![Eva Braun Levine [LCID: 2633]](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/images/large/81dd9d4a-4814-4c47-aaa2-cc1055d8228c.gif "Eva Braun Levine [LCID: 2633]")
Eva was the second daughter of five children born to Jewish parents. Her father dealt in real estate, and the family owned the apartment building in which they lived. The building had an elevator, a luxury for that time. Eva finished high school, and she began working for her father and studying history at a small local university.
1933-39: Nightlife for young people was lively in Lodz, and Eva often went dancing with her boyfriend, Herman. In 1939 they married. Then the Germans invaded. One day, the Gestapo banged at their door. They slapped Eva's father-in-law, demanding they hand over their valuable rugs. "The maid already took them," she protested. When they yelled back, Eva grabbed one man by the lapels: "Why don't you believe us? We're leaving! Here, see our suitcases?" They left.
1940-44: Herman and Eva were caught in the ghetto of Piotrkow Trybunalski after they arrived there in May 1941 looking for food. Eva's family was deported there as well. For three years she worked with her mother and sisters in the ghetto; in November 1944 all the women were deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany. When they got off the train Nazis "examined" their crotches for hidden valuables. The work Eva did in the camp was so backbreaking that she lost tissue in her spine.
As the Allies advanced, the camp prisoners were evacuated to the Bergen-Belsen camp. There, Eva was liberated by the British in April 1945. She moved to the United States in 1950.
Item ViewFritzie Weiss Fritzshall (1929?–2021) was born in the village of Kluĉárky, Czechoslovakia (today Kliucharky, Ukraine). In 1938, when Fritzie was still a child, Hungary annexed part of Czechoslovakia, including Fritzie's village. The Jewish community was subjected to Hungary's antisemitic policies and laws, but remained relatively safe until March 1944. That month, Nazi Germany invaded Hungary. German and Hungarian authorities quickly isolated, ghettoized, and deported Jews from Hungary. In April 1944, Fritzie, her mother, and two brothers were forced to move into a ghetto. From there, they were sent to Auschwitz. Her mother and brothers were murdered in the gas chambers. Fritzie was selected for forced labor after lying about her age to appear older. Eventually, she was assigned to forced labor in a factory. Fritzie was liberated from a death march in spring 1945. After the war she immigrated to the United States.
Item ViewIn March 1939, when Hana Müller (later Bruml) was 16 years old, Nazi Germany occupied her hometown of Prague, Czechoslovakia. Like other Czech Jews, Hana experienced persecution and discrimination under Nazi rule. In August 1942, she was sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto, where she worked as a nurse. More than two years later, in October 1944, German authorities deported Hana to Auschwitz-Birkenau. At Auschwitz, she was selected for forced labor. After a few weeks, she was sent to Sackisch, a subcamp of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp. At Sackisch, Hana was forced to work in a German factory making airplane parts for the Nazi German war effort. She was liberated in May 1945.
Item ViewBlanka Fischer Rothschild (1922–2010) grew up as an only child in a close-knit, affluent Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. Her father died in 1937. A few months after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Blanka, her mother, Anna, and other relatives were imprisoned in the Łódź ghetto. Blanka and her mother remained in the ghetto for more than four years. During the liquidation of the ghetto in August 1944, they managed to escape transport to Auschwitz. In fall 1944, they were deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp. They were then sent to a subcamp of Sachsenhausen, where Blanka worked in an airplane factory in Wittenberg. Her mother was sent to a different camp. Soviet forces liberated Blanka in spring 1945. Blanka made her way back to Łódź, hoping to find living relatives. None of her relatives, including her mother, survived. Blanka immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Item ViewRuth Moser Borsos (1923–1999) was born in Frankfurt, Germany. She was 9 years old when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis came to power in Germany. She experienced antisemitism in school and witnessed the effects of the Nazis' antisemitic policies. After Kristallnacht (the "Night of Broken Glass") in November 1938, Ruth immigrated to the Netherlands. There, she joined her father, who was divorced from her mother. Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands in May 1940. In late 1943, Ruth was imprisoned in the Westerbork transit camp, where she had to perform forced labor. Her father acquired passports claiming that they had Paraguayan citizenship. In September 1944, Ruth and her father were sent to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany along with other people who held Paraguayan papers. As the war came to an end, they were transferred to another camp, where they were liberated in April 1945.
Item ViewAfter the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, Dora's family fled to Vilna, Lithuania. When the Germans occupied Vilna, Dora's father was shot and the rest of the family was confined in the Vilna ghetto. Dora, her sister, and her mother were deported to the Kaiserwald camp in Latvia and then to the Stutthof concentration camp near Danzig. Her mother and sister perished in Stutthof. Dora herself was shot immediately before liberation, but she survived.
Item ViewCharlene Schiff (1929–2013) was born Shulamit Perlmutter and raised in Horochów, Poland (today Horokhiv, Ukraine). Charlene’s father, Simcha, was a philosophy professor at the nearby University of Lwów. After Nazi Germany occupied Horochów in June 1941, authorities began to target the town’s Jews. In August 1941, Simcha was rounded up and likely shot with other prominent Jews. In November, Charlene, her mother, and sister, Tchiya, were forced into the Horochów ghetto. In 1942, Charlene’s mother, Fruma, arranged two hiding places with local farmers: one for Tchiya and the other for herself and Charlene. Tchiya left first. As Charlene and her mother fled, the authorities began to massacre the ghetto’s Jews. The women hid in the underbrush of a riverbank. One day, Charlene awoke to find that her mother was gone. Charlene made her way to their hiding place, but the farmer had changed his mind and turned her away. Charlene survived alone in the local forests. She was liberated by Soviet troops in 1944. None of her family survived.
Item ViewMadeline was born into a middle class family in an area of Czechoslovakia that was annexed by Hungary in 1938-1939. Her father worked out of their home and her mother was a homemaker. Madeline attended high school. In April 1944 her family was forced into a Hungarian ghetto. The family lived in the ghetto for two weeks before being transported to Auschwitz. Madeline and her mother were separated from her father and older brother. Neither her father nor brother survived the war. A week after arriving in Auschwitz, Madeline and her mother were sent to work in an ammunition factory in Breslau. They were in the Peterswaldau subcamp of Gross-Rosen for one year until liberation by Soviet forces in May 1945. Madeline and her mother lived in a displaced persons camp in Munich while awaiting visas to the United States. They arrived in New York in March 1949.
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