Meet our Survivor Volunteers

David Bayer

“When I came back to our house there was Germans, in our house, robbing us, taking everything that they can. German officers and German soldiers, whatever they could. A lot of shoes, a lot of leather, they were taking whatever they wanted. We came in, the Germans asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ We said, ‘We live here, this is my house.’ They were laughing and making fun of us. We were scared, me, my mother, my brother, my two sisters, my father. My father was 40 years old then. And there was a German that asked my father, ‘Why do you, why do you, nobody likes the Jews. Why are you so afraid? Why nobody likes the Jews?’ Because, my father told him, ‘Because we don’t hit back.’ He made a gesture with his fist, I was scared I thought my father was going to hit him but he just made it with his fist. So every German laughed and they left.”
(postwar testimony)

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Elzbieta Strassburger (Lusthaus)

Born May 15, 1938, in Cracow, Poland

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Elzbieta grew up in Iwonicz, a resort town in southwestern Poland noted for its mineral water. Her father, Edmund, was a respected physician and Helena, her mother, had studied pharmacology. At home, they spoke Polish and were among the few Jewish families who lived in Iwonicz.

1933–39: When German troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Elzbieta’s father was drafted into the Polish army. Seventeen days later, the Soviet army drove in from the east and Edmund was captured. He was transported to a camp for Polish prisoners of war in Novosibirsk (Siberia), where he served as a physician. In November 1939, Elzbieta and her mother went to Tarnow, where her maternal grandmother lived. There they were subjected to a growing number of Nazi anti-Jewish measures, such as forced labor. Helena worked as an assistant pharmacist for the Germans.

1940–45: In June 1942, some 3,500 Jews, including Elzbieta’s grandmother, were deported to the Belzec killing center. Realizing the danger, Helena purchased “Aryan” papers for Elzbieta and herself and escaped to Milanowek, a town near Warsaw. There they lived with a Polish family. Four-year-old Elzbieta was given the name Barbara Stachura and raised as a Catholic. After the destruction of the Warsaw ghetto, German authorities intensified their efforts to find Jews in hiding. Helena worried that they would be discovered and sometimes kept her daughter from school or hid her in the basement.

In January 1945, Soviet troops occupied Milanowek. In May, Elzbieta’s mother bribed a Russian soldier to smuggle them in shipping crates across the border to Czechoslovakia. From there, the two went to Austria and then Germany, where they learned that Edmund had survived and was in Italy with the Polish army. In 1951 Elzbieta and her family came to the United States.

First Person series — Conversation with a Holocaust survivor [2005 season].