Ghetto
One of my favorite places to visit is Venice, Italy. Perhaps because I lived in Amsterdam for so many years, the water in and around Venice makes me feel connected to the city.
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Winter Coats
Winter of 1942 was severe. In the Drohobycz ghetto the Germans had decided to exterminate the Jews. The ways to achieve this were by starving or freezing them to death. The food rations were extremely small and there was no coal to heat the homes. People tried to avoid starvation in any way they could. Many of those who before the war worked in professions or trades had to resort to begging—after selling or bartering all their possessions for food, they had no other choice. Cold and hunger combined made people’s lives miserable. As a result, many starved to death. In the spring and summer the misery was intensified by an outbreak of typhus caused by outrageously unsanitary conditions. There were frequent Aktions during which we hid in a hole dug under the floor of our apartment, or in the lumber factory where my father worked. There were often rumors about forthcoming Aktions, which made life so very tense.
Don’t Ask for Soap
Charlene Schiff (Shulamit Perlmutter), from Horochow, Poland, survived the Holocaust by hiding alone in the forests near her home.
The Kindnesses
In June 1941, the Germans occupied Lithuania within three days. Shauliai, the town where we lived, was taken over on the third day. We had heard what had happened to the Jews in Kaunas and in other cities. My brother Jecheskel was a student at the university in Kaunas and he had told my parents that the Nazis and their collaborators were looting Jewish homes. Jecheskel suggested that my parents try to ask some of their Lithuanian friends to hold some of our valuable things for safekeeping. My parents asked a few friends and some agreed to help us.
Estelle Laughlin: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
Estelle Laughlin discusses the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, when German forces, intending to liquidate the ghetto on April 19, 1943, were stunned by an armed uprising from Jewish fighters. Estelle and her family hid in an underground bunker during the uprising but were eventually captured and deported.
Steven Fenves: Neighbors in Subotica
Steven Fenves discusses being forced into a ghetto immediately following the German occupation of his hometown of Subotica, Yugoslavia, in March 1944. As his family was forced out of their home, they encountered a range of responses from their non-Jewish neighbors.
Helen (Lebowitz) Goldkind: A Grandfather’s Humiliation
Helen Goldkind discusses the humiliation she and her family experienced as they were forced by the Germans to move from their hometown of Volosyanka to the Uzhgorod ghetto in Czechoslovakia in 1944.
Susan Taube: Deportation to the Riga Ghetto
Susan Taube discusses her deportation from Berlin to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia, and the days immediately following. She was deported in January, 1942, along with her mother, sister, and grandmother.
Charlene Schiff: A Daughter’s Separation from Her Mother
Charlene Schiff discusses her and her mother’s escape in 1942 from the Horochow ghetto in Poland. Soon after their escape, Charlene was separated from her mother. She spent the rest of the war looking for her mother and hiding for her life in the forests.
Nesse Godin: A Day in the Siauliai Ghetto
Nesse Godin discusses the day her father was rounded up and deported with a group of others in the Siauliai ghetto, in Lithuania. Nesse never saw him again.
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