Life had challenges in store for Joseph Muscha Mueller from the

Joseph Muscha Mueller
Date of Birth: 1932
Place of Birth: Bitterfeld, Germany
1
Life had challenges in store for Joseph Muscha Mueller
from the very start. His parents were Romani, but Joseph was raised in a German orphanage, and later by a
foster family. In school, Joseph was bullied and made fun
of by classmates who were members of the Hitler Youth
movement. Nazi law discriminated against many groups
of people who were considered outsiders, including the
people from the Roma and Sinti tribes. Because of these
unfair laws, when Joseph was twelve he was taken from
his classroom and forced to have an operation that would
prevent him from ever having children. He was supposed
to be sent to Belsen concentration camp after he recovered from the surgery. Fortunately, Joseph’s foster father
was able to get him smuggled out of the hospital before
that happened. Joseph spent five months hiding in a garden shed until the war was over.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Joseph Muscha Mueller
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Henry Maslowicz
Date of Birth: December 25, 1940
Place of Birth:
Wierzbnik-Starachowice, Poland
For 150 years, the Jewish family of Henry Maslowicz lived in
harmony with their Christian neighbors. That changed when
the Germans occupied their hometown in 1939. Henry’s father
owned an iron and coal factory. Many Jews left, but Henry’s
parents stayed. A year later, the Nazis created a ghetto, a part
of the city where Jewish people were forced to live. Henry was
born there. In 1942, upon hearing that the Nazis were going to
take everyone out of the ghetto, Henry’s father sent his young
son to be hidden in a Catholic convent. He was left out on the
street instead and picked up by a woman. She took him to an
attic, fed him, and kept him hidden. He didn’t even know his
own name.
A Jewish social worker discovered Henry there and took him to
Israel. He eventually reunited with his father and moved first
to Ecuador, then the United States.
2
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Henry Maslowicz
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Stefania Podgorska grew up on a farm with her large Catholic
family. When she was 13, her father got sick and died. Stefania
asked her mother if she could leave the farm and join her sister
in the city of Przemysl. Stefania worked in a grocery store there
that was owned by the Diamants, a Jewish family. They treated
Stefania like family. When the Germans invaded Poland, she
moved in with them.
Stefania Podgorska
Date of Birth: 1925
Place of Birth: Lipa, Poland
3
In 1941, the Diamants were made to leave their homes and
live in a Jewish ghetto. Stefania’s mother was sent to Germany
where she was forced to work. Stefania took care of her 6-yearold sister and found an apartment outside the ghetto. She
traded clothes for food. A year later, she heard the news that
all the Jewish people in the ghetto were going to be rounded
up and sent away. She helped some of them escape and hide.
Then she moved into a cottage so she could have more space.
Eventually, 13 Jewish people were living in a secret space in
Stefania’s attic. All of them survived the war. In 1961, Stefania
moved to the United States with her husband, Josef Diamant.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Stefania Podgorska
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Dora Rivkina had many talents. The middle sister of three
girls, Dora was athletic and an excellent swimmer and dancer.
She was chosen to dance the lead in a New Year’s show when
she was only in second grade.
Dora Rivkina
Date of Birth: November 7, 1924
Place of Birth: Minsk, Belorussia
Dora grew up in Minsk, the capital city of Belorussia. Before
World War II, more than a third of the residents of the city
were Jewish, just like Dora. After the Germans invaded Minsk
in 1941, Dora’s family was forced into the ghetto, a part of the
city where Jewish people were forced to live. Two years later,
when everyone in the ghetto was forced out, Dora, then 19,
escaped and joined a group of partisans—people who were
trying to fight against the Germans. Unfortunately, they were
soon captured by the German soldiers. The guards demanded
to know who was Jewish. The group answered with silence.
Then a guard said he would shoot them all if they didn’t speak.
One woman pointed at Dora.
The young, beautiful and talented girl died a terrible death.
The Germans bound her hands, tied a rock around her neck,
and threw her in a river. Then they shot her. Her sister, Berta,
the only one of Dora’s family to survive the war, learned the
story of Dora’s death from some girls who were with her.
4
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Dora Rivkina
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Shulim Saleschutz was a nine-year-old boy living with his
family in the town of Kolbuszowa when the Germans invaded
Poland. Polish soldiers on horseback tried to fight, but they
couldn’t defend themselves against the German tanks. Shulim’s
father, known for his incredible strength, helped bury the dead
horses after the battle.
Shulim Saleschutz
Date of Birth: March 7, 1930
Place of Birth: Kolbuszowa, Poland
Life changed dramatically for all the Jewish people in town.
