Miriam Nekrycz describes the first few days upon arrival with her family at the Luck Ghetto, Poland, in 1941. She remembers the inadequate housing accommodations and the overcrowded conditions in which her family lived. She also recalls the extreme cold weather and the pervasive hunger in the ghetto due to lack of food. As a result, her mother had to barter the family possessions in exchange for some food brought in by the local populace who came to pray at the Catholic Church located inside the ghetto.
Miriam Nekrycz was born on July 1, 1932, in Luck, Poland. In 1941, she was taken to the Luck Ghetto, where she lived under difficult conditions with her mother and her younger brothers. Miriam was able to make her way to the surrounding forest following her escape from the Luck Ghetto in 1942. She was then sheltered by a Polish aid giver in nearby Rokinie Nowe, Poland. While in the forest in Luck, Miriam Nekrycz witnessed a mass execution of Jews, in which her mother and brothers perished. Her father also perished in the Holocaust. Miriam lived under false identity until her liberation by the Soviet armed forces in 1944.