In 1941, Ludmilla and her new husband Leopold were imprisoned in the Kraków ghetto in German-occupied Poland. In 1943, the couple was transferred to the Plaszow labor camp. There they were subjected to grueling conditions and arbitrary violence. In fall 1944, businessman Oskar Schindler helped save some Jewish forced laborers by relocating them and his munitions factory from Kraków to Brünnlitz in the Sudetenland. Because of Leopold's previous relationship with Schindler, the couple was included in this group. En route to Schindler's factory in Brünnlitz, Ludmilla and about 300 other women were imprisoned briefly in Auschwitz. Thanks in part to help from Schindler, Ludmilla survived the Holocaust and was liberated in early May 1945. After the war, Ludmilla and Leopold remained friends with Schindler and shared the story of their rescue.
On April 28th, because May 8th was the, the end of the war, the liberation day, but April 28th was his [Schindler's] birthday, and we wanted to do something for him for his birthday. So each one of the, of us, of the prisoners, gave a little portion of their, our bread, and a little por...portion of our terrible jam or marmalade, whatever it was, and, and, and margarine. And someone who must have been very, very handy among us, I don't remember, I don't know who it was, made him a birthday cake. I mean, they didn't bake it, but just made it out of the bread, and the this. And we all gathered in the big hall, and Schindler spoke to us. He told us, and again, all the camp staff was there, all the woman SS, and the men SS, and the head, the commandant, the, the commandant of the camp, the new one, everybody was there. But he was absolutely not afraid of them, and he told us, "The end of the war is near. Please be, think good thoughts because you will survive the war. But as you survive the war, try to be human beings."
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