Neither Shulim nor his brother, Shlomo, or sister, Rozia, were
allowed to go to school. No Jewish children were. In 1941,
Germans forced the Saleschutzes and other Jewish families to
move into one small section of Kolbuszowa. Shulim lived in a
crowded apartment with his parents, siblings, grandparents, an
uncle, and two aunts. On his birthday in 1942, Shulim had to
start wearing an armband with a Star of David, like the other
Jewish men. He felt proud. The Germans forced Shulim and
other men to work, clearing snow and fixing the roads.
In July of 1942, Shulim Saleschutz was sent to the Belzec extermination camp. There, Shulim, Shlomo, Rozia, and their
mother were gassed to death. He was 12 years old.
5
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Shulim Saleschutz
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Thirteen-year-old Moishe Felman was just about to begin
a new year of school when the Germans invaded Poland in
1939. Moishe’s town of Sokolow Podlaski was bombed as
troops entered the town. They set fire to the main synagogue
and confiscated the grain business Moishe’s parents ran.
Moishe Felman
Date of Birth: 1926
Place of Birth: Sokolow Podlaski,
Poland
Over the next two years, Jewish families like Moishe’s had to
live with more and more restrictions. They had to wear a Jewish star on their clothing. They had to move to an area called
the ghetto, a part of the city where Jewish people were forced
to live. In 1941, on Yom Kippur, one of the most important
holy days of the Jewish year, the Germans began to round up
people in the ghetto. Those who fought back or hid were shot.
Moishe, his mother, and sister had to join their neighbors as all
the Jewish people were crammed into the boxcar of a train.
The train took them to the Treblinka extermination camp.
Moishe was gassed to death there shortly after he arrived. He
was 16 years old.
6
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Moishe Felman
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Ita Grynbaum and her eight brothers and sisters lived in a
small, busy, one-story house in the town of Starachowice,
Poland. The family had a tailor shop in the house. Ita’s mother
and father often traded their work for firewood and food for
the family. Ita helped her mother with chores around the
house.
Ita Grynbaum
Date of Birth: 1926
Place of Birth: Starachowice,
Poland
In June 1939, Ita’s father came home from synagogue and
went to bed. He was obviously not well, and Ita’s older brother
Chuna ran to get the doctor. But by the time they returned,
Ita’s father had died. Ita’s mother and older siblings kept the
tailor shop running. Later that year, German troops took over
the town.
Ita had to work at a nearby factory. In October 1942, she
was forced to join the other Jewish people in town in the
marketplace. Then, she and others who were considered
strong enough were sent to a labor camp nearby. Ita was put
to work serving food to the Polish workers. When the deadly
disease typhus struck the camp, Ita became ill. She was sent
to the barracks for sick prisoners. Chuna visited her daily,
often bringing her rags to pad her painful bedsores. With
no medicine or doctors for the sick prisoners, Ita died of her
illness after three months. She was 17 years old.
7
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Ita Grynbaum
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Shulamit Perlmutter, called Musia, was part of a family who
loved learning. Her father was a professor at the university
in Lvov. Her parents were both civic leaders in their town of
Horochow, in eastern Poland. Private tutors taught Shulamit
when she was just 4 years old.
Shulamit Perlmutter
Date of Birth: December 16, 1929
Place of Birth: Horochow, Poland
Three weeks after the Germans invaded Poland in September
1939, the Soviet Union took over eastern Poland. Many
people who were trying to escape the Germans passed through
Horochow. But Shulamit’s life didn’t change much. Her father
continued to teach at the university. Shulamit was now taught
in Russian.
Two years later, the Germans invaded the Soviet Union. They
set up a ghetto, a part of the city where Jewish people were
forced to live, in Horochow. Shulamit and her mother fled the
ghetto when they heard rumors that the town was about to be
destroyed. They hid at the river’s edge, and soon heard shots.
They stayed in the water all night, listening to the sound of
machine guns blasting through the ghetto. In the morning,
they saw that they were not the only ones hiding.
Shulamit heard a guard scream, “I see you there Jews: come
out!” Many people did, but she and her mother stayed hidden
in the water for days. One day, Shulamit dozed off. When
she woke up, her mother was gone. Shulamit never saw her
mother again. She never found out what happened to her. She
hid in the forests near Horochow until the war was over. She is
the only member of her family to have survived.
8
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Shulamit Perlmutter
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Jakob Frenkiel grew up as one of seven sons of a cap maker in
Gabin, Poland. His religious Jewish family lived in a one-room
apartment near the synagogue. When the Germans reached the
town in 1939, they set the synagogue and the homes around
it on fire. Then they rounded up all the Jewish men in the
marketplace.
Jakob Frenkiel
Date of Birth: December 3, 1929
Place of Birth: Gabin, Poland
In 1941, Jakob was sent to a labor camp with a group of
men. A year later, they were sent to the concentration camp
Auschwitz. When Jakob and his brother Chaim were lined up
with children and old people, Jakob wondered what would
happen to them. Another prisoner pointed to the chimneys.
