THEY FLED TO SHANGHAI WHERE EVA’S AUNT AND UNCLE HAD ALREADY ESTABLISHED A HOME AND A BUSINESS. SHANGHAI WAS OCCUPIED BY THE JAPANESE AND WAS THE ONLY PLACE THAT WOULD ACCEPT JEWISH IMMIGRANTS WITHOUT A VISA.

Isak Federman, the sole survivor of his family,was 17 years old when the Germans occupied Wolbrom. A short while later, he was grabbed off the street by the SS and sent to the first of a series of labor and concentration camps. He was liberated by the British at Sandbostel, a sub-camp of Neuengamme, in 1945.

Bronia survived a ghetto, five concentration camps and a death march. Arriving in Kansas City in 1947, she trained as a nurse, raised her family, and ran the M&M Bakery.

Ilsa Dahl grew up in Geilenkirchen, Germany where her family had lived for generations. They were observant Jews and patriotic Germans, and Ilsa’s father had served in the German army during World War I. Of the town’s 4000 inhabitants, most were Roman Catholics, with whom the family enjoyed friendly relations.

Sonia Golad, the daughter of Esther and Israel Borowik, grew up in Vilna, Poland, where she attended a private Jewish day school. In her free time, she ice skated and skied, read Sholem Aleichem and I. L. Peretz, and wrote to a pen pal in New York. She remembers long Sunday walks to visit family and friends in the suburbs and carefree summers with her siblings on a farm.

Abe Gutovitz grew up in Białobrzegi, Poland, near Warsaw. In 1942, Abe and two of his brothers were deported from their ghetto to slave labor in the Skarżysko ammunition complex and the Częstochowa camp. In 1944, Abe and one of his brothers were taken to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where the Americans liberated him in 1945.

In March 1944, Germany occupied Hungary, and from July to December, Judy and her parents were incarcerated in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, while her grandparents and her extended family were killed in Auschwitz-Birkenau and her mother’s brother died in a forced labor camp.

Norbert Lipschuetz grew up in Berlin, where he was born in 1925. He sang in the boys’ choir at the synagogue where his was one of the last bar mitzvahs before Kristallnacht. In 1934, he was expelled from public school and had to attend a Jewish school, and in 1935, the Nazis stole his father’s carpet business.

Lilly spent her summers in the country on her grandparents’ farm. In Munkács, barred from attending school by antisemitic restrictions, Lilly learned to sew in a dressmaking shop. After the German occupation of Munkács, Lilly and her family were forced into a ghetto and from there deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

On Kristallnacht, her father was arrested. After nearly a year in Buchenwald and Dachau, he was released on condition that he leave Evelyn Arzt was born in Vienna in 1932. On Kristallnacht, her father was arrested. After nearly a year in Buchenwald and Dachau, he was released on condition that he leave Austria in 24 hours. He made his way to Milan, where Evelyn, her mother and her brother joined him.