Leon Gersten and some of his family escaped the Frystak ghetto in Poland and hid with a Polish family for almost two years. Leon remembers when police officials entered the home of the Polish family looking for Jews and he recalls how much the family sacrificed.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PolishAlina Margolis and her friend were hidden under false identity in a Polish family. The family was nationalistic and when the father of this family discovered that his neighbors’ nanny was hiding two little Jewish boys under the terrace he decided to hand them over to the Germans.

Fred Ostrowski talks about the arrest and deportation of Jews of Polish origin from Germany to Poland on October 28, 1938. He remembers the journey from his hometown, Essen, Germany, to Zbaszyn, a border town in Poland. He relates that he and his mother were placed in the home of a Polish family shortly after their arrival Zbaszyn and notes that his father was in Lódz, Poland, at the time.  

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: Spanish

Anna Post remembers pretending to be a polish girl and sneaking into the Warsaw ghetto to visit her cousins for Hanukkah.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PolishStella's father was responsible for collecting dead bodies from the streets in the Cracow ghetto during WWII. When Stella’s grandfather died a natural death in the ghetto, he buried his father, then came home, and shared his feelings about it with the family.

Abbie Akst remembers when the Nazis occupied his hometown in Poland in 1939. Abbie reflects on the restrictions imposed onto Polish Jews by the Nazis including wearing a yellow patch.

Ann Monka was born in Lida a small town with a prosperous Jewish population in Poland. Ann and her mother were separated from her brother, sister and father after escaping the Lida Ghetto. Ann remembers when she and her mother hid in the Polish forests with the Bielski Partisans, while the rest of her family escaped deportations by jumping from the Nazi transport trains.

Alex recalls listening to Adolf Hitler's radio addresses before the war. He remembers how Polish Jews living in Germany were expelled from the country.

Steve recalls how Jewish kids were harassed at school and Polish kids and Jewish kids played separately.

On June 5, 1942, the Nazis reported having killed 97,000 Jews in specially constructed gas vans. Friedrich August Jeckeln — who served as an SS and police leader in the occupied Soviet Union during World War II — testified in 1945 that Reich Leader Heinrich Himmler, who organized the mass murder of Jews, told him shootings were too impractical, so gas vans were devised as a more efficient system. The method was initially used against the mentally insane in Polish hospitals in 1939. By 1942 the Nazis had begun to deploy more than 36 of these specially designed and equipped vans.

Jewish Survivor Helen Fagin decribes the 'cultural resistance' through education in the Radomsko ghetto in Poland. She explains how reading a Polish translation of Gone With the Wind allowed her and her students to at least temporarily dream of a different world outside the reality of the ghetto.

Jewish Survivor Romana describes growing up in a small Polish town after the war and how her family had to give up most of the space in their home according to Communist rule. They were forced to live together with a family that had an abusive father who tried to attack Romana and her mother.

November 8, 2012: Oscar-winning actress Jane Fonda spoke at the institute's Sexual Violence Against Women During the Holocaust Symposium, co-sponsored by Equality Now. Ms.

Biographical Information about Hilda Eisen Born April 24, 1917Izbica (Lódz, Poland), Russia/Soviet Union Date of Interview June 18, 2001 Location of Interview California, U.S.A. Length of Interview 2:09:07 Ghetto(s) Miedzyrzec (Lublin, Poland: Ghetto) Went into hiding Yes Member of underground, resistance or partisan group

Jewish Holocaust Survivor Interview language: French Interned in the camp of Beaune-la-Rolande (France) after the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup, Simon witnessed the deportation of his mother at the beginning of August 1942. He describes the difficulty that his mother experiences in being separated from her children. Some days later, Simon’s brother was deported. His mother and brother were gassed upon arrival in Auschwitz.

Rose describes her realization that the war had ended and her experience of being liberated from Ober Altstadt labor camp in Czechoslovakia in May 1945. Rose Kaplovitz was born Rozia Zaks on September 6, 1930, in Sosnowiec, Poland. Rose remembers her childhood in the Jewish community on the Polish-German border as relatively happy and secure. However, on the second day of the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, Rose witnessed her brother’s execution by German officers.

Jewish Holocaust SurvivorInterview language: PortugueseMiriam 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.