“Tomorrow the smoke will be from you,” he told Jakob. The
prisoner explained that if Jakob and his brother could get a
number tattooed on their arms, they would be put to work
instead of killed. Jakob and Chaim sneaked away and lined up
with the men getting tattoos.
Jakob was imprisoned in Auschwitz for 17 months, then forced
to march to camps in Germany. He was liberated in April,
1945, near Austria. Later that year, he emigrated to the United
States.
9
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Jakob Frenkiel
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Edit Schechter was a member of a resistance movement in
Hungary. The group was composed of young Zionists—
European Jews who wanted to re-establish a Jewish homeland
in what was then Palestine. They were doing all they could to
resist the German oppression of Jews. During World War II,
Hungary was one of the last countries that the Nazis invaded.
So in the early years of the war, the Hungarian Zionist Youth
Movement helped resist the Nazis and rescue other Jewish
people.
Edit Schechter
Date of Birth: January 1, 1924
Place of Birth: Tyachev
Czechoslovakia
10
In 1942, when Germany was sending Slovakian Jews to
Auschwitz, this group reached out to Jewish refugees and gave
them a place to live and food to eat. This was illegal under
Nazi rule, and 40 activists were caught and sent to prison or
work camps. In 1944, after Germany invaded Hungary, the
movement decided that its members would have to pretend
to be Christians in order to continue their work. Activists
like Edit created fake documents such as birth certificates and
identity cards. They warned other people when they were in
danger of being deported and created false papers that could
be used for safe travel. They smuggled young people across the
border into Romania and Slovakia. They set up more than 50
safe homes for children. Edit and her fellow activists helped to
save the lives of thousands of Jewish people.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Edit Schechter
Photo credit: Society for the Research of the History of the Zionist Youth Movement in Hungary, courtesy of David Gur
Israel (Srulek) Dubner
Date of Birth: June 18, 1925
Place of Birth: Lodz, Poland
When Israel Dubner was a boy in Lodz, Poland, he and his
brother sang in the choir at their synagogue. Their parents
worked in a textile business. Shortly after Germany invaded
Poland in September 1939, persecution of the Jews began.
Jewish people were arrested or taken for forced labor. The
Dubner family was driven out of their home and into the
Lodz ghetto, which Jews were forbidden to leave. Within a
year, Israel’s father and brother had died from starvation. In
1944, the Nazis cleared the ghetto. Israel and his mother were
shipped to the concentration camp Auschwitz. They were
separated as soon as they arrived. Israel never saw his mother
again.
At Auschwitz, Israel worked carrying bricks and slept on a
wooden bed. After a month, he was transferred to another
camp, Kaufering. There he caught the deadly typhoid fever,
but he still reported for work cleaning the homes of Germans.
American soldiers liberated Israel from the camp in 1945.
He was 20 years old when he left Poland and traveled to
Italy, and then to Palestine. He fought in the Israel War of
Independence. Israel stayed there until 1952, when he moved
to the United States to join other relatives who had survived
the war. He got married, and had three daughters. And, just
like when he was a boy before the war, Israel continued to sing
in the synagogue—this time as a cantor.
11
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Israel (Srulek) Dubner
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Jodi Dubner Gordon.
Adam Kahane and his family lived in Lodz where his
father ran a pharmacy. Adam was five years old when his
parents got divorced. After the divorce, Adam lived with
his mother and her family in Jaslo, the town where he
was born. He visited his father once a year. In 1939, they
fled to eastern Poland, hoping to avoid the advancing
German troops. Shortly after, they moved to Lvov.
Adam Kahane
Date of Birth: July 6, 1922
Place of Birth: Jaslo, Poland
Soviet authorities relocated Adam and his cousins to
a settlement in the Soviet Union. In 1941, Germany
invaded the Soviet Union. Polish citizens were released
as part of the agreement between the Soviet and Polish
governments. Adam was drafted into the Polish Army,
but when he reported for duty, he found out that they did
not want any Jewish soldiers.
Adam began nursing school in 1942 and graduated
with honors in 1945. Adam’s father Jakub had died of a
heart attack on the cattle car to the concentration camp
Auschwitz. When the war ended Adam went back to Lodz
and ran his father’s pharmacy. Three years later, Adam
moved to the United States, where he studied business at
Columbia University and got married.
12
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Adam Kahane
Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Adam Kahane
As a girl in Simleu Silvaniei, Elly Berkovits studied Jewish
and Romanian subjects. In 1940, after Hungary, a German
ally, invaded, Jewish children weren’t allowed to attend
school. Elly still continued her education in Yiddish and
Hungarian in classes organized by the Jewish committee.
Elly Berkovits
Date of Birth: February 4, 1929
Place of Birth: Simleu Silvaniei,
Romania
13
Two years later, Elly’s father was sent to a work camp.
