Abraham Lewent (1924–2002) was born in Warsaw, Poland in 1924. The Lewent family was living in Warsaw when the Germans invaded Poland in September 1939. Later, the Lewents were confined to the Warsaw ghetto. In summer 1942, Abraham's mother and three younger sisters were rounded up during the Great Action—the mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center. They were likely killed upon arrival. Abraham was not caught in the Great Action, because during the round up he hid in a small space in the ceiling. Afterwards, Abraham found a forced labor assignment at a nearby airfield. He returned to the ghetto in December 1942, reuniting with his father. During the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April–May 1943, Abraham and his father saw the ghetto being burned to the ground. They were eventually rounded up and sent to the Lublin concentration camp (called Majdanek). Abraham's father died there. Later, Abraham was sent to the Skarżysko-Kamienna labor camp, then to Buchenwald and several other camps. US troops liberated Abraham from a train in April 1945.
When the war broke out, there, the water was cut off. There was no gas in the house to cook anything. There was no food. So my father used to go out once in a while and we used to get some bread or the necessary things. And I remember for a couple weeks, we lived just on sour pickles because not far where we used to live, a couple streets further was a factory, they used to produce pickles. A Polish factory. And they used...they call it "Origi...Original," and they used to have the pickles in, in tins like...small tins, and large ones. As I found out. So I went with a friend of mine and somehow we got into that building in the night, even when the bombs were falling and we used to run in the middle of the night, and we grabbed about six or eight cans, about five pounds, and we dragged it home, and this we lived for a couple of weeks. Just on pickles, and once in a while we got bread.
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