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The Dreams, Page 2

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These are dreams I have received from around the world. As with all dreams, interpretation of symbols and meaning is highly personal. Various theories exist regarding why people have dreams of the Shoah: is it part of a Jewish collective unconsciousness? Reincarnation images? A reaction to watching "Schindler's List" on the VCR? All of these ideas have validity--I leave it to the reader to interpret for him/her self. Please send your dreams/comments to me at ShoahDream@yahoo.com so that this page will grow.



Dream 1

>NOTE: For additional information on Rabbi Gershom and his work, as referred to in this dream, go to:Suggested Reading

Basically, I started with dreams. They were surprising to me because I tend to be a rather rational person. I work as a Psychiatrist and most of my education has related to "hard science." Also, I converted to Judaism from Christianity and was therefore hostile to the idea of reincarnation. At the time this started, I had at best only a vague idea that reincarnation was even considered "kosher" within the wider Jewish tradition. So, you can't say I sought this out.

These dreams relate to an individual nicknamed Bernie. He was an American Jew who was born in the mid 1920's and lived in or Near Omaha. He attended Creighton University as an Engineering major. Fascinated by airplanes, he joined some sort of Army Air Corps cadet program on campus and later trained as a pilot. Nothing terribly dramatic here. Bernie was not the greatest flight student and ended up having to give up his dream of flying P-38 fighters and flew a light liaison plane after he "bent" an advanced trainer in a landing lesson. He was assigned to a hospital unit after Normandy, making flights to pick up blood, medicines, etc. He died in the battle of the Bulge in 1945. He made one flight where he emergency evacuated wounded soldiers. He tried to go back but was shot down. The German antiaircraft crew weren't bad types. They pulled him out of the plane and set his broken arm. They even tried to hide him when a truck came by. It was full of American GI's and driven by Germans in black uniforms. The Germans drove Bernie and his comrades to a wooded clearing. The marched off the enlisted men and machine gunned them. Bernie was the only officer so they made him kneel and shot him in the back of the head. This stuck very vividly because Bernie, as a Jew, was terrified of capture. He had made sure his dog tags falsely indicated he was Catholic. And he was too scared of torture to say the Sh'ma before he was killed.

The only sense I can make of the very vivid recollections in dreams and sometimes daytime flashback like experiences is that they were sent to me as an explanation. I had spent 30+ years as a practicing Christian and was having "out of the blue" very intense experiences which convinced me God was calling me to convert to Judaism. Also, I was trying to deal with the aftermath of growing up with a very violent Neo-Nazi father. After discussions with friends, including Rabbi Gershom, I came to understand that a lot of the difficulties I underwent in this life resulted from Bernie's guilt at dying denying his Jewish identity and choices he made before I was born to enable him/me to make Teshuvah. Interestingly, there are a lot of overlapping characteristics in other areas. I've been a total airplane nut since early childhood. I'm phobic about flying in them but design and build RC models. Also, the medical career I was drawn to was Bernie's dream after the War. I've been able to confirm some historical details over time but haven't actually located Bernie. These details relate to Orthodox practices I wasn't aware of, confirmation that a prayer I had spontaneously uttered one day was in translatable Aramaic, details regarding WWII era music (including a rather racy parody of "Chattanooga Choo Choo"), military training, types of aircraft, etc.

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Dream 2

I am the son of survivors of Auschwitz and other camps. I was born six years after the war. Two frightening memories of my childhood stay with me to this day. I had a recurrent dream that the town I grew up in (Long Beach, NY) was covered with thick, dark, low cloud cover. It was then surrounded and invaded by Nazi-type soldiers who rounded all of us up. They would execute my family, but as they were about to kill me, I awoke.

Another memory is more imagination than a dream. In 1959 when I was 8 years old, rumors circulated that Hitler was still alive. I developed a fear of looking out the windows of my house after dark. Each time I looked I imagined that I saw Hitler's face staring back at me from outside the house. This was quite frightening for an 8 year old. Although details of my parents' suffering only surfaced in recent years, the general awareness of the Holocaust was a heavy shadow over my childhood. The Holocaust was no doubt the predominant factor in shaping my personality and overall view of the world.