His group was later locked in a trailer and burned to
death. Elly and her mother supported themselves by
sewing and selling geese. They, with the other Jewish
people of Simleu Silvaniei, were forced to move into a
brick factory. Later, they were driven onto cattle cars to
be taken to Auschwitz. Elly managed to conceal a small
two-inch pocketknife in her hand and so was able to
make a small hole in the cattle car for air. They arrived
in Auschwitz on June 2, 1944. Her mother and younger
brother were killed immediately. Every day, prisoners
at Auschwitz had to stand for hours for roll call. Elly
passed out on the second day. The woman in charge of
the barracks saved Elly’s life by giving her a job inside
the barracks so she didn’t have to go to all of the roll calls
and selections. Later she had to work with chemicals that
made her ill in a Volkswagen factory. Elly was liberated
by the American army.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Elly Berkovits
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Elly Berkovits Gross
Anna Maria grew up in a large family with eight brothers and
sisters in the Netherlands. The Steinbachs were Sinti, nomadic
people who lived in wagons and moved from village to village
looking for work. The Sinti and Roma tribes of the Romani
were looked down upon by many people. They were known as
“gypsies,” which is a derogatory and insulting word.
Anna Maria Steinbach
Date of Birth: December 23, 1934
Place of Birth: Buchten, Limburg,
Netherlands
In Germany, the Nazis were passing laws against the Romani.
They were stripped of their German citizenship. They were
forced to get operations that would prevent them from
ever having children. They were rounded up and locked
in concentration camps. In 1940, the Nazis invaded the
Netherlands.
Over time, the Sinti and Roma in the Netherlands were
rounded up and taken concentration camps. In May
1944, Settela and her family were labeled as “gypsies” and
forced to board a train headed to Auschwitz. A Nazi filmed
Settela looking out from the train that was headed to the
concentration camp. They were put in a special section of the
camp for Sinti and Roma people. Dr. Josef Mengele performed
horrible experiments on many twins and children in this
section. Settele and her family were probably gassed to death
on the night of August 2-3, 1944.
14
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Anna Maria Steinbach
Photo credit:Yad Vashem Photo Archive, courtesy of Chronos
Gerard Horst Meyerfeld
Place of Birth: Germany
Gerard Horst Meyerfeld was born in Germany but moved to
France and lived with his aunt, uncle, and cousin Beatrice.
In 1939, because they were foreigners, the uncle was
sent to an internment camp near the city of Toulouse in
southern France. The family moved to the south to be near
him. Gerard’s aunt sent him to work on a farm, hoping he
would be well fed, but the farmer was collaborating with
the Nazi occupiers and Gerard was barely given enough to
eat. After a few months, Gerard left to work with the Jewish
underground, people who were secretly fighting against the
Nazis. He stayed with them until after liberation. Then he
joined the French army.
During the war, Gerard’s parents remained in Germany.
They survived by moving around from place to place and
finding work in factories. They most likely used fake names
to avoid being captured by the Nazis. After the war ended,
Gerard’s parents came to the American zone, but it was a
few months before Gerard was able to see them. Eventually,
his parents moved to the United States and Gerard decided
to remain in France. Beatrice and her parents returned to
their hometown to look for members of their family, but they
did not find anyone alive. Her grandparents, two aunts and
uncles, three cousins had been deported to Auschwitz, as
were two other uncles and her other grandmother.
15
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Gerard Horst Meyerfeld
Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Beatrice Heffes
Wlodimierz Daniluk
Place of Birth:
Solniczki, Poland
In March 1943, Wlodimierz Daniluk and his family heard a
knock on the door of their home in Solniczki. Standing on the
other side was a starving, shivering man named Paitiell Lopata.
He asked for some food. Wlodimierz and his wife, Anna, did
not have a lot to share. They were a poor farming family, but
they gave Paitiell food and shelter. When Paitiell returned
to the ghetto in the village of Bialystok, he told other Jewish
friends about the family. Soon, the Daniluks were hiding four
Jewish men in their home. Wlodzimierz began to worry. What
would happen to his family if these men were discovered? His
oldest daughter, Luba, argued that the penalty for hiding one
Jewish person was the same as hiding four. Paitiell and the
others stayed until July 1944, when the Red Army liberated
eastern parts of Poland.
Tragically, even after the Nazis were defeated, the family and
their guests were not safe. In May 1945 when the war was
finally over, the Daniluks invited the Jewish men and some
guests to a party to celebrate the victory over Nazi Germany.
In the middle of the party, a group of armed Polish Nationalist
right-wing thugs broke into the house. They were angry that
the Daniluks had given shelter to Jewish people during the
war. They murdered seven people, including Wlodzimierz,
Luba and some of the Jewish survivors. Two small children
died when the thugs burned down the house.
