Before the war, Lola had lived in Szydloweic, Poland. When the Nazis came, she volunteered to work as a slave laborer at Powiat Kelecki and Hasag, Nazi munitions factories in Skarszysko, Poland, to do packing and shipping work. She hoped to save herself and her family from the death camps.
But all of her family members were taken and she never saw any of them again. She was a slave in the labor camp from 1942 to 1944.
In the summer of 1944 she was taken to Bergen-Belsen, Germany until 1945. Bergen-Belsen is the camp in which Anne Frank died after she was sent there from Auschwitz. In Bergen-Belsen, if you didn’t die of beatings or execution, you died from typhus or dysentery. From there, my mother was sent to Dachau, Germany. Finally she was liberated from Dachau in May of 1945.
Lola lost her mother Hannah, father Lebush, brothers Velvu and Yankel, sister Helen, uncles and aunts in the Holocaust.
Lola and Leon were both taken to Feldafing, Germany after they were liberated. Feldafing was the first all-Jewish camp opened by the US Army and hosted a large community of survivors. Originally a summer camp for Hitler Youth, Feldafing was located 20 miles southwest of Munich in the American zone of occupation.