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Dream 3

I am 20 years old. My grandmother is from Poland, and she married to a naturalized citizen of US and moved to Tel Aviv for three years in 1936. Her family however died in the camps. When I was little, I had dreams about naked men and women waiting in line outside in the cold to be executed- either shot into a mass grave or to the gas chambers, it varied. This image is the first one I remember about the Holocaust. I often dream sometimes that I'm in Eastern Europe, running in the fields away from SS men. Sometimes they catch me and they are about to execute me. For some reason I'm not afraid, and I wake up.

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Dream 4

I was born in 1967, and most of my family escaped the Shoah, as they came to the US in the late 1800's and early 1900's. However, since I was a little boy a majority of my "bad" dreams have had a Shoah theme. In many, I am running away and hiding from Nazis. I have had a few dreams, of which I remember very little. Mostly they were dreams of being in the Camps, and then I always wake up after seeing the numbers on my arm. It is very frightening, to the point where I am very sensitive to any kind of media presentation of Holocaust film or visual images. I have yet to see Schindler's List. I cry if confronted with unexpected photographs. I can not bring myself to enter Yad Veshem or the National Holocaust Museum, even though I am a member

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Dream 5

My father is Jewish, and my mother made a reform conversion to marry him. I have decided to make an Orthodox conversion, which I am in the process of doing. I have had a couple of dreams about the Shoah, but the one I remember clearly is as follows: I am in a camp in a very deserted area; everything is greyish or greenish. There is forest all around, but I am aware that there are empty plains nearby. It is unclear whether I am a prisoner, or some kind of resistance infiltrator. I see bodies everywhere, but I notice that they are curiously healthy-looking, being pink, and well-fleshed. Suddenly, I see very stereo-typical evil-looking guards herding people outside, where they begin to murder them, not using guns, but, I think, knives and batons or something similar- the act of murder is certainly very physical. I can't remember whether there is any blood. I panic, because I know it is my responsibility to save these people, they are somehow letting me know that they are relying on me, without seeming to know I am there. The rest of the dream is unclear , but I wake up knowing I had failed to save anyone, and feeling completely helpless.

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Dream 6

I had a dream that I am a young boy in the 40's somewhere in Europe. I had a large yellow David's star on my coat. I was running down a street when two Nazi guards jumped out and grabbed me. They drag me through a ghetto and into a wagon with several other Jewish men. We go on for what seems like forever when we are lifted out we are told to walk but I can't my legs keep giving out. When a beautiful woman picks me up and drags me into a hut. I am put on the bottom bunk of bunk beds that go up to the ceiling. She feeds me and helps me learn to walk again. Then one day a German officer comes and beats me with a hose like weapon. I am lined up against a wall when a boy who looks exactly like me hugs me and calls me Aaron. We stand together and a man with the oddest white gloves points at us and we are stripped and put into a machine that squishes us almost to death when a needle enters my arm and I fall asleep.

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Dream 7

I often wonder how the Holocaust molded my life. My sister recently said that I definitely fit the pattern of the eldest child in the family of parent survivors.

My dream, which happened often after the birth of my children is really very simple. I am in a barn, or sorts, with alot of people. We are forced in and the door is shut. We hear alot of fighting and alot of gunfire. I am trying to protect the child in my arms. Suddenly the door opens and I would see Nazis with guns about to enter the room. All I remember is the feeling of helplessness and fear. I always wake up just as the Nazis begin to fire into the room.

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Dream 8

For many years I have fought internal nightmares regarding the Holocaust, or as you say, the Shoah. At the age of 17 I began to have nightmares, and would awaken from my dream, only in some way still be in it. Surrounding me were the faces of men and women...Jewish prisoners of the Shoah. The feeling of terror and horror filled my mind and heart. These dreams were constant, almost as if they were reaching from the grave to torment me. From the time I was a young girl, I had been fascinated by the German language, and soon in my teens became somewhat fluent...the language came very naturally. While in Germany in 1985, I found that many things were very familiar, and had numerous "dejavu" experiences. The dreams do not occur as often, and I have had many dreams in which I am being chased by an SS officer....my gun is empty...he is calling me a traitor. As perhaps you can see, my terror is not that I was a prisoner or a victim, but a member of the nazi regime. Today, I am 29 years old. As an adoptee I know very little about my roots, other than my father's family, came from Austria and my mother's from Scotland. I would hope and pray that I was never a part of this inhumanity..today I am a lesbian, and quite proud of our heritage...but a part of me will always wonder about my soul's past.