16
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Wlodimierz Daniluk
Photo credit: Righteous Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem
Joseph Gani grew up in a small village by the shores of the
Ionian Sea in Greece. While his father worked in his small
textile shop, Joseph went to public school, studied the Jewish
religion, and played the sports he loved so much—soccer and
baseball.
Joseph Gani
Date of Birth: 1926
Place of Birth: Preveza, Greece
17
In 1941, the Germans invaded Greece. Jewish people like
Joseph had lived in Greece for over a thousand years, but all
the Jewish people in Joseph’s area were rounded up in March
1944, and sent to the concentration camp Auschwitz, in
Poland. Just a teenager, Joseph should have still been playing
sports with his friends on the seashore. Instead, as part of
the Sonderkommando, a work unit at Birkenau, Joseph
had to carry the corpses of fellow Jewish people out of the
gas chamber where they had been gassed to death to the
crematoria where their bodies would be burned. In October
of the same year, some Sonderkommando workers revolted.
They disarmed the guards of the Shutzstaffel (SS) and blew up
one of the crematoria. Soon, other workers joined in the fight.
Joseph Gani was killed standing up to the Nazis in October
1944. He was 18 years old.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Joseph Gani
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
Aleksander Kuliseiwicz
Date of Birth: 1936
Place of Birth: Krakow, Poland
Aleksander Kuliseiwicz studied the law, but his real
passion was music. A student when the Nazis invaded
Poland in September 1939, Aleksander expressed his
antifascist opinions through his writing, and he suffered
for them. The Gestapo arrested Aleksander and sent
him to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp near
Berlin. Though they were able to lock Aleksander up,
they couldn’t keep him silent. During his six years of
imprisonment, Aleksander wrote 54 songs, mostly about
the horrendous treatment of prisoners at the camp.
The songs helped the prisoners cope with inhuman
conditions. They also helped to document the conditions
at the camp. After the camp was liberated, Aleksander
remembered his songs, as well as the songs of his fellow
prisoners. He dictated hundreds of pages of lyrics to the
nurse that took care of him at a Polish infirmary.
After the war, Aleksander became a collector, gathering
music, poetry, and artwork of camp prisoners. He
played his camp songs at recitals in the 1960s, and
issued recordings of them as well. He embarked on a
monumental study of culture in the concentration camps,
and the role of music as a survival tool for the prisoners.
His music lives on today, part of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum Archive.
18
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Aleksander Kuliseiwicz
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Aleksander Kulisiewicz
Doctors often have to take extraordinary measures to save
lives. But what if those measures included putting your own
life on the line? That’s what Dr. Joseph Jaksy did.
Dr. Joseph Jaksy
Date of Birth: 1900
Place of Birth: Bratislava,
Czechoslovakia [now Slovakia]
19
Dr. Jaksy was a urologist in Bratislava, Slovakia. In November
1940, Slovakia joined the Axis and was the first Axis partner
to agree to deport its Jewish residents to Nazi labor and
concentration camps. Dr. Jaksy was the personal physician to
the founder of the Slovak People’s Party, the fascist regime
that ruled Slovakia during World War II. He used his position
of power to organize rescue efforts that saved at least 25
Jews from deportation to camps. During the war, Dr. Jaksy
treated many “sick” patients whose only illness was that
they were on the Nazi deportation list. Dr. Jaksy sheltered
them in his wards, once even pretending to give a man an
operation so he could safely escape from the Germans. With
a group of friends, he devised a plan that included: finding
shelter, providing money, food, and medical care, forging
identification papers and falsifying medical records; and
helping people get out of the country. He was never arrested,
although his involvement with the resistance was suspected.
He stayed in Slovakia after the war, but left in 1948, fearing
persecution by the new communist regime. Dr. Jaksy made
a new home in the United States, and was honored by Israel
and the State of New York shortly before his death in 1991.
“What I did,” he wrote, “I did in my role as a doctor and out of
my feelings as a human being.”
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Dr. Joseph Jaksy
Photo credit: Righteous Among the Nations Department, Yad Vashem
Robert Vermes
Date of Birth: 1924
Place of Birth: Topolcany, Slovakia
Robert Vermes grew up surrounded by the arts. His father was
a photographer and his mother was an opera singer. In 1942,
members of the Slovakian fascist Hlinka Guard rounded up
the Jewish men in his town. Robert and his father were sent to
Majdanek, a concentration camp where they were killed. Like
many others who died at the hands of the Nazis, little is known
about Robert’s time at Madjanek and his last days. This photo
is the last portrait taken of him before he was deported to the
camp.
Two months later, the Hlinka Guard came back for the Jewish
women, including Robert’s mother and his little sister, Erika.
One of the guards knew Robert’s father so he allowed the
women of the Vermes family to escape. They sealed their
home and fled into Hungary. Erica’s mother went to work,
and Erica was sent to a Jewish orphanage for girls, where she
stayed until 1944.
