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Zofia Rapaport
ID CardZofia was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw. Zofia's father, a self-made man who had put himself through university, was a successful banker. The Rapaports lived on a street of single-family homes with gardens. Zofia's room was decorated with yellow lacquered furniture. 1933-39: As a young child, Zofia loved to play with her dog, Chapek. Sometimes she got to go shopping with her mother downtown. Each year during the Jewish holiday of Passover her family visited Zofia's grandparents in Lvov. In late August…
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Helene Herta Katz Wohlfarth
ID CardHelene, called Herta, was born to a Russian-Jewish father and a German-Jewish mother in a town on the Main River, near Frankfurt. Her father had immigrated to Germany from Russia in 1890. Her mother had automatically taken on her husband's Russian citizenship when she married. In 1914 Russia and Germany went to war, and Russians living in Germany were considered "enemy aliens." 1933-39: Herta married Siegfried Wohlfarth in 1933 and could change from being "stateless" to taking on his German citizenship.…
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Itka Wlos
ID CardItka was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish family in Sokolow Podlaski, a manufacturing town in central Poland with a large Jewish population of about 5,000. Itka came from a poor family. After completing her public schooling in Sokolow Podlaski at the age of 14, she began to work. 1933-39: Itka was a young woman, unmarried and living with her parents when war between Germany and Poland broke out on September 1, 1939. German aircraft bombed Sokolow Podlaski's market and other civilian targets…
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Alida Nathans Wijnberg
ID CardAlida was the oldest of eight children. Her parents, religious Jews, owned a textile business in the small town of Vries. As a teenager, Alida helped her family sell textiles to the local farmers, carrying the goods in a suitcase attached to the handlebars of her bicycle. She married Samuel Wijnberg, and the couple had three sons and a daughter. 1933-39: The Wijnbergs owned and lived in a kosher hotel in the town of Zwolle. It was the only kosher hotel in the region, so many Jewish businessmen and cattle…
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Chava Cherniak Biber
ID CardChava's mother died when she was 2, and Chava went to live with her grandfather, who was a rabbi in the village of Matsiov. Her grandfather's second wife welcomed Chava. After first studying at a Polish public school, Chava attended a Jewish day school. When Chava was a teenager her adopted grandmother died, and Chava took over managing her grandfather's household until he remarried. 1933-39: Chava's grandfather's third wife was an unsympathetic woman. After she came to their home, Chava wanted to be…
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Max Rosenblat
ID CardMax's parents, Taube and Itzik, first met as children in 1925. Taube was the daughter of a tailor who hired apprentices in his shop, and Itzik was one such apprentice. The Jewish youngsters fell in love and dreamed of getting married even though Taube's family frowned upon the match. 1933-39: In 1938 Taube and Itzik married. The couple lived in an apartment on 49 Zeromskiego Street in Radom, where Itzik opened a women's tailor shop. Max was born in July 1939. He had curly hair and blue eyes like his…
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Fruma Lieberman Perlmutter
ID CardFruma was one of four children born to a Jewish family in the Polish village of Luczyce. Her parents owned a large farm near the village. In the early 1920s, Fruma married Simcha Perlmutter, a philosophy professor at the university in Lvov, and the couple settled in Horochow. By 1929 the couple had two daughters, Tchiya and Shulamit. 1933-39: In September 1939, as Simcha was arranging for his family to immigrate, Germany invaded Poland. Three weeks later the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland where…
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Dora Eiger
ID CardDora grew up in the industrial city of Radom, known for its armaments industry. Though fervently Jewish, her Yiddish-speaking parents differed from each other in that her mother was deeply religious while her father was not religious and was an ardent member of the Zionist Labor Party. Also known by her Jewish name D'vora, Dora attended Jewish schools and joined a Zionist youth organization. 1933-39: When Dora visited her uncle near the German border in 1936, she first noticed anti-Jewish placards and…
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Chaim Werzbe
