The True Story of One Family’s Escape from the Nazis
When Hanka was a small child, her family lived in a close-knit Jewish community in the city of Kraków. Their world was densely woven with relatives: dozens of cousins, many aunts and uncles, and grandparents who lived nearby. The family apartment stood on Wawrzenca Street in the Jewish quarter of the city, an area where Jewish life had existed continuously since the late 14th century. For centuries, particularly during the 15th and 16th centuries, Poland had been a welcoming place for Jewish settlement, protected by tolerant monarchs. That legacy shaped the Kraków Jewish district into a deeply Orthodox, traditional environment.
Life there was simple and communal. There were no cars, only the occasional horse passing through narrow streets without streetlights. Children crossed roads freely and roamed without supervision. For Hanka, it was a life of freedom. Each morning she and her siblings dressed, ate a piece of bread, and were sent outside to play. Her parents did not worry; the neighborhood was safe, familiar, and bound by shared customs and trust.
The family lived modestly but securely. Their apartment had 3 rooms and a large kitchen that served as the center of daily life. Relatives came and went constantly, and the synagogue stood only half a block away. This closeness extended beyond family to the entire surrounding community. Everyone knew one another, and responsibility for children was shared.
Hanka’s mother owned a vegetable shop. She rose early each morning with her husband to open the store, receiving produce from farmers who came in from the countryside. On Fridays she returned home early to prepare all the meals for the Sabbath, bringing fruits and vegetables from the shop. She was a lively, social woman, humorous, energetic, and strong-willed, with firm principles and a determined character.
Hanka’s father had once been a professional football player and had played for the Polish national team. He was handsome, athletic, gentle, and kind. Both parents believed passionately in education, which they viewed as central to Jewish life and identity. Learning was never optional; it was fundamental.
The children remembered their older sister as the authority figure in the household whenever their mother was absent. Whatever she said was law. One sibling recalled the thrill of riding a tram for the first time, traveling only one stop without paying because there was no money. Their life resembled scenes from old films, a world already fading even before it was destroyed.
Everything changed in September 1939.
Germany invaded Poland with overwhelming force. The German army advanced rapidly, crushing resistance and introducing the world to the concept of blitzkrieg—an unleashed military power that left devastation in its wake. Within 2 weeks, the Polish army surrendered. German aircraft flew low over Kraków, dropping not explosives but gas intended to terrify civilians. The smell was acrid and sulfurous, lingering in memory long after.
When German warplanes first appeared over the city, one aunt gathered 50 children into their grandfather’s cellar, covering them with feather mattresses in a desperate attempt to shield them from bombing. Soon afterward, Nazi soldiers arrived at Jewish homes. They confiscated valuables and ordered families to prepare to leave. Jewish apartments were systematically entered and stripped.
When the Kraków ghetto was established, all Jews were forced from their homes and marched into the enclosed district. Families carried only the clothes they wore, each person allowed a single small bag, often holding nothing more than an extra pair of shoes. German soldiers patrolled constantly, their tall black boots echoing ominously through the streets. The sound of those boots became a warning signal. Children learned to run and hide at the first hint of their approach, sometimes concealing themselves in garbage bins.
The ghetto was sealed with barbed wire fencing. Nazi guards lined the gates as crowds of Jews were forced inside at gunpoint. They were told not to get comfortable, that their stay would be temporary. Once inside, no one was allowed to leave.
Hanka’s family was assigned to a single room in an apartment shared with strangers. Each day, Jewish prisoners were taken out for forced labor at a camp called Plaszow. Hunger spread rapidly. People tried to sneak out in search of food, but those caught by SS guards were imprisoned or shot on the spot.
At the ghetto gates, as her mother tried to comfort her, Hanka saw a man selling hats from a cart. Her mother used loose change from her pocket to buy her a red hat. As the ghetto gates closed behind them, she pulled the hat down over Hanka’s ears and led her inside. From that moment on, Hanka wore the red hat continuously. It felt like protection, as though something tangible was keeping her safe.
Inside the ghetto, children disappeared. A boy named Marcel used to ride his bicycle back and forth in the street, performing tricks while Hanka watched and waved. One day he never returned. She understood what that meant. People who vanished were being deported to camps.
Food was scarce. There were no shops. Hanka’s mother, who still had access to food supplies outside the ghetto because of her business connections, carried in heavy bags each day and shared what she could. A prison operated inside the ghetto where young men were held for labor. Conditions were horrific. There was no water. Her mother could not tolerate it. She cooked large pots of leftover food at night and dragged them to the prison. Once, a guard heard the noise and fired at them. The children fled, abandoning the pot. Their mother reprimanded them fiercely, insisting they return for it despite the danger. That night was their last trip. Deportations soon escalated.
The ghetto became a place of constant terror. Orphanages were emptied by force. Children were thrown from windows before being loaded onto trucks. Elderly men were kept in a hospital as a show for the International Red Cross. When the hospital was later shut down, doctors negotiated with the Germans, offering the elderly a choice: be shot or be given injections to die peacefully. Many chose the latter.
