Charlene 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.
I was, and I'm speaking from a personal point of view, and I know I'm not the only one, there I was, an orphan, a survivor of unspeakable pain and atrocities of the war, and nobody extended a helping hand during the war. Now, after the war, wouldn't you think we would have priority to go out or to get out of Germany? But no, I had to wait three long years. There were quotas. There were always quotas. There were quotas to get into the United States. My...when I finally did get a hold of my family in the United States--because I remembered my grandmother's address--I still, I mean, they guaranteed that I would not be a burden to the government, and yet I had to wait three long years before I was allowed to come to the United States. Meanwhile, I, I tried on my own to get a student's visa, and I attended the University of Heidelberg for almost--well, over a year, but, uh, that would have given me a student visa. I must say that the people at the University of Heidelberg bent backwards to accommodate me. There were such a gaps in my education, formal education. It was nonexistent, and yet I took some tests and they helped me and I was accepted as a full-time student. And, uh, I will never forget that. I'm grateful for that. But I still had to wait three years to come to the United States, and I don't think that was right, to treat us in such a way.
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