Lydia Stack came from a Catholic family.  Her grandfather was the caretaker at the synagogue in her town and her grandparents lived next door to the synagogue.  The synagogue was burned down on Kristallnacht and the Jews in the town were either taken away or all left.  Lydia had to do two years service for the Germans and worked on a farm and then as a maid in a German officer's home.  After her two years of service, she was assigned to work in a munitions factory near her home and she refused on the grounds that she would not make munitions used to kill people.  She was arrested after refusing to show up to work and she was jailed at Gestapo headquarters in her town for approximately 6 weeks and then she was transported to Ravensbruck where she was for 1-1/2 years before being transported to another labor camp.  She was 19 years old at this time.  She was liberated after escaping from the labor camp just as the American Army was approaching the camp in 1945.  When the Russians took over Lydia and her mother and grandmother left for Munich.  She met her husband who was an American soldier in Munich and they married in 1953.  Lydia had tuberculosis and could not leave for the United States for four more years.  Her husband went back to the U.S, got discharged from the army and moved to Germany until Lydia could gain entrance to the United States.  She arrived in the United States in March, 1957 and brought her mother and grandmother with her.  They settled in Detroit.  Lydia and her husband have one son and two granddaughters.