ID CardChaim was raised in a Yiddish-speaking, religious Jewish family in Sokolow Podlaski, a manufacturing town in central Poland with a large Jewish community of about 5,000. The economic activities of most of the townspeople were closely tied to those of nearby Warsaw and surrounding farming communities. As a young man, Chaim liked to play chess and was active in a local Zionist organization. 1933-39: Chaim made a living in the grain business. After settling down, he married a widow who was older than he and…
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Herta Scheer-Krygier
ID CardHerta's Viennese mother and Polish-born father owned a successful men's clothing business in Munich when Herta was born. After Hitler's antisemitic Nazi party attempted to overthrow the German government in November 1923, the Jewish Scheer family moved to Vienna, where Herta's grandparents lived. 1933-39: Hiking was one of Herta's favorite activities. She belonged to the Zionist youth group called Gordonia, and at their meetings the members spoke about creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine. After the…
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Eva Brigitte Marum
ID CardEva Brigitte was the youngest of three children born to German-Jewish parents in the capital of Baden, a state along the Rhine River in southwestern Germany. Known as Brigitte by her friends and classmates, and as "Brix" by her family, she grew up in a secular household and attended public schools. Her father was a local Social Democratic party leader. 1933-39: In 1933 the Nazis came to the Marum's house and arrested Eva's father because he was an active anti-Nazi. Two months later she suddenly saw him…
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Paula Garfinkel
ID CardPaula was one of four children born to a religious Jewish family in Lodz, an industrial city with a large Jewish population. As a child, Paula attended public schools and was tutored at home in Jewish studies three times a week. Her father owned a furniture store. 1933-39: Paula, her brothers, and sisters spent a lot of time at the clubhouse of their Zionist group, Gordonia. Their group believed in humanistic values, Jewish self-labor, and in building a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Paula liked to work…
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Fritz Alexander Rosenberg
ID CardFritz was one of three sons born to a Jewish family in the university city of Goettingen, where the Rosenbergs had lived since the 1600s. His father owned a linen factory. Fritz worked as a salesman there, and later he and his brothers inherited the business. In 1913 Fritz married Else Herz. By the early 1920s they had two sons and a daughter. 1933-39: In 1933 the Nazis came to power in Germany. A year later the Rosenbergs' factory was seized and three Nazis came to the family's home. An officer set a gun…
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Else Rosenberg
ID CardElse, born Else Herz, was one of three children born to a Jewish family in the large port city of Hamburg. Her father owned a grain import-export business. As a child, Else attended a private girls' school. In 1913 she married Fritz Rosenberg and the couple moved to Goettingen where they raised three children. 1933-39: With the onset of the Depression in the 1930s, Else's husband's linen factory went into decline. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, they confiscated the Rosenberg's factory. Deprived of…
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Inge Auerbacher
ID CardInge was the only child of Berthold and Regina Auerbacher, religious Jews living in Kippenheim, a village in southwestern Germany near the Black Forest. Her father was a textile merchant. The family lived in a large house with 17 rooms and had servants to help with the housework. 1933-39: On November 10, 1938, hoodlums threw rocks and broke all the windows of Inge's home. That same day police arrested her father and grandfather. Inge, her mother and grandmother managed to hide in a shed until it was…
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Feiga Kisielnicki
ID CardFeiga lived with her husband, Welwel, and their three children in the small, predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn, which was 35 miles east of Warsaw. The Kisielnickis were religious and spoke Yiddish in their home. Feiga was a housewife and her husband was a merchant who often traveled, by horse and wagon, to Warsaw on business. 1933-39: Germany recently invaded Poland, and several days ago, German forces fought Polish troops in a battle right here in Kaluszyn. Half the town, including Feiga's house, has…
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David J. Selznik
ID CardThe village in Lithuania where David grew up was located near the Latvian border. His father was a peddler. At age 6, David was sent to Ukmerge, a town known to Jews by its Russian name, Vilkomir, to study traditional Jewish texts at the rabbinical academy there. Six years later, David was called to return home to head the Selznik family because his father had died. 1933-39: David lost his job in 1933, so he left Lithuania and went to the United States and then Portugal. But in 1936 the Baltic states were…
