Sabina Szwarc
Born 1923
Warsaw, Poland

Sabina grew up in a Jewish family in Piotrkow Trybunalski, a small industrial city southeast of Warsaw. Her family lived in a non-Jewish neighborhood. Her father was a businessman and her mother was a teacher. Both Yiddish and Polish were spoken in their home. In 1929 Sabina began public school, and later went on to study at a Jewish secondary school.

1933-39: On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. Four days later, German troops streamed into our city. After one month of occupation, my father had to give up his business, I had to give up school, and our family of five was forced into a ghetto that had been set up by the Germans. We shared an apartment with another family. From blocks away we could hear the sounds of German patrols and heavy German boots on the cobblestones.

1940-44: In 1942, as the ghetto was being liquidated, my Polish girlfriends Danuta and Maria got my sister and me false Polish ID cards. On the eve of the final roundup, we escaped and hid in their home. Two weeks later my sister and I took labor assignments in Germany where nobody knew us. I was a maid in a hotel for German officers. One of them asked me whether there were Jews in my family. He said that he was an anthropologist and that my ears and profile seemed Jewish. I looked offended and continued to work.

Sabina was liberated in Regensburg, Germany, by American troops on April 27, 1945. She emigrated to the United States in 1950 and pursued a career as an ophthalmologist

Gitla Zoberman
Born 1917
Sandomierz, Poland

Gitla was the second-youngest of four girls born to observant Jewish parents. They made their home in Sandomierz, a predominantly Catholic town on the Vistula River. Her father owned a small bookstore across from the town hall, selling school texts and novels. Gitla attended public school before enrolling in a Catholic girls' high school. In the winter, Gitla enjoyed skating on the Vistula.

1933-39:In 1937 I moved to Katowice, a large town on the Polish-German border. There, I enrolled in a business college and lived with my sister, Hana, who worked as a pharmacist. In August 1939 we heard that the Germans would invade Poland. Hana and I decided to return to Sandomierz, where we thought we would be safer. On September 1, 1939, the Germans invaded Poland. They occupied Sandomierz two weeks later.

1940-44:After one year in the Pionki labor camp, my father and I escaped to Warsaw. My sister Irene, whose Aryan features and good Polish let her pass as a Christian, arranged our way to the city, aided by a Polish man she'd hired. In Warsaw, I stayed locked in Irene's apartment while she worked. After we dyed my dark hair blonde, I got a job as a dishwasher. I had false ID and wore a cross. My disguise failed. A boy on the streetcar pointed at me and yelled "Kike," an insult for Jews. I never left the apartment again.

Gitla was deported to Stutthof and Gross-Rosen camps, before being liberated by Soviet forces in January 1945. Her sisters, mother and father all survived.

Barbara Ledermann Rodbell
Born 1925
Berlin, Germany

I went into her ballet school and took classes, and I was then asked to join the company. And I asked if, the underground, was it all right? Oh yes, because you got fantastic papers when you went there, into this company, uh, because the company traveled, you got papers to be out after curfew. And that way I could help shift people from one hiding place to another, or, like American soldiers, shot, shot down people, other people who were underground. Uh, and let me tell you how this was done. Um, there were no more taxis, there were very few cars because there was no gasoline, uh, for them to use. So what they had was people on bicycles pulling--you know, like in Third World countries--they would pull little wagons behind them. Some of them were covered, so that when it rained, which it does a lot in Holland, you know, people wouldn't get wet, and others were open, all sorts of various ways of transportation. And the few people that I moved were moved in the middle of the night, you know, I mean, after curfew, with them being the bench, and me sitting, you know, sitting like this, bent over, and me sitting on top, on, sitting on their backs, with a rather short skirt, and, uh, my very good papers, with makeup on still from the ballet. And when the Germans stuck their, or when Dutch police stuck their head in there and saying, "What is this? Curfew is on." You could, I would have a smile and papers. And I shifted a lot of people that way.

Leah Hammerstein Silverstein
Born 1924
Praga, Poland

At, at another time I was sitting in front of a big basket with vegetables, cleaning it, and the sun rays came on my head and one of the girls said, "Look, her hair is reddish like a Jewess." And everybody laughed, and I laughed most hilariously, you know, but inside, you know, the fear was gnawing on my insides, you know. At another time the kitchen chef, uh, grabbed me and put my head on the table. He was preparing the, uh, the sausage for the evening supper. And he put this long knife to my neck and said, "You see, if you were Jewish, I would cut off your head." Big laughter in the room, and I laughed most hilariously, of course. But you know what it does to a psyche of a young girl in her formative years? Can you imagine? With nobody to con...console, cons...console you, with nobody to tell you it's okay, it'll be better, hold on. Total isolation, total loneliness. It's a terrible feeling. You know, you are among people and you are like on an island all alone. There is nobody you can go to ask for help. You can nobody ask for advice. You had to make life-threatening decisions all by yourself in a very short time, and you never knew whether your decision will be beneficial to you or detrimental to your existence. It was like playing Russian roulette with your life. And it was not only one incident. It was this way from the moment I came on the Aryan side.

