Halina Wind Preston (1922-82)

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HALINA WIND PRESTON

On April 30, 1981, my mother was interviewed by WHYY-TV reporter Elma Andrews at the Holocaust monument in Freedom Plaza in Wilmington, Delaware. This short film clip is the only known footage of my mother speaking. She died in a Philadelphia hospital on Dec. 2, 1982, after cardiac bypass surgery at age 60. 

"THE EARTH WAS BREATHING"

Seventy-nine years ago, on Jan. 8, 1942, the second day of Ukrainian Christmas, a 16-year-old boy named Jaroslaw Klimentowych Dolnyawka witnessed a mass murder of 880 Jewish men, women, and children in a field outside my mother’s hometown of Turka-nad-Stryjem. I interviewed him standing in that field in 1992, and the 15-minute raw footage is shared now for the first time. For details, read my Mother's Day 1995 article Speaking for the ghosts: A story for my mother.