Bertha Gutovitz

Of Blessed Memory 1922 – 2012

Bertha Cukier was born in 1922 in Białobrzegi, Poland. She and her family later moved to Radom where her father, Abraham, was a cobbler.  While in the Radom Ghetto, Bertha was saved by her younger brother, who recommended her for a job outside of the ghetto, thereby escaping deportation to Treblinka. Over the next four years Bertha was a forced laborer in Blizyn, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and an aviation plant at Hohenelbe-Vrchlabi. When she was liberated by Soviet forces in 1945, Bertha returned to Poland looking for survivors. In Białobrzegi she found her cousin, Joe Gutovitz, whom she later married. In 1949, Bertha, Joe, and their first child came to the United States.