Ben Lesser was born October 18, 1928 in Krakow, Poland. Ben grew up in a family of seven, of which only two would survive the Shoah. As a ten year old boy Ben witnessed the German invasion of his country, and he vividly remembers the Wehrmacht marching through the streets of Krakow. Violence began to […]
Alice Nowaczyk was born November 7, 1924 in Bodfari in north Wales, not too far from Wrexham. Her father was a Great War veteran who also saw service in World War Two; he had re-enlisted in the reserves prior to WW2, and when that conflict began he found himself at Dunkirk, where he was wounded […]
Helmut Lemke was born February 3, 1926 in a village in East Prussia. His father was a Great War veteran who had served as a medic on the eastern front, and he never recovered from the shellshock and horrors of that war, taking his life when Helmut was just 13. Helmut grew up alongside his […]
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 […]
Anna Cheszes was born in Poland, likely in 1940; she is uncertain of her birthday given the circumstances of her early life, but based on her faked baptismal certificate she celebrates it on June 8. Based on information she has learned, Anna believes that she was born Pola Kaplan, and she was raised as Anna […]
Irene Solnick was born August 22, 1937 in Przemyśl, Poland. Her name at birth was Ruth, but Irene was the Christian name she was given in wartime Poland – to help her to survive the Shoah. She was raised in a mixed Jewish family, where her grandfather and father were Orthodox, Yiddish-speaking successful merchants, while […]
Bill Balabanow was born February 17, 1926 in the little town of Blue Ridge Summit in southern Pennsylvania, though the family moved to Lancaster in 1931, and that is where he spent most of his childhood. Bill’s parents divorced when he was an infant, so his parental and family memories come mainly from his mother’s […]
Jozef Palimaka was born May 9, 1926, in Czaple Male, a village not too far from Krakow, Poland. His parents had a small farm there, though they made the decision to relocate to Czarne Konce, near Lviv, a few years later, when they purchased a larger farm with an orchard. As Jozef was the oldest […]
Wolfram Forster was born October 22, 1925, in Berlin, Germany. He grew up in that city during the interwar years, witnessing the political changes that were taking place around him as he attended school. Wolfram’s father was a Great War veteran who became a police officer, and who later fired when he refused to join […]
Tom Boneham was born March 21, 1923 in Warwickshire, England, where he grew up on a farm in the village of Shotteswell in the Stratford-upon-Avon district, not too far from the town of Banbury. His father Tom worked that farm with Tom’s mother Hilda; the two of them had met after Tom’s father was discharged […]
Marie Doduck was born May 10, 1935 in Brussels, Belgium. She was a young child when the war began, but given the intensity of her experiences, she remembers those early days well. She grew up in a large Jewish family in Brussels, one that had a long history in Poland. When the war came the […]
Daisy Gross was born April 20, 1939 in Nitra, Czechoslovakia. She grew up there, and had a good life by all accounts; her father had a good job, and she and her parents were doing well, alongside their housekeeper Tonka. But the tone changed with the war: Daisy’s father ran a sugar beet refinery, and […]
Vivian Stockhamer was born in Lida, Poland in 1936 to Leibel Litovitz and Charna (Boyarski) Litovitz. Her father had 10 siblings and her mother had 3 siblings, all of whom were married with children and many of whom were living in Lida prior to the outbreak of World War II. From 1939 to 1941 Lida […]
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 […]
Ben Burston was born November 29, 1924 in Kielce, Poland. Ben’s parents made the decision to emigrate to Canada – to escape anti-Semitism and to find better economic opportunities. They settled in downtown Toronto, in the Kensington Market neighbourhood. Ben’s mother died when he was quite young, so he was raised by his father in […]
Edward Moczulski was born in Brest, Poland. Edward’s family ended up in the Soviet zone of occupation after Poland was divided in the 1939 Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. Life continued in these new circumstances, but then in 1940 a Red Army officer appeared at the family’s door, looking for Edward’s older brother. The family did not […]
Ralph Goldman was born in Iwaniska, Poland on July 25, 1921. He came to Canada as an infant, early in the 1920s, and he grew up in downtown Toronto against the backdrop of the Great Depression. The economic situation forced him to leave school when he was only 14, and he went to work to […]
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 […]
Georgette Brinberg was born June 10, 1938 in Villerupt, France. Her parents had emigrated from Poland in the 1920s, looking for opportunities. They began their lives in France in Villerupt, a border town in the northeast known for the metal trades. When the war began and the German blitzkrieg fell on France, Villerupt was heavily […]
Mila Mesner was born November 22, 1923 in Zalishchyky, Poland (now Ukraine). She recalls a positive childhood, full of family and good memories. All of that changed with the beginning of the war: Mila’s town was in the Soviet zone of occupation, and she remembers that arrests and deprivation began right away. Mila’s father chose […]
John Bozek was born August 16, 1924 in Detroit, Michigan. His parents had emigrated from Poland at the turn-of-the-century, and John was the youngest in a family of four siblings. He grew up against the backdrop of the Great Depression, but John remembers that his father always had a job, and that the family even […]
Sidney Gladstone was born July 18, 1925 in Toronto. He grew up in the city’s old Ward neighbourhood, though he remembers moving around a lot when he was young, and attending many different schools. Sid’s grandparents had emigrated to Canada at the turn of the century, leaving behind the limitations and pogroms of Poland to […]
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 […]
Muguette Myers was born in 1931 in Paris. Her parents had emigrated to France from Poland, hoping to leave behind the anti-Semitism of eastern Europe. Muguette’s father died when she was only three, so it became her mother’s job to support the family. Muguette had to go to school with her brother despite her young […]
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. […]
Elie Dawang was born to Lithuanian-Jewish parents, Faiwish and Shaina, in 1934 in Paris. Elie was six years old when the Germans occupied France in 1940. The Dawangs fled to a small village near the Spanish border but returned to Paris in 1941 to liquidate the family business. The family had false papers but the […]
Fishel Goldig was born in 1933 in Mielnica, in eastern Poland. In 1939 the family found itself under Soviet occupation, following the Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact. With Operation Barbarossa and the arrival of the Germans in 1941, Fishel and his family were forced into the ghetto in the nearby town of Borszczow. Conditions deteriorated, and rumours […]
Avraham Peter grew up in the city of Lodz, Poland, where he was born August 12, 1926. His parents had their own factory/business and the family was living a good, observant life, and the young Abe attended a Jewish school, and was raised in part by his grandparents. Anti-Semitism was a reality in 1930s Lodz […]
Thursday, April 8 was Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day. It’s a day to remember and reflect on the horrors of the Holocaust, where six million Jews and millions of other innocent victims – Roma and Sinti, Slavs, disabled persons, LGBTQ+ individuals, and others – were systematically murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. At […]
Max Smart was born June 1, 1930 in Buczacz, Poland (now Ukraine). He and his family were living a good life in the 1930s, and Max remembers well the idyllic nature of life in that time. Even as events around Poland began to move towards war, Max and his family felt safe, unaware of what […]