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Dream 9

NOTE: For additional information on Rabbi Gershom and his work, as referred to in this dream, go to:Suggested Reading


I converted to judiasm when I was 25. I was never exposed to any Jewish culture when I was growing up. I was always searching for a place that I fit. I was raised a Christian but it never "took". I started having dreams and nightmares in my early teens. Then I had regression therapy and the whole story came out. I was living in Berlin in Nov 1938. It was the night of Khristalnacht. I fled Berlin with my three children in my neighbors car. We didn't make it too far before the Nazis took it away from us. We were forced to walk and fled into the woods. Our destination was Socklove, Checkslovkia. It took us three weeks of walking at night before we arrived in the dead of night at my neighbors cousins house. He let us in but let me know that we could only stay there 1 week as there was not enough food to go around. I didn't have to worry as later that night the einsatzgroupen rounded up the whole village and marched us outside of town about 10 miles where they shot and killed us. I was one of the last to be killed because my bum leg slowed me down. I saw my three children be murdered in front of my eyes before they put a bullet in the right side of my head. The last memory I have is of lying in a pit staring up at a horrible face of a young Nazi as he spit on me in disgust! I started to shake with the intense cold and then knew no more!

To this day I HATE the cold and get massive hives on any part of my body that is exposed to the cold. I live in Florida and don't plan on moving to anywhere cold!

I have read both of Rabbi Gershom's books and have found them to be a blessing and a Godsend. I am NOT alone or crazy!

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Dream 10

The first time I heard of the dreams described by those who experienced such unusual phenomenon, I was overwhelmed by unexplainable emotions and felt as if I was literally frozen in time. Since I was a very young girl, I have experienced dreams of war torn Europe, being bombed by fighter planes and the recollection of pain and anguish of people around me of whom I had no recollection of nor knew personally. I am not Jewish, nor do I have any links to any Jewish heritage that I am aware of. I was raised in a very charasmatic, Christian environment, but always felt disjointed in my Christian beliefs.

I began the journey 2 years ago, by accident I may add, a search for religious answers and began studying Judiasm. I since have made the decison to convert. This entire quest has been full of strong emotions, wonderous and peaceful answers to my lifetime of unaswered questions. I am not unfamiliar with dreams, as I have encountered many dreams that were factual and proved to be valuable to my direction in life and actual occurances that later transpired in my life. These WW2 dreams have followed me through adulthood and I have been very puzzled by thier origin or meaning, and I have always been unable to come to peaceful terms about them.

As a young girl I was VERY connected and VERY emotional by any WW2 movies that I saw, the holocaust...Anne Frank etc...I cannot explain the charged emotions that I would experience when I viewed related content. To this day, I cannot talk about the holocaust....WW2....war torn Europe without becoming very emotional. I know that I was led to study Judiasm...I was led to convert....and as for the rest of my past experiences and how they relate to Judiasm, it is a complete mystery to me. However, I do know that I have such pent up and charged emotions discussing this subject and yet that is unexplainable to me.

Recently, a dear friend of mine who is a Jewish Attorney sent me the following that sums it up in my heart and I hope that someday I will be able to match the missing pieces:

"Said Resh Lakish: The convert is dearer than the Jews who stood before Mount Sinai. Why? Because had they not seen the thunder, and the mountains quaking and the sounds of the horn, they would not have accepted the Torah. But this one, who saw none of these things, came, surrendered herself to the Holy One and accepted upon herself the kingdom of heaven. Could any be dearer then she?"


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Dream 11

I am an American Jewish male, born in 1953. From age 8 to approximately age 14 I had a nightmares with a recurring theme. I was alone in Hitler's Germany, without parents. I would be a foster child/servent/apprentice to a high ranking Nazi official, at times in the household of Hitler himself! Toward the end of the dream my world would come crashing down usually with the revelation to the Nazi that I was circumcised. I would wake up in a cold sweat.

