Incarcerated in the forced labor camp of Wolanów, Poland, Chana worked in the kitchen of the men’s camp. It’s from this place that she witnessed a German killing the companion of a woman she knew. She reflects on the initial images of horror witnessed in the camp, and remembers them as those that shook her the most.
Chana Rosenberg was born in 1930 in Szydlowiec, Poland. Soon after the German invasion of Poland in 1939, she was deported to a forced labor camp in Wolanów and then transferred to a concentration camp in Blizyn. When the camp population was evacuated in July 1944, Chana and her mother were transferred to Auschwitz and then to concentration camps in Germany, Ravensbrück and Malchow. They were freed by the Soviet armed forces while being transferred from Malchow on a forced march in spring 1945. After the war, the two women were reunited with Chana’s father and one of Chana’s brothers. The family settled in Lyon, France. After working in a family-owned clothing store, Chana became a therapist.