But when another fascist group, the Hungarian Arrow Cross
came along, Erika was captured along with other Jewish
people in Budapest. They were taken to be shot along the
banks of the Danube River. Somehow, Erika was able to slip
away.
20
After liberation, Erika was reunited with her mother by chance
on the streets of Budapest. Erika eventually immigrated
to the United States, where she married and became an
interpreter for Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. She donated
this photograph of her brother to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Robert Vermes
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Erica & Joseph Grossman
Pinchas Schumacher was Zayde, the Yiddish word for
grandfather, to Estera Ajzen. He was patriarch of a Jewish
family that lived in the city of Chelm, in eastern Poland.
Before World War II, Jewish people made up more than half
the population of Chelm. Throughout Europe, roughly nine
million Jews lived in the countries that would be occupied by
Germany during World War II.
Pinchas Schumacher
Date of Photo: 1930
Place of Birth: Chelm, Poland
21
This photograph captures a way of life that the Nazis tried
to destroy. By the end of the war, two out of every three of
Jewish people in Nazi-occupied countries would be dead.
After the German invasion of Poland in September 1939,
Estera Azjen and her family fled to the Soviet zone. In
January 1940, they were deported to a labor camp in the
most northern part of European Russia. They were released
in April, 1941. Ester and her family moved to Gorky, where
she met a Soviet Jewish soldier from the Ukraine. They were
married and settled in Poland after the war, later moving to
the U.S. in 1956.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Pinchas Schumacher
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Ester Ajzen Lewin
Fryderyka Mangel
Date of Birth: March 14, 1914
Place of Birth: Rzeszow, Poland
Fryderyka Mangel met her future husband Edmund Kessler in
Rzeszow, when he moved to her home city after attending law
school. They were married in 1937. Four years later, the young
couple had to move into a ghetto, a part of the city where Jewish
people were forced to live. They were separated in the summer
of 1942, when Edmund was sent to the Janowska concentration
camp. There he was beaten into unconsciousness several times
and given hardly anything to eat. He escaped after three months,
and was able to join Fryderyka. They first hid in the attic of a Pole
who was sympathetic to their plight. Then a Ukrainian neighbor
threatened to denounce them, and they had to move to a farm that
had an underground bunker. The farm belonged to Wojciech and
Katarzyna Kalwinski. Though their bunker measured only 5 by 7
meters, and the Kalwinskis were already hiding many people, they
agreed to take in Fryderyka and Edmund. The Kesslers stayed there
until they were liberated by the Soviet army on July 27, 1944.
In early 1945, the Kesslers returned to Rzeszow. They were forced
to leave Fryderyka’s hometown a few months later when a pogrom,
an organized massacre of helpless Jewish people, broke out. They
fled to Krakow, but left Poland for good after being threatened with
another pogrom. This time, Fryderyka was seven months pregnant.
The couple welcomed their daughter Renata to the family in
Vienna, Austria. Edmund worked as administrator at the Rothschild
Hospital in Vienna, which served as a way station for Jewish
displaced persons. He later served as Chairman of the International
Committee for Jewish Refugees. In 1952, the family immigrated
to the United States. The Kalwinski family was honored by Yad
Vashem as Righteous Among Nations in 1967.
22
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Fryderyka Mangel
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Renata Kessler
Simon Gelbart learned to survive against the odds from an
early age. The youngest of 13 children, his father died when he
was only seven years old, and his mother died soon after that.
When his aunts and uncles refused to care for him, Simon was
left a homeless orphan. He lived on the streets until he was 15.
Then he became an apprentice to Zisha Nitka, a shoemaker
who lived in Kalisz. He became an expert shoemaker and
eventually married Zisha’s daughter, Sura Rivka.
Simon Gelbart
Date of Birth: 1907
Place of Birth: Warta, Poland
Simon and Sura had two sons, Israel David and Haim. After
the start of World War II, the Jews of Kalisz were forced to
move. Simon packed up his shoemaker’s tools and hid coins
in the heels of their shoes. They were deported to a Siberian
Labor camp. Although Simon was frail and unhealthy, he was
assigned to chop and haul lumber. On the first day, he failed to
meet his quota and was sent to prison for six months.
In 1942, the family was sent to a collective farm near the Volga
River. Haim died from starvation. He was seven years old.
Israel David survived because of the generosity of a Russian
woman, Pashinka Bravina. She took the boy into her home
and fed him bread and milk for eighteen months. They were
allowed to return to Poland in 1946, but fled to West Germany
because of the danger of anti-Semitism. Simon dreamed of
moving to Israel and setting up a shoemaking factory. He was
denied a visa, and so instead the family moved to Omaha,
Nebraska, in 1951.
23
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Simon Gelbart
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of David Gelbart
Roman Haar was born in the Free City of Danzig, where
his father Salo worked as a salesman. Roman’s mother, Ema,
converted to Judaism before she married his father. Roman
had a half-brother, Joachim Frietsche, from his mother’s first
marriage. On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland.