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Dream 12

I have never had a dream about the Shoah. I'm not Jewish, nor am I very old. One time when I was doing a research project, I remember staring at the wall and getting very vivid mental picutres. Everything was gray and black and I found myself in a cattle car on the way to Auschwitz. I remember the tracks, the smoke billowing from the chimneys, and the monotonous gray sky. That is all I can remember, but I know I was out of it for a while.

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Dream 13

Nobody in my family is a Holocaust survivor. I have had dreams concerning Nazi Germany since I was 4. That's before I ever knew about it (the Holocaust) either. I'm 17 now and still have dreams. I have memories of my father's death. My mother and I are running from the Nazis. I saw the SS guard who shot my father and the other week I saw myself. I was a little girl. My grandmother was there and she said "I want you to meet someone. Her name is Rachel." It was me, except little. I started to cry as others in a line stared at me as they were waitng to die.

I have these dreams ever so often. They are truly nightmares.

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Dream 14

I am the daughter of Jews who survived the war in Russia. My father is the sole survivor of a family of 200 in Lemberg, Poland and my mother and her brother and sister were the sole survivors of a family of about 100 people. For years I have had the same recurring dream; that I somehow am transported back in time and I go to my mother's family in her little town just prior to the out break of the war. I meet her family but do not reveal who I am. I offer to take them to the United States and support them here. They are almost all ready to agree to go when my mother (as a young woman) comes in and convinces them not to leave. I then go to my father's family and suffer a similar lack of success; this time due to my grandfather's refusal to leave (my father is not there). I keep having the same conversation with them over and over in Yiddish; I keep offering them money and security but nothing helps.

I recently spoke with my cousin in Buenos Aires who told me that he has experienced the same dream on many occasions.

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Dream 15

I've had this dream twice that I can remember. The last time was a while ago, but not long enough for me to forget it.

In the dream there was the feeling that my family and I were being chased. It was a horrible feeling. I knew what we were trying to get away from--the Nazis. We were dressed in clothes from the 1940s and were at a train station waiting to get on the train. We were all frantic and the train just wouldn't come. I don't remember the Nazis ever actually getting there. I'd always wake up from the dream right before we'd see them, but I always remember being so close to getting away and never actually doing it.

My mom and I are trying to find out what happened to my grandfather's side of our family during the war (grandfather's side is Jewish, grandmother's is Catholic). So far we found out that two of his family members were taken on a train to Auschwitz where they were killed in the gas chamber.

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Dream 16

I am a 48-year-old woman, and neither my family nor me have any connection to the Shoah that I know of, although my mother's best friend, now dead, was Polish, and fled the Nazis.

All my life I've been terrified and fascinated by the Holocaust. I have started having what are not dreams, but memories surface. The name that comes to me is Rachel. I lived in a quiet street in Austria, and my family was not practicing Jews. I remember being outraged at having to sew that ugly star on my clothing, especially my favorite dress, which was plaid.

Then my father disappeared. My mother and I were rounded up with many people and taken to a ghetto. I do not know where we are, but I am cold, and hungry, and still angry. My mother packed a brass menorah, not a fancy one, or a pretty one, just a plain thing, and I felt she should have put food, or things we could exchange for food on the black market. Or something warm.

Then I'm in Bergen-Belsen. I'm still always cold. I'm lying on the planks of the "bunk" shared with many others--and then I'm out of my body, looking down, thinking, "that doesn't hurt at all. I thought dying would hurt."

My feelings are still intense. I went to a travelling memorial, and found out I was right about Bergen-Belsen, that there were no crematoria there. I see faces of people against a fence and I think I recognize them. I look at the suitcases in piles. I look at the hair, the eyeglasses, and the baby's shoes.
I cannot get the nightmare out of my mind, and I'm determined to make certain no one ever forgets. I still feel that way.
I will never forget, nor will allow revisionists to spread their lies and hatred without speaking out.

Six million Jews. Five million others--homosexuals, Poles, Gypsies, political prisoners, mentally ill and mental defectives, and all others deemed "life unworthy of life" by the killing machine. I won't let their memories be besmirched. I can't.

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Dream 17


My mother is a survivor of Auschwitz-Birkenau, and I was born in 1952.

A reccurent dream I used to have around my twenties (and still re-discover nowadays) figures THE SELECTION at the arrival in the camp.

