Sylvia Winawer

Sylvia's Jewish-born parents had converted to Christianity as young adults, and Sylvia was raised in the Christian tradition. Mr. Winawer was a successful lawyer and the family lived in an apartment in the center of Warsaw. Sylvia's mother collected art.

1933-39: Sylvia attended a private school run by the Lutheran Church, and she loved her school and classmates. When she was 9, her parents brought her the most wonderful "present"--a new sister! Two years later life changed when the Germans invaded Poland and reached Warsaw in September 1939.

1940-44: In October 1940 the Germans forced Sylvia's family to move to the Warsaw ghetto. In the ghetto she gave lessons in the third grade curriculum to an orphan girl named Feiga, and she grew very close to her. But Feiga was so poor that she was taken to an orphanage in the ghetto. Sylvia was very sad when Feiga and all the children of the orphanage, as well as the director of the orphanage, Dr. Janusz Korczak, were deported from the ghetto in 1942.

Sylvia and her parents escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and survived the war. Sylvia later learned that Feiga had been killed at the Treblinka killing center in 1942.