In December, the Nazis ordered all foreign-born Jews to leave
Danzig. Joachim, who was Christian, stayed and moved in
with his grandparents.
Roman Haar
Date of Birth: July 9, 1935
Place of Birth: Danzig
24
Roman and his parents moved to Salo’s hometown of Rzeszow,
Poland. In 1941, all Jewish people in Rzeszow, including
Salo and Roman were forced into a ghetto. Ema said she
was German and stayed to work as a cleaning woman for
the people who took over the Haar’s apartment. Roman got
smuggled out of the ghetto and sent to his mother. Eventually,
the Jewish people in the ghetto were sent to the concentration
camp Belzec. Roman’s family was killed there. To save her son’s
life, Ema claimed that Salo was not Roman’s real father, and
that he was fully German. The German authorities rejected
her claim. Ema was told that Roman had to enter the Jewish
quarter immediately. Instead, for a year and a half, Roman hid
in the apartment where she worked. In May 1944, Ema took
Roman to Danzig, where her father lived. A local policeman
saw Ema and remembered that she was Jewish, but since the
war was close to ending, he did not arrest them. Roman was
liberated in Danzig by the Russians in 1945. After a few years
in a displaced persons camp, they started a new life in the
United States.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Roman Haar
Photo credit: U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Roman Haar
Dachau Survivors
These three men were prisoners at Dachau, a concentration
camp in Germany, established in 1933 by the Nazi government.
At first most of the prisoners were political opponents of
the Nazi regime. Over time, other groups were also interned
there, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, homosexuals and
those considered “asocial,” many of whom were mentally ill
or disabled. When the persecution of Jewish people increased
in 1938, the number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose.
After Kristallnacht, a night of widespread violence against
Jewish people throughout Germany, Austria, and parts of
Czechoslovakia, more than 10,000 Jewish men were imprisoned
there.
Dachau was a training center for SS concentration camp guards,
and it became a model for all Nazi concentration camps.
Prisoners at Dachau who were considered too sick or weak to
work were killed by SS guards or sent to another camp to be
killed. Others were subjected to horrific medical experiments.
They were injected with deadly diseases, forced to drink saltwater
that could kill them, and left in extreme cold conditions,
which led to hypothermia. Hundreds of prisoners died or were
permanently disabled as a result of these experiments.
American forces liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945. Near
the camp, they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with
bodies. The three men in the photo are standing in the barracks
immediately after being liberated. We don’t know any of their
names.
25
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Dachau Survivor
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Hoover Institution Archives KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau, courtesy of Benjamin
Ferencz Stuart McKeever
The Cukierman family was well known in the city of Bedzin,
Poland. Benjamin, called Binim, was the fourth of seven
children born to Gayleh Rifkeleh and Herschel Cukierman.
The family ran a busy bakery. Their cakes were so delicious that
people came from hundreds of kilometers just to buy them.
Everyone in the family worked in the bakery, and everyone
shared holiday and Sabbath meals together.
Benjamin (Binim)
Cukierman
Date of Birth: 1908
Place of Birth:Bedzin, Poland
Binim began work at the bakery at 4 a.m. every day. After
work he cleaned up and went to meet his many friends. He
was popular, an excellent musician and athlete. He loved to
play soccer, ski, and go swimming.
Binim got married in May 1939, four months before World
War II began. His family chipped in to buy a store for him and
his wife, Edzia. They sold some of the most famous chocolates
in Poland.
Two years after the Nazis invaded, Binim, his three brothers,
and one of his nephews were sent to Markstadt concentration
camp. Everyone else in the family was sent to Auschwitz.
Binim died on April 5, 1944. Almost every member of the
large and loving Cukierman family was killed. One of Binim’s
nephews, Cvi, was able to escape and return to Israel. Later,
he heard that Binim’s wife Edzia had also survived. They were
reunited by phone, and Cvi learned that Edzia had remarried
and had a daughter and two granddaughters.
26
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Benjamin (Binim) Cukierman
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ann Weiss, The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Dora Zylberberg was the sister of Chaim Michael Zilberberg,
a leading figure in the Mizrachi group in Bedzin. She and
her sister-in-law Tauba were close friends. The Mizrachi were
religious Zionists. They supported the establishment of a
Jewish state in Israel. Neither Dora nor Tauba were able to
see that dream become a reality, as they did not survive the
Holocaust.
Dora Zylberberg
Date of Birth: Unknown
Place of Birth: Bedzin, Poland
27
The Mizrachi began meeting at a prayer house in Bedzin at the
end of the 19th century. After World War II, the prayer house
was converted into an apartment. In 2004, Adam Szdlowski
discovered the remains of the prayer house. After three years,
the building was entered into the heritage register. In it, there
are decorations that show the Holy Land and symbols of the
12 tribes of Israel. The colorful art had been buried under coal
for many years. There are plans to begin restoration of the
prayer house.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Dora Zylberberg
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ann Weiss, The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau
The back of this photo is inscribed in Polish, “Bedzin in April
21, 1920 as an eternal keepsake, Fela.
