father survived with his father and
her mother survived with two sisters. She knows how lucky she is
that they made the choice to live.
“I was lucky because my parents
chose life,” said Dorfman. “They
chose to live, to have children, to
raise a Jewish family, and to be
part of the American Dream. They
stayed connected to who they
were and never forgot where they
came from, but they embraced
life. And that is a very different
story than many survivors and
people that they know who lived
and came to America.”
Stories of the Holocaust were
often told in her household while
growing up. They inspired conversation with aunts and uncles
who were held in various concentration camps. Her mother made
sure that the family watched every
movie and read each book on the
subject. Carolyn struggled to deal
with it, often experiencing nightmares imagining what the experience was like for her mother. At
15, her mother was taken away
from everything that she knew.
Carolyn internalized these feelings, trying to hide how painful
“I was lucky because my
parents chose to live,
to have children,
to raise a Jewish family,
and to be part of the
American Dream.”
---Carolyn Dorfman
New Jersey Stage
October 2014
pg 38