Uncovering a Holocaust survival story

September 13, 2026 / 9:52 AM EDT / CBS News

As a young girl taking out a box containing toy soldiers from her dad's dresser drawer, Elizabeth Connolly was just curious, not trying to unearth a little-known piece of history. "I would go in and I would play with them, and I would set them all up on the floor," she said.

But tucked in that drawer next to those toy soldiers was an envelope of photos, which Connolly found intriguing: "I always remember thinking, 'Hmm, they don't look like any of our relatives. I wonder who they are.'"

They appeared quite removed from her reality in Upstate New York. "There was one that just always drew me: It was a mom holding a little girl's hand, coming up the hill, and there was another woman standing behind that was very, very thin," she said.

She'd asked her dad about them: "He would just say they were people that he came upon in a train, and that was it," Connolly said.

Her dad, Carrol Walsh, a U.S. Army sergeant in World War II, kept the photos given to him by a friend, a fellow tank commander. "I think a lot…

Original source: https://www.cbsnews.com/entertainment/