Holocaust survivor highlights exhibit

Associated Press

CLEVELAND

A Holocaust survivor who immigrated to Cleveland in 1951 is the only living person among 31 immigrants featured in a National Archives exhibit that opened Friday in Washington, D.C.

Michael Pupa, 73, of suburban Orange, is a Polish refugee who lost his mother and baby sister in the Holocaust.

A giant photograph of Pupa at age 12 is featured on a banner outside the archives, so the retired mortgage broker and title insurer decided it was time to open up to his family about how the sad-eyed boy in the picture survived World War II.

Pupa says he scrounged for survival with his uncle in forests that surrounded their native Manyevitz after Nazis shot many of their relatives.

“What transpired in World War II was painful for me,” Pupa told The Plain Dealer. “Because of my experiences, I didn’t want to talk about my past for a long time. But now I think it is time.”

He was a small child when World War II began. His mother and a baby sister whose name he doesn’t remember were shot early when his family was sent to a Jewish ghetto. Pupa escaped to the woods with his father, Morris, and uncle, Lieb Kaplan. His father survived the war, but was murdered soon afterward.

After the war, Pupa, his uncle, and two of his uncle’s daughters spent several years shuttling through a series of refugee camps in Germany. Pupa and his younger cousin, Bronja, got permission to move to the United States.