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Holocaust Encyclopedia. Washington: 2012. s.v. "Belzec."
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005191 > (accessed April 25, 2013).
Holocaust Encyclopedia. Washington: 2012. s.v. "Warsaw."
<http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005069> (accessed April 25, 2013).
In January 1945, Soviet troops occupied Milanowek. Due to the rising threat of being caught, Elzbieta’s mother bribed a Russian soldier to smuggle them in shipping crates across the border to Czechoslovakia in the month of may.
Elzbieta, seven at the time, and her mother went to Austria and then Germany, where they learned that Edmund, her father, had survived and was in Italy with the Polish army.
In 1951, Elzbieta and her family moved to the United States. She is now almost 75 years old.
Holocaust Encyclopedia. Washington: 2012. s.v. "Survivor Volunteers:
Elzbieta Strassburger (Lusthaus)." <http://www.ushmm.org/remembrance/survivoraffairs/meet/detail.php?content=strassburger > (accessed April 25, 2013).
Elzbieta grew up in Iwonicz (prounounced i-won-ich), a small town in southwestern Poland.
Her father, Edmund, was a respected physician. Her mother, Helena, had studied pharmacology.
They spoke Polish and were among the few Jewish families who lived in Iwonicz.
To the left is an image of Elzbieta, only months old, going for a stroll on a snowy day.
After the uprising of the ghetto in Warsaw (a ghetto similar to the one in Tarnow), German authorities increased their efforts to find all of the Jewish people who were in hiding. Due to the fact that this ghetto was established very close to where Elzbieta and her mother were living, her mother worried that they would be discovered. Thus, she would frequently keep her daughter from school or would hide her in the basement of their house. They lived in this manner for nearly three years.
Life in the Warsaw Ghetto:
Above is the Warsaw ghetto
after the uprising
Above is a portrait of Elzbieta and her mother.
The image above is a picture of the
ghetto on the 1940s
Elzbieta’s father was drafted into the Polish army after a German invasion in Poland on September 1st, 1939. Seventeen days later, her father was captured and transported to a camp for Polish prisoners where he served as a physician.
In November 1939, Elzbieta and her mother were
forced to a Ghetto in Tarnow, where her
grandmother lived. The Tarnow Ghetto was not
the ideal place to live; it was run-down, had poor
living conditions, and was surrounded by a 2 m
high wooden wall topped with barbed wire. There
they were subjected to a growing number of
inhumane Nazi procedures, such as forced labor.
Her mother worked as an assistant
pharmacist for the Germans.
The image above is one of Elzbieta and
her mother in the Tarnow Ghetto
In June 1942, 3500 Jews, including Elzbieta’s grandmother, were deported to the Belzec killing center. There, they would be gassed and buried behind the building. They were responsible for over 434 500 deaths. Realizing the danger, her mother purchased “Aryan” papers ("Aryan" refers to a person who is not Jewish, but caucasian) for Elzbieta and herself and escaped to Milanowek, a town near Warsaw. There they lived with a Polish family.
At this time, Elzbieta was only four-years-old. She was given the name Barbara Stachura and raised as a Catholic to avoid being caught by the Germans.
To the left is four-year-old Elzbieta and her mother Helena. To the right is a picture of the Belzec Killing Centre.