Author: Gutta Sternbuch

Publisher: Feldheim Publishers

Published: 2005

Total Pages: 310

ISBN-13: 9781583307793

Memoirs of Sternbuch (née Eisenzweig), an Orthodox Jew from Warsaw. Pp. 63-138 describe her experiences in the Holocaust, including the Nazi occupation and life in the ghetto. Sternbuch and several other young women who had been students at the Bais Yaakov Seminary conducted secret classes in Jewish studies for girls in the ghetto. She also taught at Janusz Korczak's orphanage until July 1942, when she received Paraguayan passports from her future husband, Eli; she and her mother were then incarcerated in the Pawiak prison. In January 1943 they were transported to the Vittel internment camp in France, where Sternbuch also organized classes for Jewish girls. In December 1943 Paraguay rescinded recognition of the passports issued to the Jews, and most of the Jews in Vittel were deported. Sternbuch and her mother escaped and went into hiding until their liberation in September 1944. She married after the war and, with her husband, helped Jewish survivors in France and then in Switzerland. Pp. 175-243 contain two essays by Kranzler on Jewish life in Poland before the war.