Sandy Goldwasser Berenbaum was born in 1946 in a Displaced Persons Camp in Pocking, Germany. Her parents were Holocaust survivors who endured unimaginable hardships during World War II. Her father, originally from Mlawa, Poland, was a prisoner in a Nazi slave labor camp in Komi SSR, Siberia, while her mother was from Kiev, Ukraine (formerly part of Russia). They both survived antisemitism, pogroms, bombings, and starvation and met after Sandy’s father escaped the labor camp. Determined to build a new life, her father led the family to the American sector in Germany, facilitating their emigration to the United States, where his only surviving brother lived.