Fela, Last name unknown
Date of Birth: Unknown
Place of Birth: Będzin, Poland
28
The photo was found at Auschwitz, the largest concentration
camp of the Nazi regime. It is a reminder of a loving couple
about whom we have no other information. Many of the
people who were deported to Auschwitz brought photographs
with them, precious reminders of home. Most of these
photographs were destroyed by the Nazis.
In the 1930s nearly half the population of Bedzin was
Jewish—about 21,000 people. Many worked in the garment
industry or food manufacturing. Some Jewish business people
developed the city’s mining and metal industries. The German
army invaded Bedzin on September 5, 1939. Five days later
the Great Synagogue and about 50 houses around it were
burned down by anti-Semitic Poles and “Volksdeutsche”
(Polish citizens of German descent). By late October the Jews
of Bedzin had to surrender their radios. In November they had
to pay a ransom in gold and silver and begin wearing a blue
Star of David on their arms. Next Germans took over Jewish
businesses and the finest homes. As of September 1941, the
Jews had to wear a yellow badge and were forbidden to use
public transportation. In May and June 1942, the first groups
of Jewish people were deported from Bedzin and sent to their
death at Auschwitz. The deportations continued throughout
the war. We have no record of Fela’s last name nor the name of
her fiancé.
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Fela, Last name unknown
Photo credit: Courtesy of Ann Weiss, The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Stanislaw and Regina Swida were responsible for the life of one
small Jewish boy. They did everything they could to make sure
that he would survive the Holocaust.
Stanislaw and Regina Swida
Date of Birth: Unknown
Place of Birth: Warsaw, Poland.
Avraham Horowitz was born in the Warsaw ghetto, a place
where Jews were forced to live under appalling conditions.
In April 1943, the Nazis began to remove everyone from the
ghetto and send them to concentration camps. Avraham’s
family split up in order to survive. His mother, Tatiana, got
forged papers and went to live with a Polish family. His father,
Benjamin, went into hiding. Avraham, who was a baby, ended
up at the Swidas home.
Stanislaw and Regina knew it would be difficult to hide
Avraham’s Jewish identity because he was circumcised. But
Stanislaw ingeniously went to the Gestapo, the secret police of
Nazi Germany and succeeded in getting a certificate stating the
Achmet Kraczkiewicz, Avraham’s new name, was a member of
the Muslim community. Muslim boys are also circumcised.
Stanislaw and Regina raised Avraham as if he was their own.
Tatiana visited, but Avraham didn’t remember that she was
his mother. In 1944, when the Poles rebelled in an attempt
to liberate Warsaw from Nazi Germany, Stanislaw and his
son disappeared. Regina escaped through the ruins of Warsaw
with Avrham. Tatiana took him back shortly before liberation.
Avraham did not find out that she was his mother until after
the war ended. They stayed in touch with Regina until they
moved to Israel in 1950. Regina passed away in 1979.
29
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Stanislaw Swida
Courtesy of Ann Weiss, The Last Album: Eyes from the Ashes of Auschwitz-Birkenau
Dachau Survivors
These three men were prisoners at Dachau, a concentration
camp in Germany, established in 1933 by the Nazi government.
At first most of the prisoners were political opponents of
the Nazi regime. Over time, other groups were also interned
there, including Jehovah’s Witnesses, Roma, homosexuals and
those considered “asocial,” many of whom were mentally ill
or disabled. When the persecution of Jewish people increased
in 1938, the number of Jewish prisoners at Dachau rose.
After Kristallnacht, a night of widespread violence against
Jewish people throughout Germany, Austria, and parts of
Czechoslovakia, more than 10,000 Jewish men were imprisoned
there.
Dachau was a training center for SS concentration camp guards,
and it became a model for all Nazi concentration camps.
Prisoners at Dachau who were considered too sick or weak to
work were killed by SS guards or sent to another camp to be
killed. Others were subjected to horrific medical experiments.
They were injected with deadly diseases, forced to drink saltwater
that could kill them, and left in extreme cold conditions,
which led to hypothermia. Hundreds of prisoners died or were
permanently disabled as a result of these experiments.
American forces liberated Dachau on April 29, 1945. Near
the camp, they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with
bodies. The three men in the photo are standing in the barracks
immediately after being liberated. We don’t know any of their
names.
30
www.memoryprojectproductions.com
Dachau Survivor
Photo credit: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Hoover Institution Archives KZ Gedenkstaette Dachau, courtesy of
Benjamin Ferencz Stuart McKeever