Brandla Small

"Her constant message to her family and to her grandchildren was: Never take your life and your freedoms for granted!"

Name at birth

Brandla Lange

Date of birth

01/24/1914

Where were you born?

Bogoria, Poland

Where did you grow up?

Bukowa, Stashiv (grandparents lived there). I lived in Lodz as a young adult.

Name of father, occupation

Calmon Lange, Dealt in animal feed

Maiden name of mother, occupation

Raizel Finekuchen, Homemaker

Immediate family (names, birth order)

Twelve

How many in entire extended family?

Over 60

Who survived the Holocaust?

Five: Three brothers, Max, Carl, and Motel, and myself and a first cousin, Joe Finer

My mother met her first husband just before they were sent to the Lodz ghetto. They were married there and had a daughter. Her husband was picked up in a round-up one day as he went to work. She never saw him again.

My mother became solely responsible for working and feeding herself and her infant child. It was so difficult for her. The food lines were horribly long, the piecework she did had to be handed in on time, and there were times when she couldn’t feed her child or herself because of the circumstances.

Near the end, the Nazi’s did daily sweeps of the ghetto. The first time they came for the elderly and the sick. The next time they came for the infants and young children. My mother lived on the third floor of an apartment building.

When she found out about the sweep for young children, she managed to hide her daughter by sneaking into an apartment that had already been checked by the Nazi’s and covering herself and her daughter up with the bedclothes, blankets, pillows that had been strewn on the floor.

They survived that sweep. The next day she and many other women were put on a transport to Auschwitz. The train was horrible. As soon as they arrived and got on line, the child was ripped from her arms and thrown to a female SS guard.

She never saw her 3½ year old, baby daughter again.

Name of Ghetto(s)

Lodz

Name of Concentration / Labor Camp(s)

Auschwitz Birkenau

What DP Camp were you after the war?

Yes, Lager Herzog, Hessisch Lichtenau

Where did you go after being liberated?

Waldenberg, Germany

When did you come to the United States?

1949

Where did you settle?

Detroit, Michigan but first to Akron, Ohio

Occupation after the war

Seamstress

Spouse

Samuel Small, Tailor

Children

Rose Handleman, small business owner; Joe Small

Grandchildren

Two boys, Justin and Michael Feldman

What do you think helped you to survive?

My mother always told me that she survived because she was emotionally strong. She was motivated by hope to see some of her family again and by sheer hatred of the Nazi’s.

What message would you like to leave for future generations?

Her constant message to her family and to her grandchildren was:

Never take your life and your freedoms for granted!