LINKS TO THE PAST
BRIDGES TO THE FUTURE
THE FAMILY HISTORY PROJECT OF DRAISY FRIEDMAN
My paternal great grandmother Chana Lefkowitz was born in 1924 in Hungary to a family of seven. In April of 1944, after two months in a ghetto, she and her family were deported to Auschwitz. Only Chana and her two sisters survived.
After three days in Auschwitz, Chana and her sisters were transferred to Kaiserwald, Stutthof and three other camps whose names are unknown. In each of these camps, the day started with a small piece of bread, intended as the prisoners' breakfast, lunch and dinner. The first day of work, Chana was so starved she ate her entire slice for breakfast. At dinner that night, Chana's sisters asked her why she wasn't eating.
Chana, too ashamed to admit she’d already eaten her portion, said the piece was so small, she’d finished it before anyone had a chance to see her eating. But Chana knew she wouldn’t be able to save bread the next day either, so she came up with a plan. Instead of each of the three sisters keeping their own slice of bread for the whole day, they would split one sister’s serving for breakfast, another for lunch, and the last for dinner. This way, they would share a sense of responsibility since overeating would mean stealing a sister’s share. The plan worked extraordinarily well, and for the entire year they were imprisoned, the sisters had something to eat at every meal.
The three sisters remained together throughout the entire war. In April of 1944, they were liberated in the city of Leipzig, Germany. By sticking together, they managed to make their way back to their home in Ehel, where they reunited with their brother. They then travelled to to Romania, where Chana married and gave birth to my grandmother.
Today, Chana lives in the town of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. She graciously allowed me to interview her for my project, the full transcript of which is included in my project.