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Sophie Turner-Zaretsky describes her years in Poland living under a false identity

Sophie was born Selma Schwarzwald to parents Daniel and Laura in the industrial city of Lvov, two years before Germany invaded Poland. Daniel was a successful businessman who exported timber and Laura had studied economics. The Germans occupied Lvov in 1941. After her father's disappearance on her fifth birthday in 1941, Sophie and her mother procured false names and papers and moved to a small town called Busko-Zdroj. They became practicing Catholics to hide their identities. Sophie gradually forgot that…

Eva, Alfred, and Leane Munzer

Eva, Alfred, and Leane Munzer. Infant Alfred survived in hiding; his sisters were discovered and killed in Auschwitz.

A Jewish child with a rescuer

A Jewish child, Jacky Borzykowski, with the priest who placed him in hiding on a farm. Belgium, 1943.

Doriane Kurz describes how she and her brother were hidden

Doriane's Jewish family fled to Amsterdam in 1940, a year that also saw the German occupation of the Netherlands. Her father perished after deportation to Auschwitz. After their mother was seized, Doriane and her brother hid with gentiles. The three were reunited at Bergen-Belsen, where they were deported via Westerbork. They were liberated during the camp's 1945 evacuation. Doriane's mother died of cancer soon after Doriane helped her recover from typhus. Doriane and her brother immigrated to the United…

Jewish children in an orphanage after the war

After the war, thousands of Jewish children ended up in orphanages all over Europe as a result of the Holocaust. The toddlers in this children's home in Etterbeek, Belgium, survived in hiding, but their parents had been deported to Auschwitz.

Lida Kleinman

Portrait of a young Jewish girl, Lida Kleinman sitting in her room in Lacko, Poland, 1935. In January 1942, Lida was sent into hiding. She hid under false identities in Catholic orphanages until the end of the war.

Irene Freund

The younger of two children, Irene was born to Jewish parents in the industrial city of Mannheim. Her father, a wounded German army veteran of World War I, was an interior decorator. Her mother was a housewife. When the Nazis came to power in 1933, Irene's older brother, Berthold, was attending public school. Three-year-old Irene was at home with her mother. 1933-39: Celebrating Jewish holidays with all of Irene's aunts and uncles was really nice. One of her favorite places was the zoo; she especially…

Rescue - ID Card/Oral History

Rescue and Resistance - Photograph

Alida Nathans Wijnberg

Alida 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…

Page from Otto Wolf's diary

Otto Wolf (1927-1945) was a Czech Jewish teenager who chronicled his family's experience living in hiding in rural Moravia during World War II. His diary was published posthumously. This image shows book 4 of Otto Wolf's diary. This is the first entry by Felicitas Garda (Otto Wolf's sister) dated April 17, 1945. Felicitas continued Otto's diary after his disappearance.

Budapest - ID Card/Oral History

Rescue (Abridged Article) - ID Card/Oral History

Rescue and Resistance - ID Card/Oral History

Sisters Eva and Liane Münzer

Sisters Eva and Liane Münzer. They were placed in hiding with a devout Catholic couple. In 1944, Eva and Liane were reported to the police as a result of a fight between their rescuers. The husband denounced his wife and the two Jewish girls. The three were immediately arrested and sent to the Westerbork camp. On February 8, 1944, eight- and six-year-old Eva and Liane were deported to Auschwitz, where they were murdered. Photograph taken in The Hague, the Netherlands, 1940.

Raszka (Roza) Galek Brunswic describes a roundup in the Warsaw ghetto and her escape from deportation

Roza's family moved to Warsaw in 1934. She had just begun college when Germany invaded Poland in 1939. In 1940, the Germans sealed the Warsaw ghetto, where her parents were shot during a roundup. Roza escaped and went into hiding. From her hiding place she saw the burning of the ghetto in the 1943 uprising. She had false papers stating she was a Polish Catholic (Maria Kowalczyk), and was deported by cattle train to Germany in June 1943. She worked on a farm until liberation in 1945.

Polish family who hid a Jewish girl

Members of a Polish family who hid a Jewish girl on their farm. Zyrardow, Poland, 1941-1942.

Rosa Israel Waldhorn

Rosa was one of 14 children born to religious Jewish parents in the village of Yasinya at a time when it was known as Korosmezo and was part of Hungary. During World War I, she married Michael von Hoppen Waldhorn, an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army who was based near Yasinya. During the 1920s they moved to Paris, where they raised three children. 1933-39: The Waldhorn family's life in Paris was very different from their life in Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Rosa's husband made a good living, and he…

Leah Hammerstein Silverstein describes working under a false non-Jewish identity in a German hospital in Krakow

Leah grew up in Praga, a suburb of Warsaw, Poland. She was active in the Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir Zionist youth movement. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Jews were forced to live in the Warsaw ghetto, which the Germans sealed off in November 1940. In the ghetto, Leah lived with a group of Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir members. In September 1941, she and other members of the youth group escaped from the ghetto to a Ha-Shomer ha-Tsa'ir farm in Zarki, near Czestochowa, Poland. In May 1942, Leah became a courier…

Robert Gruber

Robert was raised by Hungarian-speaking parents in Kosice, a town in eastern Slovakia with a sizable Jewish community of 7,000. The Grubers were a traditional Jewish family and they observed the Jewish Sabbath, dietary laws, and holidays. Robert's father owned a small jewelry shop. 1933-39: When Robert was 5, Kosice was taken over by the Hungarians, who were led by a dictator named Horthy. He stood on the main street with his parents, watching the soldiers march into town in a victory parade. They were…

A mother's photograph

Parting from one's child was a difficult experience for parents who placed their offspring with foster families. Eda Künstler entrusted this photograph of herself to her daughter's rescuer, Zofji Sendler. On the back it is inscribed, "Anita's real mother."

Six Jewish girls who were hidden in a convent

Six Jewish girls hidden from the Nazis at the Dominican Convent of Lubbeek near Hasselt. Belgium, between October 1942 and October 1944.

Marcus Fass

Marcus, known to his family as Moniek, was one of three children born to a Jewish family in the Polish town of Ulanow. His father worked as a tailor. Ulanow's Jewish community had many of its own organizations and maintained a large library. From the age of 3, Moniek attended a religious school. He started public school when he was 7. 1933-39: In 1935 Moniek's father left for America to find a job so that his family could later join him. He sent money to them while they waited for their emigration papers.…

Sisters Eva and Liane Münzer

Denunciations of Jews to German authorities came from a variety of different sources, sometimes even from their "protectors." In 1944, Eva and Liane Münzer (pictured here) were reported to the police as a result of a domestic fight between their rescuers. The irate husband denounced his wife and the two Jewish girls. The Münzer sisters were sent to Auschwitz and killed.

Portrait of a boarding school class in which a Jewish boy was hidden

Class photograph of students at the San Leone Magno Fratelli Maristi boarding school in Rome. Pictured in the top row at the far right is Zigmund Krauthamer, a Jewish child who was being hidden at the school. Rome, Italy, 1943–44.