Raszka (Roza) Galek Brunswic
Born 1920
Sochocin, Poland

And they said to me, "You have a choice to go either on a farm, to an ammunition...uh...uh...fabrik [factory], or to hotels. I thought for myself to be...to be safe, would be the best thing to go on a farm. Because I knew it'll be a lot [of] hard work but I won't meet so many Poles. I was afraid to meet Poles. That was the idea. I still had my false papers as a Christian girl. Sure. As Maria Kowalcik. Maria Jadwiga Kowalcik. The middle name was Jadwiga. As such I came to Germany, as Maria Kowalcik. And I thought for my own sake, I probably would be safer to be away from everybody. And I thought on a farm, Poles would probably not likely go to a farm. They might want to go to a hotel, to some offices, to some...any other place, but I thought for myself, I'd rather go to a farm. First of all, I was emaciated. I was...I was about eighty, ninety pounds, skin and bone, when I came to Germany. Skin and bone. And...um...as such I came to Germany. They told me where they are going to bring me, to Krummhardt, near Esslingen. It is a small farm, that the man that owns the farm is paralyzed, but he has a son-in-law by the name of Karl Beck, and a daughter Louise. She was just married to this Mr. Beck. And I was brought to Krummhardt. That's how I came to Germany. Okay. I was a city girl. I never knew what means...what work means because at home we were wealthy. We had maids, and...we had everything. I never even knew how to boil a glass of water. Very spoiled...very...really very well taken care of, and I had no idea what a farm means...work on a farm. Anyway, but I adapted and adjusted very well. I knew that that's the way it is. That's the way it's going to be. I better make the best of it.

Bertha Adler
Born 1928
Selo-Solotvina, Czechoslovakia

Bertha was the second of three daughters born to Yiddish-speaking Jewish parents in a village in Czechoslovakia's easternmost province. Soon after Bertha was born, her parents moved the family to Liege, an industrial, largely Catholic city in Belgium that had many immigrants from eastern Europe.

1933-39:Bertha's parents sent her to a local elementary school, where most of her friends were Catholic. At school, Bertha spoke French. At home, she spoke Yiddish. Sometimes her parents spoke Hungarian to each other, a language they had learned while growing up. Bertha's mother, who was religious, made sure that Bertha also studied Hebrew.

1940-44: Bertha was 11 when the Germans occupied Liege. Two years later, the Adlers, along with all the Jews, were ordered to register and Bertha and her sisters were forced out of school. Some Catholic friends helped the Adlers obtain false papers and rented them a house in a nearby village. There, Bertha's father fell ill one Friday and went to the hospital. Bertha promised to visit him on Sunday to bring him shaving cream. That Sunday, the family was awakened at 5 a.m. by the Gestapo. They had been discovered.

Fifteen-year-old Bertha was deported to Auschwitz on May 19, 1944. She was gassed there two days later.

Emanuel Tanay
Born 1929
Miechow, Poland

And then we were being marched down the streets where there was the small ghetto."

One day there came an announcement that there will be a Jewish quarters, which has come to be known as the ghetto. But they, the Germans called it the Jewish quarters, essentially, in, in German. And, uh, it gave you a perimeters where Jews could live, which was a tiny portion of the town, and I'm speaking of the town where I lived, but it was similarly true in other towns. And, uh, the Poles who lived in that area had to evacuate, but there was no problem because there was, the area that the Jews left was a much wider one, so whatever Pole was displaced from the Jewish...designated area for Jews, uh, they got much better quarters anyway, but not the other way around. Uh, in terms of, uh, the Jews moved in, few families into one room, two families, maybe one family in one room in the beginning. Because the ghetto, the area, the Jewish area, the Jewish, uh, part of town would become smaller and smaller and smaller. But at first it was open, so you could get in and out in certain hours. For example, there were, a Jew could not be in the street after seven o'clock. But all the other times you could get out and mingle, be outside. One day there was an announcement: the ghetto is closed. And there were gates, there were walls built, built, and you couldn't get out. So you see there was this ever-increasing, uh, level of persecution.

