Greenfield is the daughter of two Polish Holocaust survivors who came to Willow Glen in 1949. She says she has been trying to unlock the knowledge of her family's past her whole life.

Recently, Greenfield traveled to Washington, D.C., to attend the Nov. 1­2 Tribute to Holocaust Survivors for the 10th anniversary of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Greenfield was hoping to find a relative, a neighbor or any connection that would bring closure to the void, she says.

"In my own way, I searched all my life," Greenfield says. "For my parents, I wanted to find some family."

Her journey to understand what her parents went through began when she was a little girl. Her mother, Ruth Reischer, was 14 when she was taken from the Warsaw Ghetto to a concentration camp in Germany, and she was unable to share much of her story with her daughter for a long time, Greenfield says.

"I was groping for answers," Greenfield says. "I tried to be sensitive to my mother because she was so young when she was taken, but I felt conflicted because I wanted to know a lot."

But her father, Michael, who passed away four years ago, found catharsis in talking about his experience, Greenfield says. He would read every magazine article and watch every documentary about the Holocaust.

Her father spent time in seven concentration camps and was liberated from Dachau before he and Reischer met in a displaced persons' camp in Munich. Only one member of his family, a brother, is known to have survived.

"He came out still believing in good, the good in people and doing good for others," Reischer says. "We believed in doing for others in a quiet, unassuming way."

Reischer says the job of remembering the Holocaust has now been passed to the next generation, which one of her two daughters is eager to accept.

"It's now Sandy who is going to keep the fire burning and still be a witness," she says.

Since she was 21, Greenfield has taken notes and compiled documents to record her parents' experience. When she heard about the survivors' reunion in the nation's capital, she wanted to go but wasn't sure that that weekend was free.

She was unaware that her husband, Lance, had booked a flight and hotel reservations. When she found out, she was so excited that before she left she made signs with her father's last name spelled in Polish and her mother's maiden name, Kacenelenbogen, to take with her, hoping someone would recognize family names.

Seven thousand survivors and family members attended the gathering, which included a Holocaust Museum tour that was closed to the public.

There was also a model of the Warsaw Ghetto. Greenfield found the streets her parents lived on—10 blocks apart—although they never met until they were in the same refugee camp after the war.

Although she didn't find any relatives, Greenfield says meeting other survivors and being able to represent her parents and "be there in spirit for my father and body and mind for my mother" was an unforgettable experience.

"I felt like I was looking through my parents' eyes on my own," she says.

The powerful friendships that she formed at the event with other survivors encouraged her to never give up looking, she says.

"It's our job as children of survivors to keep their memories alive," she says.