezin (the showcase concentration camp) and Auschwitz, which has become a symbol of the Holocaust.</p><p>Miller felt the trip was a calling to honor the memory of her ancestors by witnessing the death camps firsthand. She felt it was an opportunity to walk in the footsteps of her grandparents, aunts and uncles. She thought, as a department store clerk had suggested, her family &#8220;would speak to her&#8221; when she was there.</p><p>The tours of the concentration camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau in particular, drained Miller, saddened her and rendered her speechless. She walked the railroad tracks that carried the Jews to their eventual deaths. She shuddered at the sign above the entrance that reads, &#8220;Work shall set you free,&#8221; because she knew what the prisoners didn&#8217;t: Auschwitz would be their &#8220;residence of death.&#8221;</p><p>A guide told the story of Auschwitz. Miller said she listened intently on what was a clear, summer day that contrasted the ugliness of the guide&#8217;s presentation and the stark reality of the site itself. She began to cough and choke, unable to catch her breath. She remembered the sales clerk&#8217;s words &#8212; Miller realized her family was speaking to her, telling her how perhaps they had died, choking and gasping in gas chambers.</p><p>Miller saw the crematoriums where bodies were burned. She listened as the guide told of how the prisoners&#8217; hair and dental work were removed. She saw the open latrines that lined the center of the barracks and she envisioned the human beings who died in that place. It overwhelmed her. The list of ways people had died seemed endless and one method seemed more horrific than the next.</p><p>It was a spiritual experience for Miller that left her silent as she tried but failed to wrap her head around what it must have been like to experience what her family members and millions of others had. This is why Miller tells her story to anyone who will listen.</p><p>&#8220;If it is forgotten, it is bound to be repeated,&#8221; she said.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Elly Miller talks about family members lost during the Holocaust. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust1-2.jpg</photo0><caption0>Elly Miller talks about family members lost during the Holocaust. </caption0><photoCredit0>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit0></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust2-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Elly Miller holds the last postcard sent to her mother from her grandmother during World War II. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo1>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust2-2.jpg</photo1><caption1>Elly Miller holds the last postcard sent to her mother from her grandmother during World War II. </caption1><photoCredit1>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit1></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust3-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">Elly Miller gets emotional while discussing her family and the Holocaust. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo2>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust3-2.jpg</photo2><caption2>Elly Miller gets emotional while discussing her family and the Holocaust. </caption2><photoCredit2>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit2></div><div class="neFile"><img class="neImage" src="https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust4-2.jpg">
<div class="neCaption">The clasped hands of Elly Miller as she tells the story of her family and the Holocaust. </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo3>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/web1_TTL041916holocaust4-2.jpg</photo3><caption3>The clasped hands of Elly Miller as she tells the story of her family and the Holocaust. </caption3><photoCredit3>Aimee Dilger | Times Leader </photoCredit3></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>By Bill O&#8217;Boyle</p><p>boboyle@www.timesleader.com</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><factboxMeta><p><strong>What was the Holocaust?</strong></p><p>&#8226; On the website of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum:</p><p>&#8220;The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.</p><p>Holocaust is a word of Greek origin meaning &#8220;sacrifice by fire.&#8221;</p><p>The Nazis, who came to power in Germany in January 1933, believed that Germans were &#8216;racially superior&#8217; and that the Jews, deemed &#8216;inferior,&#8217; were an alien threat to the so-called German racial community.</p></factboxMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Reach Bill O&#8217;Boyle at 570-991-6118 or on Twitter @TLBillOBoyle.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

The Holocaust: A story that must never be forgotten, says Elly Miller, of Wilkes-Barre