Hundred and hundred times my mother related this very moment, I suppose as a model of Will and straight Action (of course she pretends to be a specialist of both...): she was standing by a Dutch girl who spoke German to the officer in charge of the selection, so he moved her out of the file. My mother stepped immediatly behind that girl, but was rejected back to the former file. So she looked intensively at the Dutch girl, who then said to the officer that this woman was her cousin ... he nodded, allowing my mother to join the small file.

I think it is important to add that this first survival action in the camp, followed by many others, permitted to my mother to be one of the 27 survivors of her convoy, originally composed of 1500 persons.

My dream of course is more confused that this specific event. In the dream, we are around 50 people in a dark basement, gathered in a corner. In front of us, not so close (like 10 meters) are three men, in normal dark suits. I can't distinguish their features, they don't look agressive but rather competent, professionals.

The man in the middle is the only one active. He holds a paper and pronounces a word. I understand immediatly that now it is a question of decision on my side; if I identify myself with this word, if I choose this word as being the one that "fits" me, I step ahead and join the other ones who have elected this word as "theirs".

I have no problem to understand the meaning of the word, but it remains too much vague for me to be able to take any absolute decision about it; it sounds like the expression of a feeling, or maybe a color.

The ones who have opted for this first word are led out of the room by one of the two assistants.

I wait for the second word, but in the meantime I feel very confused; there won't be any word "for me".

I shouldn't have entered the game following the purposed rules: for instance I should have stepped at the first proposition, whatever it would have been. But now it's too late, and I will remain alone at the end.

Effectively the second word doesn't fit me neither, though many of my companions take a step ahead (those ones may have had the same reflexion that I, and decided to move quickly) Generally I awake at that time.

The obvious about survivors' children, is that actually they pass through the same problems as anyone (here for instance the incapacity of making a decision) but they will illustrate it in a specific way.

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Dream 18



This is one of my earliest memories - a nightmare which I suffered at the age of about five. I can still see it as clearly now (thirty years later!) as I did then...

I am standing in a field, near to a mountain. A railway track goes through this field, and I see a train traveling on it, towards the mountain. I am aware that the train will go through the mountain via a tunnel. However, in order to reach the tunnel in the mountain, the train must first go over a bridge which connects the field to the mountain (there is a deep but narrow crevice which separates them).

As I watch the train go past me, I see it crash into the side of a mountain, its carriages and passengers are smashed against the mountainside, and must all be dead.

As a five year old child, I was terrified by this dream. As far as I remember, I only had the dream once, but once was enough to imprint the image on my mind forever.

Over the years I have often thought of that dream. I always thought how illogical it would be to build a train track through a mountain, and to expect a train to cross a crevice all by itself to go into the tunnel! One day I realised that there should have been a bridge. The bridge must have been destroyed - that is why the train crashed into the mountainside. I was also unaware until recently that in Eastern Europe railway lines like this do exist - they have to in order to provide access to difficult to reach terrains. How could I have known all these things at the age of five?

I was not born Jewish, nobody in my family nor my parents' friends were Jewish - I had no contact with anyone or anything Jewish as I was growing up. Yet I have always felt a deep, strong urge to learn about Judaism; I am drawn towards anything Jewish, and when I see Orthodox Jews I feel a deep inner longing to be amongst their community.

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Dream 19



I am a 44-year-old woman and a convert to Judaism (nearly 16 years now.) I have had a number of dreams about the Shoah, but this one is the most emotionally meaningful and the most recurrent:


It is summer, a very hot bright day, and I am running along the train tracks trying to catch up to a train (a cattle car) in which my beloved rabbi and members of my community are trapped. They are in the final car.


Instead of very tight, closed-off walls of the train car, as in real life, there are only a few slats. I can see my rabbi very well; our gazes are locked. I am running more and more desperately, trying to catch up. In this dream, I am a young man, wearing a kippah and tallit. I want to be with my rabbi more than I want to live. He is an old man, in traditional garb, with a long white beard. His dark eyes look at me very sternly, and I get this message from his gaze: Stop running. Say farewell. Live! Live with dignity.


At last, panting hard, I give up and stop running. The train pulls out of my view. I throw off my kippah and tallit in a rage, down into the yellowed dry grass by the side of the tracks.


The predominant feelings of this dream are frustration, an aching desire to be with my rabbi, no matter how impossible it may be, and rage.

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