Introduction ixPART 1THE BEFORE TIME1. Where Do We Go? 32. My Brother Josef’s Dream 113. Invasion 154. Łódź Ghetto, Bałuty, Poland 205. Spring Thaw 226. Arbeit, Lifeblood of the Reich 277. Let Them Burn 328. Lice Will Kill You 369. Give Me Your Children 4010. Perla, 1943 4611. How Much Can We Endure? (1943) 4912. Auschwitz (August 1944) 6313. Hambühren Work Camp (September – December1944) 6914. Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (1945) 77PART 2LEON15. The Rabbi’s Son 8916. Our World Falls Apart 9417. What Do We Do Now That We Are Free? 10618. Should We Leave Germany? 109PART 3THE NEW LIFE19. America 20. The American Dream 11913321. Debbie, Our Blessing 14022. Kutsher’s Resort and Hotel, The Catskills, 1975 15223. The Center for Holocaust Studies, Flatbush Yeshiva 15524. Past Future and Future Past 16428. Superstorm Sandy; Goodbye Brooklyn 25. Could You Hide a Jewish Woman? 16926. The House of Memory 17927. To Build a Museum 18728. Superstorm Sandy; Goodbye Brooklyn 193Postscript 201Photos 205Notes 215Bibliography 217Acknowledgments 219About the Authors 221Amsterdam Publishers Holocaust LibraryRay Kaner survived the Łódź ghetto, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen. Her son uncovers her story of survival – and how she helped spark a groundbreaking movement to preserve Holocaust memory.In Was It Just a Matter of Luck? Dr. Charles Kaner weaves an unflinching, moving account of his family’s survival during the Holocaust with the story of how those memories – and his mother’s fierce devotion to testimony – helped shape a new era of remembrance in America. At the heart of the narrative stands his mother, Ray Kaner, whose courage, intelligence, and will to live carried her through the ghetto and the horrors of Auschwitz, Hambüren, and Bergen-Belsen.Tracing Ray’s life from an idyllic childhood in interwar Poland through the collapse of her world, Kaner brings readers inside the Łódź Ghetto with striking immediacy: the hunger that distorted time, the humiliation of forced labor, and the desperate ingenuity that kept Ray and her sister Sally alive. Through Ray’s memories – told to her son decades later during the COVID lockdown – Kaner reconstructs the threads of chance, instinct, and resilience that repeatedly saved her life when the slightest misstep could have meant death.Parallel to his mother’s journey runs Kaner’s own: a boy raised in Brooklyn by survivors who rarely spoke of themselves; a dentist who built a life in New York; and, ultimately, an adult son determined to understand how his mother survived when so many did not. As he listens to Ray recount her childhood, the deaths of her parents, her years of slave labor, and the scars of liberation, Kaner also revisits the extraordinary second act of her life. In the 1970s, as her daughter Debbie entered high school, Ray helped pioneer one of the earliest efforts to collect survivor testimonies – grassroots work that would contribute to the founding of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Flatbush Yeshiva, a precursor to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.Kaner shows how Ray’s lifelong insistence on telling the truth of what she lived became a moral engine that shaped institutions, touched generations of students, and continues to shape her family’s understanding of history, family, and obligation.Both an intimate family chronicle and a sweeping historical testimony, Was It Just a Matter of Luck? reveals how a single survivor’s voice – clear, human, and uncompromising – can illuminate the Holocaust anew. It is a tribute to a mother’s strength, a son’s quest to understand, and the responsibility we all bear to remember.In Was It Just a Matter of Luck? Dr. Charles Kaner weaves an unflinching, moving account of his family’s survival during the Holocaust with the story of how those memories – and his mother’s fierce devotion to testimony – helped shape a new era of remembrance in America. At the heart of the narrative stands his mother, Ray Kaner, whose courage, intelligence, and will to live carried her through the ghetto and the horrors of Auschwitz, Hambüren, and Bergen-Belsen.Tracing Ray’s life from an idyllic childhood in interwar Poland through the collapse of her world, Kaner brings readers inside the Łódź Ghetto with striking immediacy: the hunger that distorted time, the humiliation of forced labor, and the desperate ingenuity that kept Ray and her sister Sally alive. Through Ray’s memories – told to her son decades later during the COVID lockdown – Kaner reconstructs the threads of chance, instinct, and resilience that repeatedly saved her life when the slightest misstep could have meant death.Parallel to his mother’s journey runs Kaner’s own: a boy raised in Brooklyn by survivors who rarely spoke of themselves; a dentist who built a life in New York; and, ultimately, an adult son determined to understand how his mother survived when so many did not. As he listens to Ray recount her childhood, the deaths of her parents, her years of slave labor, and the scars of liberation, Kaner also revisits the extraordinary second act of her life. In the 1970s, as her daughter Debbie entered high school, Ray helped pioneer one of the earliest efforts to collect survivor testimonies – grassroots work that would contribute to the founding of the Center for Holocaust Studies at Flatbush Yeshiva, a precursor to the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City.Kaner shows how Ray’s lifelong insistence on telling the truth of what she lived became a moral engine that shaped institutions, touched generations of students, and continues to shape her family’s understanding of history, family, and obligation.Both an intimate family chronicle and a sweeping historical testimony, Was It Just a Matter of Luck? reveals how a single survivor’s voice – clear, human, and uncompromising – can illuminate the Holocaust anew. It is a tribute to a mother’s strength, a son’s quest to understand, and the responsibility we all bear to remember.