Rachel (Rae) Gropper (nee Kruger) was born March 3, 1941. Her parents came from Poland, where they had made a life for themselves in prewar Warsaw. They shared memories of that with Rae at a later time, as she was born during the war, and they also told her about the bombing of Warsaw in […]
Stanley Wozniak was born January 9, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. He was born into a large family of 11 children, and they grew up in a positive environment in the 1930s, though the coming of war in 1940 impacted the family dramatically. They had been living in western Poland, but the aftermath of the German […]
Paula Bultz was born November 24, 1935 in Warsaw, Poland, where her family had lived for four generations. She remembers her prewar childhood in positive terms, full of family and love. All of that changed in late 1939: her father was recalled to active military service, and in September the war began. Paula’s mother made […]
Eva Kuper was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1940, into a world that had just been catapulted into war. Her parents were from Sandomierz, born into families with well-tempered expectations that had been shattered with the Nazi occupation. They ended up in the Warsaw Ghetto, where they endured the brutality and deprivation of the Shoah. […]
Ted Bolgar was born September 12, 1924 in Sarospatak, a small town in Hungary. The Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944, and in April, the Jews of Sarospatak were forced into the ghetto of a nearby town. When the ghetto was liquidated in June, all the inhabitants were deported to Auschwitz. Upon arrival, Ted and […]
Andrew Tylman was born in November 1933, and he grew up in the town of Sochaczew, Poland. His early life took place in a largely Jewish milieu,and the family was prosperous, vacationing in Glowno and prominent in the community. The onset of the war changed the situation dramatically; as violence in his small town began […]
Stefania Sitbon is a Holocaust Survivor from Poland. She was born just before the war began, so Stefania doesn’t remember the German invasion, or life before the war. The memories she has are of her childhood, a time when things had changed dramatically. Stefania grew up in the chaos and hunger of the Warsaw Ghetto, […]
Hana Windwar was born in 1933 in Warsaw, Poland. She was six years old when the war began and she was the only child of her parents. She went to Russia with her parents. Her dad was taken to Russia, and forced into the army during the war. Her mom needed to work and Hana was put in a orphanage. Hana […]
Chava Sloma was born in Otwock, Poland in 1925. Though she recalled incidents of anti-Semitism, she said her prewar life was for the most part good. All that changed dramatically in September 1939 though; the family initially fled to Warsaw, but as the German army advanced, the decision was made to separate, and Chava and […]
Amek Adler was born April 20, 1928 in Lublin, Poland, and he grew up in Lodz. After Nazi occupation in 1939, his family escaped to Warsaw and then to Radom. In 1943, Amek was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, and from there he survived the brutality of a series of work camps. The end of the war […]
Adam Shtibel was born in the small Polish town of Komarow. Early in the war his town was occupied by the USSR, and later by the Germans. At that time, he served as herdsmen for a local farmer. With the death of his father, Adam continued as labourer for a Polish farmer. Adam saw the […]
Hank Rosenbaum was born into a comfortable Jewish family in Warsaw in 1936. The German invasion of Poland turned life for the Rosenbaum family upside down. He and his family would spend the next 6 years in and out of ghettos- escaping and evading the Germans on multiple occasions. He spent the final years of […]
Mel Goldberg was born in the summer of 1942, in Baila Rawska, Warsaw. He was born into a family with two brothers and one sister, but none survived the war. Mel’s town was liquidated in 1942 , and the family was sent to Treblinka, a death camp located in Poland. As Mel’s father had given […]
Simon Saks was born in Poland in 1932. He was taken by the Nazis from his home at the age of 7, and was imprisoned until his liberation at the age of 13. He had one year of education at a public school before that time. Simon at first was in the Warsaw Ghetto; there […]
Nina Grey survived the Holocaust in wartime Poland. Her family was on the move, hiding in and out of Warsaw and fortunately always able to stay just one step of the Germans. She shared her story at Baycrest’s Cafe Europa in the fall of 2012, when she sat down with Jake Borinsky, Jessie Cooke, and […]
Irene Kurtz was born February 2, 1928 in Warsaw, Poland. She grew up with lots of extended family, and was living a happy life, going to school and celebrating shabbat. The coming of war in 1939 would shatter that life; it began with restrictions and shortages, and it quickly escalated as the Nazis and their […]
Pinchas Gutter was born in Lodz and was 7 years old when the war broke out. After his father was brutally beaten by Nazis in Lodz, he fled with his family to what they thought was safety in Warsaw. From there, Pinchas and his family were incarcerated in the Warsaw Ghetto for three and a […]
When World War Two began in 1939 Abe and his family went to Warsaw for just two weeks as Germans took it over and then to Bialystok. After Abe and family left Bialystok they went to Lida. From there Zaida and his family spent the rest of the war in Siberia, safe from the Nazis. […]