Message:
Rachela was deported from the ghetto to Auschwitz in August 1944.
She was then sent from Auschwitz to Halbstadt, a subcamp of Gross-Rosen, where she worked in an ammunition factory before being liberated on May 9, 1945.
Soon after her return to Lodz, Rachela met Lolek Eliezer Grynfeld.
Below are the testimonies of Rachela I found in the book “The Deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination” of Andrzej Strzelecki. I think that these are extracts coming from the testimony I found in the Visual History Archive of the USC. I requested the video but I cannot understand it as it is in Hebrew.
Rachela also wrote a book “Gwizd zycia” that, I think, could be translated by “the whistle for life”.
Rachela give details of her departure to Auschwitz at the page 46 of the book of Andrzej Strzelecki named “The Deportation of Jews from the Lodz Ghetto to KL Auschwitz and Their Extermination”:
“My entire family and I arrived at a place where the trains were standing for us. They were made up of cattle wagons. And when we were “packed” into one of these, we immediately felt the great tragedy of our situation. We were kept incarcerated there for a very long time without being told where we were being taken to. There were almost no windows, the openings were closed or covered, presumably so that we could not see where we were being taken to. It was extremely crowded. People were lying on top of another.”
From the page 311 to 315 of the same book, there is an extract of an interview Rachela made where she described how she was separated from her whole family in Auschwitz.
On the page 93 of the same book, we have more details about her life in Halbstadt:
“Halbstadt (Mezimesti in the Czech Republic). This camp, which was established in October 1944, held over 500 Jewish women. Approximately half of them had been in the Lodz Ghetto, whereas the rest were from Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Among other things they were employed in the assembling of measuring apparatus at the MESSAP (Deutsche Mess- und Apparatebau Gesellschaft) plant. Almost all the women prisoners were liberated by Red Army troops at Mezimesti on 9th May 1945. In 1995 former prisoner Rachela Grynglas-Grynfeld related conditions at the Halbstadt camp as follow:
“At Halbstadt we worked in a munitions factory… Now when I hear what others who have survived the camps say, I think that Halbstadt wasn’t that bad, because each of us had our own bunk, we were all given some clothes, and a pair of shoes to go to work in. We were constantly hungry, but at least we each received our own portion of bread… several prisoners starved to death. We were very hungry.”
On page 128 of the same book, Rachela explains her return to Lodz:
“In 1945, immediately after my return to Poland and Lodz, I headed straight for no. 26 Aleja Kosciuski, a quarter of which house my parents had bought before the war. One co-owner was a Pole called Wesolowki. Before our deportation to Auschwitz we had agreed that after the war we would all meet in this house, no. 26 Aleja Kosciuski. I went to the landlord, Mr Wesolowski, and introduced myself. He knew my parents, but he did not know me. So I introduced myself and told him I was the daughter of Mr and Mrs Grynglas. I am lost for words to describe how beautifully he greeted me and I will never forget that. He gave me a flat. After the war, getting a three-room flat with a kitchen was not that simple. Then unfortunately a Russian colonel or field marshall turned up and evicted me. Mr Wesolowski next gave me a two-room flat. Not only did he give me another flat but he also brought over a table, some chairs and a cupboard… and also a pillow… Sadly none of my family returned and I became a lonely orphan. That was when this Pole received me in such a beautiful way.”