Nina Kaleska
Born 1929
Grodno, Poland

They had two ghettos in in Grodno. The upper ghetto and the ghetto in..not very far from where we lived. And very shortly the entire, the entire Jewish population of Grodno was being uprooted from their home. And that I remember very distinctly and with great pain. We had some beautiful china. We had a very lovely home. Wasn't rich but it was beautiful. The Germans would come in and simply at the whim of a wisp, just like that [snaps fingers], remove the most beautiful china and just throw it against a wall to break it, for fun, and started to taunt and tease. And you didn't really have to be old or young to recognize that this was the devil in the flesh.

Rochelle Blackman Slivka
Born 1922
Vilna, Poland

In '41...right before...they used to...the Jewish holidays. They...the SS decided to make a ghetto in our town, in Vilna. And there was a poor section where a lot of Jews used to live there. And, uh, the Jewish home for the aged was there, and the biggest synagogue of the city of Vilna was there. The orphanage. The Jewish hospital was there. And a lot of poor Jews lived around this section. And one night, the SS, with the help of the Ukrainian police with the Lithuanians, they came in and took out all the Jews from there and they drove them to a place, Ponary, outskirts of Vilna there, and they shot them all there. We heard screaming and yelling and crying during the night, but we weren't allowed to look out of the window, because those who looked out were shot. We didn't know what was going on anyway until the next day our neighbors told us what was going on. We had a lot of relatives there. My mother's cousins lived...all of...all of my mother's relatives lived there. And a couple of weeks later they rounded up all the Jews from the city and the suburbs and they put us all in this ghetto, in this...and surrounded us with walls, and with guards, and we had to live in one...in an apartment, two to three families in a two-room apartment.

Nesse Galperin Godin
Born 1928
Siauliai, Lithuania

Now to go into the ghetto you just had to show the certificate. If you had the certificate, they let you in through the gate. So about five thousand people got into the ghetto. We had ten thousand Jewish people into the two ghettos. The people that did not got the, get this yellow certificate, I believe it's about 3,500 of them--the orphanage, the old-age home, the elderly, the sick, the children from many families, and many, many people that they came to their home last and there was no more room in the ghetto. They were put into the city synagogues, in the shulen, as we called it, in the shul. With hunger, no water. They were begging for food, they were begging for them to be saved. People were trying--our Jewish community council, who were wonderful people, they tried so hard to save. They were saying already, "Okay, take them to this little city of Zagare." They thought at least they will live, because we had already the thousand men experience. These people were killed just like the thousand men, in another forest, 3,500 of them. So by the time the ghetto was formed, I don't know exactly whether it was August or September, I don't remember. But I know [by the] High Holidays, we were already--my family--in the ghetto. Half of our population was killed.

Madeline Deutsch
Born 1930
Berehovo (Beregszasz), Czechoslovakia

Little by little, it became just worse and worse. But within weeks...it was...as a matter of weeks. We were in April...it was the beginning of April. I think we were invaded around the end of March, and, uh, in April already we were in the ghetto. And what was the ghetto? Now what happened here was the German SS in cooperation, with total cooperation of the Hungarian police and the Hungarian gendarmes came to our homes very early in the morning at dawn and knocking real hard, and "Jews, get out of your house. Get out and line up in front of the house." We couldn't imagine what was happening. I mean it was just a horrible, horrible thing. The children were screaming, and all of us were...were afraid. We didn't know what was happening and what was to come. And then we were told that we'll be allowed back to the house for just a few minutes to get a little suitcase or a little handbag in which we could put a...a change of clothing and maybe some food, just dry food like a piece of bread or something that we had, and then we were to come out again and line up in front of the...our homes. So we each got a little bag and put just the bare minimum in there. And then we were being marched down the streets where there was the small ghetto.

Alice Lok Cahana
Born 1929
Budapest, Hungary

"The minute the gates opened up, we heard screams, barking of dogs." Several days later we arrived to Bergen-Belsen. And Bergen-Belsen was hell on earth. Nothing ever in literature could compare to anything what Bergen-Belsen was. When we arrived, the dead were not carried away any more, you stepped over them, you fell over them if you couldn't walk. There were agonizing...people begging for water. They were felling...falling into planks that they were not pulled together in the barracks. They were crying, they were begging. It was, it was hell. It was hell. Day and night. You couldn't escape the crying, you couldn't have escaped the praying, you couldn't escape the [cries of] "Mercy," the, it was a chant, the chant of the dead. It was hell.

Helen Lebowitz Goldkind
Born 1928
Volosianka, Czechoslovakia