Martha Shemtov was born in Lvov, Poland on October 10, 1940. Her birth name was Regina Goldstein, and she was an only child. On June 22, 1941, when the Germans took over Lvov, Martha’s parents decided to move to Stryj, thinking it would be safer in a smaller town. A few weeks after moving to Stryj, the ghetto was created, and they never left. After getting caught hiding in a neighbour’s house, the family was marched into town and loaded onto a train heading for the Belzec death camp. They managed to survive by jumping from the moving train, and they found their way to a local farmer’s house, and then back to Stryj. In 1943, at age two and a half, Martha’s parents made the decision to try to save their daughter:  Martha was sent for a time to a Polish family, but they grew afraid of the potential punishment and returned Martha to her father.  He made arrangements to try another family, and Martha was sent to live with a Polish woman and her grandmother, where she was raised as a Catholic child. She stayed with them until her father came to get her after liberation in 1945. Martha’s mother Ida did not survive:  she was killed in 1944 when attempting to escape a roundup in Stryj.  Martha’s father remarried after the war, and to simplify things for his young daughter he explained to Martha that his new wife was her mother, who had returned from hiding now that the war was over.  Martha did find out the truth, which led to a few difficult years as she grappled with her notions of identity and family.  In 1957, Martha went to live in Israel, and she moved to Canada in 1963. Martha has three children and six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.  She was interviewed by Crestwood students at Baycrest in December 2024.