Vladka (Fagele) Peltel Meed

Born 1923, Warsaw, Poland

Vladka belonged to the Zukunft youth movement of the Bund (the Jewish Socialist party). She was active in the Warsaw ghetto underground as a member of the Jewish Fighting Organization (Z.O.B.). In December 1942, she was smuggled out to the Aryan, Polish side of Warsaw to try to obtain weapons and to find hiding places for Jewish children and adults. She became a courier for the Jewish underground and for Jews in camps, forests, and in other ghettos.

Describes her reaction to the burning of the Warsaw ghetto as she watched from a building outside the ghetto.

Ben Meed

Born in Warsaw, Poland

Ben was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family. When Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Ben was a teenager attending school and working a job. After the Germans occupied Warsaw, Ben decided to escape to Soviet-occupied eastern Poland. However, he decided to return to be with his family, then in the Warsaw ghetto. Ben was assigned to a work detail outside the ghetto. Later, he went into hiding outside the ghetto and posed as a non-Jewish Pole. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943, he worked with others to rescue ghetto fighters, bringing them out through the sewers and hiding them. After the uprising, Ben escaped from Warsaw by posing as a non-Jew. Following liberation, he rejoined his father, mother, and younger sister.

Describes reactions to the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

William Lowenberg

Born 1926, Westphalia, Germany

As a boy, Bill attended school in Burgsteinfurt, a German town near the Dutch border. After the Nazis came to power in Germany, Bill experienced increasing antisemitism and was once attacked on his way to Hebrew school by a boy who threw a knife at him. In 1936, he and his family left Germany for the Netherlands, where they had relatives and thought they would be safe. However, after Germany invaded the Netherlands in 1940, antisemitic legislation--including the order to wear the Jewish badge--was instituted. Bill, his sister, and his parents were deported to the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands. In August 1943, Bill was deported from Westerbork to the Auschwitz camp in German-occupied Poland. He was transported from Auschwitz to Warsaw in late 1943, following the German suppression of the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Bill and other prisoners were forced to demolish the remnants of the ghetto. As Soviet forces advanced in mid-1944, Bill was placed on a death march and then transported by train to the Dachau camp in Germany. He was liberated by U.S. forces at the end of April 1945.

Describes destruction of the Warsaw ghetto after the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Abraham Lewent

Mendel Rozenblit