Peter Diana, Post-Gazette
	Martin Forstenzer holds a photo of his late mother Estelle Forstenzer from 1948, which was used for her immigration forms.

Chico Harlan
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Friday afternoon, Martin Forstenzer found a collection of yellow notebook paper filled with the single-spaced handwriting of his mother, who'd died two days earlier.

	Darrell Sapp, Post-Gazette Holocaust survivor Jack Sittsamer stands in front of his display inside of the Robinson Building of the Jewish Community Center in Squirrel Hill. He was a Holocaust prisoner from 1942-45. Click photo for larger image.

Mr. Forstenzer counted the sheets of paper: one... two... three, all the way to seven. Maybe one or two pieces were still missing, he thought. He didn't know, because his mother, Estelle Forstenzer, had never told him that such a document existed.

Mr. Forstenzer discovered the papers in his mother's apartment, to which she'd been walking Wednesday morning. Even at 83, she remained active. She went swimming every morning at the Squirrel Hill Jewish Community Center. She ice-skated and played bridge. She ushered at the Benedum Center. Just earlier in the week, she'd taught as a substitute at one of the Pittsburgh Public Schools.

But that morning, returning to her apartment, she was struck by a vehicle at Murray Avenue and Bartlett Street. She died at UPMC Presbyterian, leaving behind two children, and -- as Mr. Forstenzer later realized -- a documented story of her courage.

Like roughly 150 other Pittsburghers, Ms. Forstenzer had survived the Holocaust, the relentless extermination of Jews and other minority members in Nazi Germany. And like many, she almost never recounted her experiences -- how her Polish family had refused to flee, at the behest of the town rabbi; how she'd endured the labor camps; how she'd lost her entire family, and begun her life, post-World War II, entirely alone.

"When I was a little boy, other than the fact that she'd been in a concentration camp and her whole family had been killed, she never talked about it all," Mr. Forstenzer said. "To me, 'concentration camp' was just sort of a mysterious place. I had no idea as a boy. ... It was a forbidden subject."

Most who survived the concentration camps dealt with the horrors, first, through silence. Only in the last 20-odd years, experts say, have circumstances converged to foster a willingness among survivors to speak. Some decide to share history, fearful that its record might dissipate. Sometimes, old age encourages the reflection.

Some Pittsburghers, like Jack Sittsamer, end long periods of quiet at the urging of another. (Holocaust historian Barbara Burstin first encouraged Mr. Sittsamer to share his memories.) Some, like Marga Randall -- who died in November 2005 -- made sharing the memories a life mission. Ms. Randall wrote a memoir and spoke often to school classes.

Others never wish to break their silence.

At the Pittsburgh Holocaust Center, commemorating its 25th anniversary with a ceremony two weeks from now, the memories exist en masse. The center holds 3,000 books and hundreds of audiotapes. Employees, starting in the mid-'80s, began interviewing Holocaust survivors living in Pittsburgh, videotaping their stories. The center now holds 43 such accounts.

Within the last several years, though, the mission to collect first-hand accounts of history has stirred a sense of history. Most living Holocaust survivors are now in their 80s. Fewer than 10 in Pittsburgh volunteer to share their stories publicly.

"We do have the stories in video form," said Edie Naveh, director of the Holocaust Center, "but the issue is also, obviously, that the human voice -- the individual who is alive -- provides the most powerful testimony. That has an impact that a recorded voice does not. And those individuals are passing."

Ms. Forstenzer lived her life with vigor in part, friends believed, because she wished to drive herself from her past. She began recounting her experiences in the mid-'90s, Mr. Forstenzer said. She found motivation from Steven Spielberg's 1993 film "Schindler's List," which by extension publicized the value in documenting history's horrors.

Around that time, Mr. Forstenzer, a Fort Collins, Colo.,-based writer who often contributes to The New York Times, asked his mother if she'd be willing to record an audiotape. The son met his mother at her home and asked questions, those he'd never asked before. He learned, for the first time, some of his mother's story.

Ms. Forstenzer never relished talking publicly about her memories. She spoke sometimes at classes taught by Alexander Orbach, a University of Pittsburgh religious studies professor. She told her stories to Carol Rosen, a friend she'd known for 15 years. ("She was always reluctant to talk to me about it before," Ms. Rosen said.)

In April 2003, Ms. Forstenzer attended a memorial service in Oakland, on the 60th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising. She lit a candle, and a volunteer provided the audience with a snapshot of her tale.

She'd worked in a munitions factory in Poland, for instance. Her job: making bullets that would then be used to kill people just like her.

Sometimes, she'd intentionally manufacture a dud.

Ms. Forstenzer did not congregate often with other survivors in the region. In Pittsburgh, through the support of the Holocaust Center, some gather at holiday parties and summer get-togethers. In the mid-'80s, Ms. Naveh started a support group for survivors and children of survivors; she realized that often, the older generation found it easier to share memories with somebody else's child. Sharing stories with their own children caused too much mutual pain.

Local playwright Amy Hartman, in researching her Holocaust-themed theater production, "Mazel," spoke with 14 survivors in the area. "Mazel" -- which played at the Jewish Community Center last month -- compiled the personal histories Ms. Hartman had heard.

By the end of her interviewing, she'd talked to Esther Haas, who spent time at Auschwitz and regretted not remembering more. She'd talked to Malka Baran, who said that during the war, she was an automaton, almost numb. She met with Ray Naar, a psychotherapist still practicing in Pittsburgh, who said that the experience defined him.

"I got a sense of how they all felt about talking," Ms. Hartman said. "The sense I got was really, these memories -- some were horrible and some were vivid, but mostly, they were difficult. And in retelling their stories, they always paid a price."

Perhaps that's why Ms. Forstenzer compiled her detailed account -- the one her son discovered mixed with other important belongings -- only privately. Yesterday, Mr. Forstenzer collected the yellow pages and began reading his mother's words:

"... I was sent to a camp in Debica where they were building a railroad station. We had to carry two buckets of water all day long for the bricklayers to mix the cement. We received food twice a day, in the morning and evening. The lines were always long for bread and black coffee in the morning, and they seemed longer in the evening for soup. We were exhausted and very hungry.

"... One time, on Yom Kippur, my friend and I decided to fast that day in hope we would get some relief from the constant suffering, but to my great surprise we were rushed to carry the water faster and beaten more than ever. Never again did we fast on holidays."

Ms. Forstenzer was then shipped to Krakow, Poland, she wrote, where she worked at a Jewish cemetery and lived in tight barracks, three beds on top of one another.

"We had to dig graves. The Germans would take out the valuables from the grave, and gold teeth if anybody had them. The cemetery site, as well as the work, was very depressing. There was a huge courtyard where the Germans called us together almost every week and somebody was hung or shot in front of us for disobedience."

The son paused from the reading.

"You have to understand," he said, "I'm learning this for the first time."

In addition to her son, Martin Forstenzer, of Fort Collins, Col., Ms. Forstenzer is survived by son Edward Forstenzer, of Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Visitation begins at 11 this morning at the Ralph Schugar Chapel, 5509 Centre Ave., Shadyside. Funeral service will follow at noon.