Local woman shares story as a second generation Holocaust survivor

In honor of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we’re taking a look at the impacts the attempted genocide left on children of survivors, known as the second generation.

News Channel 3’s Lauren Coronado spoke with Brandy Fox, a Palm Springs woman who believes her mental health condition is a product of a lingering Holocaust.

Fox was born and raised in Pittsburgh, but her story starts long before that. Her parents migrated to the United States after living through the horrific events of Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, a secret kept from Fox for years.

“I would sneak in the attic and have fun and then I was like, ‘what is this?’ I would find some of these pictures I have now and thought, ‘OK’. Then we sat down and had a talk and they told me about the camps and the way they were and I was still a young kid in grade school,” shared Fox.

Fox’s father rarely shared memories of his three years in the Dachau concentration camp. Her mother refused to speak of it at all. Fox remembers playing a game of hide and seek every time someone knocked on her parent’s door.

“And my grandmother would take me and my sister and say it’s play time and they would put us downstairs in this cave and told us to stay there for a while. I never thought of anything until a few years down the road and it seemed like they were just paranoid,” said Fox.

Now Fox says she battles paranoia and depression, among other mental health conditions.

“So many times I go to the door and I hear someone there and I get scared they’re going to take me away.”

As 73 years pass since the liberation of Auschwitz, Fox’s goal is to raise awareness and let other second generation survivors know they are not alone.

Get immediate mental health support here.