When the war started in 1941, my father left for the Army.  There was chaos, with people running away and hiding.  My grandmother wouldn’t leave until later, but my mother and I left.  My mother felt guilty about leaving without her mother and went back to Rovno after one month.  I was left with a Christian family.  No one was left in Rovno, and my mother came back to get me.  We went to Uzbekistan then, but I don’t know much about that time; I was too young.  I know we had to cross the Volga River and went by train.  We had very little to eat.  I remember rooting in garbage to look for watermelons.  

 

We stayed in Uzbekistan until 1945 and then took a cargo train back to Poland.  My father came back from the Army and checked the lists that appeared in newspapers and on walls and found us.  My parents then had two sons.  In 1957 we went to live in Israel, in Mabarat Bat Yam.  I went to live on Kibbutz Ma’anit near Netanya for six months.  I loved it. I worked picking oranges and did kitchen work.  I went to Ulpan and also learned to be a hairdresser.  

 

I met my husband Alex in Israel and we got married in 1960, and then left for the United States in 1962.  I still have two brothers in Israel. When we got to Detroit, I worked for different hair salons and then at Borman Hall for sixteen years. Now I’ve been at Fleischman for 24 years.                    

I hope the next generation will never experience such evil as the Holocaust, and I hope that everybody will live in harmony and peace no matter what race or religion they are.