Blanka 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.
I remember distinctly September '39, '39, the first of September, was the first day of war, and I remember--there are certain moments that are crystallized in your memory. They're etched so deeply, and I remember exactly the moment. I was sitting on a balcony, reading a book. And all of sudden, I heard a thud, a tremendous thud sound, and I saw planes circling above the city. I wasn't even afraid. I didn't know with what to associate this, but this was the day that the war started, and the planes came over Poland. I did not know that they crossed the border at that moment, but I remember the planes and the thud. And it startled me, and I got up and went to the room. This is something that is etched in my memory.
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