Sura Andrezejko Born 1927 in Stawiski, Poland

Although the Germans and their collaborators murdered six million European Jews, including one and a half million children, most of France's Jewish community survived. Frida was never caught by the Germans thanks to the nuns at Chateau de Beaujeu.



Renya Sieger

Born October 10, 1936 in Cracow, Poland

Renya, the daughter of Josef and Mala (Reifer) Sieger, was born in Cracow, Poland. Cracow was a large industrial city. Between the two world wars, Jewish cultural and social life flourished in Cracow. By 1939, approximately 60,000 Jews lived in Cracow, Poland's third largest city.

Cracow was occupied by the Germans on September 6, 1939. Renya was not yet three years old when the Germans began persecuting Cracow's Jews. Jewish property was seized and several synagogues were burned down. By March 1941, approximately 40,000 Jews had been expelled to neighboring towns, their property confiscated. At the same time, a sealed-off ghetto was established. The worst problems were the result of overcrowding and poor sanitary conditions. The population was impoverished, and the Germans set up several factories to exploit the cheap labor in the ghetto. Thousands of Jews died in the streets from starvation, disease, and exposure. At the end of May 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the ghetto to death camps. By June 8, 1942, approximately 3,000 Jews were deported to the Belzec death camp; 300 had been shot on the spot.

Many strong and healthy Jews were sent to work in the Plaszow slave labor camp. In October 1943, approximately 7,000 Jews were deported to Belzec and Auschwitz. In addition, 600 Jews were shot on the spot. At this time, the Jews living in the old age home, the hospital, and the orphanage were all arrested and sent to death camps. The round ups continued until the end of March 1943 when the ghetto was emptied. Of the Jews sent to the Plaszow labor camp, only a few hundred survived.

Renya and her family disappeared without a trace.

One and a half million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.



Gabriele Silten

Born May 30, 1933 in Berlin, Germany

Gabriele, the daughter of Fritz and Ilse (Teppich) Silten, was born in Berlin, Germany. Berlin, a sophisticated and cosmopolitan city, was home to a highly assimilated Jewish community. Gabriele's father was a pharmacist and the Siltens had a comfortable life.

After Hitler came into power in Germany in 1933, life for Germany's Jews became increasingly difficult. Hitler's Nazi party passed various antisemitic measures stripping German Jews of their citizenship, cutting them off from all social interaction with non-Jews, and harshly restricting Jewish economic life. Jews were barred from most professions and the majority became impoverished. In 1938, Gabriele and her family fled to Holland. Settling in Amsterdam, Gabriele made friends with a girl her own age living in the same building. They attended kindergarten together, and Gabriele quickly learned Dutch.

The Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, just before Gabriele's seventh birthday. Gabriele was no longer allowed to play with her non-Jewish friends. She had to attend a private school for Jewish children and wear the yellow star.

Arrested in a massive raid on June 20, 1943, Gabriele and her family were sent to the Westerbork transit camp. In January 1944, Gabriele and her parents were transported in cattle cars to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Conditions were horrible. The ghetto was extremely overcrowded and infested with typhus-spreading vermin. Gabriele was fortunate to be able to stay with her mother and father. Nearly everyone worked 10 hours a day, seven days a week. There was little food, and Gabriele often went hungry. Ten year-old Gabriele was put to work as a message carrier in the old-age home.

Prisoners at Theresienstadt were generally transported to other camps in Poland, where they were murdered. Gabriele and her parents were still in Theresienstadt when it was liberated on May 8, 1945. They were weak and in poor health.

Only 100 of the many thousands of Jewish children who passed through Theresienstadt survived the Holocaust. Gabriele was fortunate to be among them.

One and a half million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.



Greti Skala

Born August 10, 1935 in Secovce, Czechoslovakia

Greti, the daughter of Emery and Stefania (Bley), was three years old when the Germans occupied Czechoslovakia. Her father worked in the family hardware store. The Germans immediately began persecuting and brutalizing the Jewish residents of her town. When they confiscated her father's store, he lost his livelihood. Greti's father desperately searched for a way to survive.

Through a friend, he was able to obtain false baptism certificates, giving the family a new identity. They changed their last name to Skala and moved to Bratislava, the capital city of the region. The family lived as best as they could under wartime conditions. They constantly lived in fear that they would be betrayed. Greti began school and became the top studemt in her class. She even helped her Christian classmates with their religious lessons.

In early 1944, Hungary seemed to be a relatively safe haven. Greti's father obtained visas for Hungary. Soon after their arrival at a Hungarian hotel, the Germans occupied Hungary. The Skalas were recognized as Jews and denounced. Handed over to the Nazis, Greti and her parents were deported to the Ravensbrueck concentration camp in Germany.

Conditions in Ravensbrueck barely sustained life. The Germans were determined to stave their prisoners to death. Typhus-carrying vermin infested the entire camp. Eight year-old Greti and her mother managed to stay alive. In April 1945, as the Allies approached, Greti and her mother, along with thousands of sick and starving inmates, were evacuated from Ravensbrueck and forced to march westward. Many hundreds died of exhaustion, while others were shot. Some were even killed by allied bombs.

They arrived at Bergan-Belsen, a camp filled with dead and dying prisoners. In May 1945, the camp was liberated. Greti, who had contracted typhus in Bergen-Belsen, and her mother were sent home in trucks to Bratislava. Greti was immediately hospitalized. She soon died. Greti was only nine years old.

Greti was one of 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators in the Holocaust.



