Survivors and their Stories

Martin Spett

Raised in Tarnow, Poland, a city of 70,000 at the outbreak of the Second World War, Martin was the eldest of two children. His mother, Sala Leisten had been born a US citizen in Newark New Jersey, and his father, Arthur Spett, was Polish. They lived in an apartment building on Dwernickiego Street in the outskirts of the city. Learn More.

 

Gisela Glaser

Born in Tarnow, Poland in 1924, Gisela Glaser was one of four children. Her father died shortly before Germany invaded Poland in 1938, and the rest of her immediate and extended family perished at the hands of the Nazis during the War. Gisela Glaser endured ghetto life, imprisonment at Plaszow, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bergen Belsen, Mauthausen, and Venusburg. Learn More.

 

Toby Kirsh

Toby Krish was born in 1911 in Warsaw, Poland. In 1933, German Jews began to flee to the country, following Hitler's rise to power. On May 10th, 1940, the German Army marched into Belgium, and after only seventeen days of fighting, conquored the country. Mrs. Kirsh and her husband fought and hid from the Nazis until they were able to move - with the support of the resistance group - to the Ardennes region of Belgium in 1941. Learn More

Clara Knopfler

Clara Knopfler was born January 19, 1927 in Cehul-Silvaniei, Transylvania, a small town in northern Romania. She and her brother Zoltan were raised by their mother, Pepi, and father, Joseph. When Clara was 13, the Nazis invaded and she was denied public schooling. Learn More.

 

 

 

Lily Margules

Born in Vilna, Poland in 1924, Lily Mazuar Margules was one of two children born to pharmasist David Margules and dentist, Gutta Margules. However, in May of 1939, Lily's mother suddenly passed away, and four months later the Nazis invaded Poland. Over the next six years, Lily and her sister, Rachel, managed to stay together as they endurded the hardships of life in the Vilna ghetto, concentrations camp, slave labor camps, and the dead march. Learn More.

 

 

Philip Freid

Philip Freid was born in Lodz, Poland in May of 1928. He was the youngest of three children born to Ita and Hersz Freid. Philip was 11 years of age when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939, and he first experienced ghetto life in Lodz at the age of 12. Durning his family's time in the ghetto, his father died of starvation. Learn More.

 

Alain Rwabukamba

 

 

Edith Tavon

Edith Tavon was born in 1925 in Vienna, Austria. After her family escaped from Austria on November 8th, 1938, they lived in Belgium for 3 months and then in Wales for a year. In 1940, because of the British policy of internment of German and Austrian Jewish men as enemy aliens, the family decided to move to the United States. Learn More.

 

 

 

Gerta Freeman

 

 

 

 

 

Bernard Adler

 

 

 

 

 

Herta Shriner

 

 

 

 

 

Olga Stern

 

 

 

 

 

Herta Pollak

 

 

 

 

 

Irene Adler