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Nanny Gottschalk Lewin
ID CardNanny was the oldest of four children born to Jewish parents in the small town of Schlawe in northern Germany, where her father owned the town's grain mill. Nanny was given the Hebrew name Nocha. She grew up on the mill grounds in a house surrounded by orchards and a big garden. In 1911 Nanny married Arthur Lewin. Together, they raised two children, Ludwig and Ursula. 1933-39: Nanny and her widowed mother have moved to Berlin. They feared the rising antisemitism in Schlawe and hoped, as Jews, to be less…
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Welwel Rzondzinski
ID CardOne of six children, Welwel was born to Jewish parents living in the predominantly Jewish town of Kaluszyn, 35 miles east of Warsaw. His parents were religious, and they spoke Yiddish at home. Welwel's father was a bookkeeper for a large landowner. After Welwel's father died, his mother ran a newspaper kiosk in Kaluszyn. Welwel married when he was in his twenties and moved with his wife Henia to Warsaw. 1933-39: When war broke out three months ago, many Jews left Warsaw in a mass exodus towards the east.…
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Fela Perznianko
ID CardFela was the older of two children born to Jewish parents living in Zakroczym, a town on the Vistula River near Warsaw. Her father was a respected attorney. As a young woman, Fela worked as a hat designer in Warsaw, until she married Moshe Galek when she was in her late 20s. She moved to the nearby town of Sochocin, where her husband owned a pearl-button factory. Fela and Moshe raised four daughters. 1933-39: In 1936 the Galeks moved to Warsaw, attracted by the city's cultural life. When Germany invaded…
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Ethel Stern
ID CardEthel was born to a Jewish family living in Warsaw. When she was 9, her family moved to the town of Mogielnica, about 40 miles southwest of Warsaw. Ethel's father spent much of his time studying religious texts. His wife managed the family liquor store. Ethel attended public school during the day and was tutored in religious studies in the evening. 1933-39: Ethel had always wanted to be a teacher. At age 14, after attending religious school in Lodz, she began to teach in the town of Kalisz, where her…
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Abraham Lewent
ID CardAbraham was born to a Jewish family in the Polish capital of Warsaw. His grandfather owned a clothing factory and retail store, which his father managed. Abraham's family lived in a Jewish section of Warsaw and he attended a Jewish school. Warsaw's Jewish community was the largest in Europe, and made up nearly one-third of the population of the city. 1933-39: After the bombardment of Warsaw began on September 8, 1939, Abraham's family had little to eat. The stores had been reduced to rubble; they had no…
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Yosel Coller
ID CardOne of six children, Yosel was raised in a religious Jewish family in Lodz, an industrial city in western Poland. His father was a businessman. At the age of 6, Yosel began attending a Jewish day school. His two older sisters attended public school in the morning and religious school in the afternoon. Yosel spent much of his free time playing soccer with his brothers. 1933-39: Yosel's family lived in a modest house in the northern section of Lodz. He went to a Jewish day school and had many friends there.…
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Shlomo Reich
ID CardShlomo was one of seven children born in Lodz to the Reich family. The Reichs were a religious Jewish family, and Shlomo's Hasidic father wore earlocks and a traditional fur hat. After public school every day, Shlomo attended the Ostrovtze Yeshiva, a rabbinical academy where he studied Jewish holy texts. Shlomo's father owned a shoelace factory. 1933-39: The Germans invaded Lodz in September 1939 and began to institute anti-Jewish measures. Jews were not allowed to use public transportation, to leave the…
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Benjamin Bornstein
ID CardBenjamin and his younger brother Zigmush were born to Jewish parents in the industrial city of Lodz. Lodz was Poland's second biggest city before the war, and one-third of its inhabitants were Jewish. Benjamin's father, Moshe, owned a candle factory, and his mother, Brona, was a nurse. 1933-39: In 1939, as Benjamin began the third grade, the Germans occupied Lodz. Jews were forbidden to ride buses, and were ordered to wear yellow stars. Because the Germans sometimes grabbed Jews off the streets for forced…
