Hershel Greenblatt was born in the spring of 1941 in Ukraine, during the early stages of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. His parents, Manya and Abraham, were active in the resistance, which forced them to move constantly to evade capture. For the first two years of his life, Hershel and his family hid in a cave system near Kiev known as the Priest’s Grotto. Living conditions were brutal, with freezing temperatures and scarce food scavenged from nearby farms. Despite falling seriously ill, Herschel survived without medicine. When his mother was injured while searching for food, Hershel remained in the cave for nine weeks before his parents returned and took him further east to escape the Nazi advance.

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As the war dragged on, the family sought refuge in Krasnodar, where Herschel’s father was imprisoned for stealing bread to feed them. During this time, Herschel’s mother gave birth to his sister while caring for him alone. By the war’s end, they learned that much of their extended family had been killed. Hershel’s mother’s relatives were murdered at Babi Yar, and his father’s family was killed in the gas chambers of the Majdanek concentration camp. In 1945, the they fled the Soviet Union and reached Salzburg, Austria, where they joined many Holocaust survivors in displaced persons camps.

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The family spent five years in refugee camps before immigrating to the United States. They arrived in New York Harbor aboard the U.S.S. General Ballou, where Hershel’s father pointed out the Statue of Liberty as a symbol of their new beginning. Settling in Atlanta with just $80, the family received support from the local Jewish community. Hershel’s father ran a grocery store downtown, while Hershel embraced his new life, becoming a proud American citizen. Today, Hershel continues to share his story. He and his wife Rochelle have two sons, Michael and Jeffrey, as well as four grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.