Doris Wohlfarth

Born October 28, 1937 in Amsterdam, Holland

Doris was born October 28, 1937 in Amsterdam, Holland. Her parents, Siegfried and Helene, had left their home in Frankfurt, Germany, three years earlier to escape persecution by the Nazis. Prior to that, Doris's father was an accountant working in the German courts, and her mother was the owner of a small mail order business. Doris's father lost his job in 1933 simply because he was Jewish. Realizing that things would only get worse, Siegfried and Helene decided to cross the border into Holland.

Holland accepted many refugees from Germany, and the Jews there enjoyed equal rights. But in 1940, the Nazis invaded the tiny country and immediately began persecuting its Jews. Fearing that the Germans would arrest them, Doris's parents began looking for someone to shelter their daughter. Knowing that they might never see Doris again, Siegfried and Helene tried to prepare their daughter for the separation by distancing themselves from her emotionally. With untold pain in their hearts, they stopped hugging and holding her. Doris was only three years old at the time.

With the help of the Dutch resistance, Doris's parents were able to place their child with a childless Dutch couple. Then they went into hiding. On Friday, August 25, 1944, the Gestapo located their hiding place and arrested them. Less than a month later, they were sent to the Auschwitz death camp in Poland. Doris's father was murdered there, but her mother was transferred to a slave-labor camp in Czechoslovakia. Doris's mother miraculously survived the Holocaust.

With the defeat of Nazi Germany and her liberation, Helene now began her trek back to Holland. Deathly ill and weighing only 70 pounds, she kept herself alive by hoping that the Germans had not found her little girl. When Helene finally located her daught, Doris, now eight, she did not even recognize her mother.

Though Doris survived the Holocaust, 1.5 million Jewish children were caught and murdered by the Germans and their collaborators.



Renate Wolff

Born October 19, 1933 in Hamburg, Germany

Renate, the older daughter of Georg and Lilli (Engers), lived with her family in Hamburg, Germany. Before the Nazi takeover, the Jews of Hamburg were prosperous and were well-integrated into the city's social and cultural life. They were prominent in most professions. Renate's father worked as a teacher and cantor for Hamburg's large Reform Jewish community.

The very year that Renate was born, the Nazis came to power in Germany and began passing a series of anti-Jewish measures. Jews were barred from most professions, public schools, and many public places, and Jewish businesses were confiscated. Jews were stripped of their German citizenship and were segregated from the population as a whole. Many Jews began to flee the country, but others, like Renate's parents, believed that the restrictions were only temporary and would soon end.

After the wide-scale destruction, violence, and acts of terror that occurred on the night of November 9-10, 1938, Renate's parents tried desperately to get their children out of Germany. They wrote to refugee assistance organizations in England, begging them to find a place for their daughters. Because their parents could not pay for their children's care in England, the two young girls remained trapped in Germany.

In December 1941, when Renate was eight years old, the entire family, along with 16,000 other German Jews, was deported to Riga, Latvia. The 30,000 local Jews, who had already been living in the sealed-off ghetto, had been murdered by the Germans to make room for them. There was inadequate food, water, and sanitary facilities. Thousands died from starvation, disease, and exposure.

By December 1943, the ghetto was emptied of its population. Most of the inhabitants were murdered by the Germans or sent to labor camps where they were worked to death.

Renate and her family disappeared without a trace.

One and a half million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators during the Holocaust.



Ebi Gruenblatt

Born May 1,1927 in Nyirmihalydi, Hungary

Ebi, the daughter of Morris and Margit Gruenblatt, was born in Nyirmihalydi, Hungary. Her father was the manager of a large rural estate. The youngest of four children, Ebi had three brothers who adored her. Her family enjoyed a comfortable, affluent life, and Mr. Gruenblatt was widely known and well-respected.

The Germans occupied Hungary in March 1944. Before Ebi's seventeenth birthday, the Nazis arrested her family, along with other Jews in the area, and interned them in the local synagogue without food or water. After two weeks of deprivation and forced marches through the countryside, they reached the city of Nyiregyhaza, where they were herded into a closed-off ghetto. Lacking work and the means to earn a living, the Gruenblatts were in danger of starving to death. Christian friends helped by smuggling food into the ghetto. Ebi and her family reported for "resettlement" in mid-May. Shoved into cattle cars, travelling under conditions that barely sustained human life, they arrived in Auschwitz five days later.

In June, Ebi and her mother, passing as sisters, were sent to the Plaszow labor camp near Cracow. Filled with constant fear, Ebi and her mother were put to work moving heavy rocks from one location to another. They were being worked to death. In late September 1944, Ebi and her mother were brought back to Auschwitz. They were now sent to Augsburg, Germany, to work in the K.U.K.A. Ammunition Factory. Soon after, the area was heavily bombed by the Allies, and they were evacuated, first to Dachau, and then to a work camp near Muehldorf. Since she knew German, Ebi was given work as a registrar. When the Allies began bombing Muehldorf at the end of April 1945, Ebi and her mother, along with other inmates, were packed into cattle cars. The Germans palnned to take them to the Alps and murder them. The tracks were almpst completely destroyed and the train could not get far. Allied planes strafed the train while the prisoners took refuge under the boxcars. Ebi, her mother, and others escaped, but the Germans hunted them down and returned them to the train. Allied soldiers finally arrived on the scene and liberated them. Ebi celebrated her eighteenth birthday as a free human being.

One and a half 1.5 million Jewish children were murdered by the Germans and their collaborators in the Holocaust. Ebi was one of the few who survived.