Bodies piled in the streets. Family members recognized loved ones among them. By this point, there was no illusion about what was happening. At the start of the occupation, Kraków had 60,000 Jews, with schools, markets, and synagogues. Now only a few thousand starving prisoners remained.
Then came the liquidation.
The liquidation of the ghetto began with methodical brutality. German trucks arrived in the streets, and soldiers jumped down, among them a man known throughout Kraków for a single horrifying purpose: he was assigned to shoot children. Residents were warned not to leave their apartments. Anyone found outside, especially children, would be killed immediately. When the truck stopped in front of their building, the family extinguished the lights, closed the door, and sat in complete silence.
The building had 4 floors. The soldiers began at the top and worked their way down. Boots thundered on the stairs. Doors were smashed open with rifle butts. Shots rang out, followed by screams, then silence. Floor by floor, apartment by apartment, families were murdered. Above them lived children with whom they had played. They heard the door break, the children scream, then gunfire, and then nothing. Their apartment was last.
When the man entered, his uniform was soaked in blood. He stood calmly, removed the magazine from his pistol, and slowly loaded it, bullet by bullet, while they watched. He raised the weapon. Hanka was 12 years old. She knew the shot would come at any second. Her mother told her to close her eyes.
At that moment, another German soldier entered and spoke to the man in German. After a brief exchange, the man holstered his pistol and left. No one ever knew what was said or why they were spared. Hundreds had been killed that day. Why this family lived remained a mystery.
Soon afterward, the Germans decided to destroy the ghetto entirely. Families were forced to dig their own graves, ordered to undress, stand inside the pits, and were then killed with grenades. It marked the end of Jewish life in Kraków.
Faced with certain death, the parents made a decision. They would attempt to escape. Hanka’s father, once a well-known football player, had Christian friends outside the ghetto. Her mother still had limited permission to leave for her food business and had bribed the guard at the gate regularly. They used every remaining resource to secure forged Christian identity papers. As Christians, they might survive. As Jews, survival was impossible.
They also contacted a Polish farmer who had delivered vegetables to their shop before the ghetto was sealed. He agreed to help. One dark night, a platform was constructed beneath a horse-drawn cart. One by one, the family slid underneath and hid. Hanka’s younger sister was gravely ill with pneumonia, and their mother warned them that there could be no sound—not a breath, not a cry. On another occasion, they were hidden in garbage barrels, covered completely with refuse as a cart exited the ghetto. No one stopped them. The guards assumed the driver was returning home after deliveries. The farmer risked his life to save theirs.
They did not expect to survive. The escape was not motivated by hope but by choice. If they were stopped, the father carried pistols, and the plan was to kill one another rather than be captured. They would choose how they died.
After escaping, they hid in an empty apartment while forged papers were finalized. Once completed, they traveled by train toward the Czech border. Heavy snow delayed the train for hours. Nazi guards eventually abandoned the station from cold and fatigue. When the train finally arrived, the family boarded unnoticed and crossed into Czechoslovakia, where German control had not yet reached. Crossing the border meant freedom.
They continued on foot through mountains and snowfields. The father carried the youngest child in a bag. Hanka wore her red hat as they walked through snow that reached her face. Her shoes fell apart. She wrapped her feet in cloth and rags, continuing barefoot through the frozen terrain. At night they hid in hunting huts or buried themselves beneath snow when they heard German patrol dogs approaching.
They reached Hungary, where life appeared normal. Shops were open. Synagogues and churches functioned. Her father warned Jewish communities to flee, but many did not believe him. The family traveled to Budapest, where they were arrested for illegal border crossing and imprisoned. Despite forged papers identifying them as Catholic Poles, they were interrogated. Guards threatened the children with pistols, demanding the truth. They held to their false identities and were eventually released.
When Germany invaded Hungary, the family was sent to a labor camp in the village of Markali. There, the father befriended a Catholic priest by playing chess daily. The priest knew the family was Jewish but protected them, insisting to SS guards that they were Catholics. When inspections were announced, the priest warned them that their young son had to be hidden because circumcision would expose him.
The father took the boy into a dense forest known as Subonya Puszta. German and Russian forces were on opposite sides, firing at one another, but neither entered the forest. A barn there served as a hiding place. The boy was left with other young Jewish refugees, told his family would return.
Days passed. Russian forces arrived. The others joined them. The boy stayed, waiting for his father. He was left alone in the forest. Each day he waited, hoping his father would appear. Food ran out. He fished, ate raw food, scavenged bird eggs, and survived with the companionship of a dog that stayed with him. When a rocket struck the barn and destroyed the roof, he realized he could not stay.
Weak, skeletal, and starving, he left. He wandered through abandoned villages, fields strewn with corpses and minefields. He navigated by walking where bodies lay, reasoning that mines would already have detonated. He learned his parents had been shot. He was an orphan.
Meanwhile, the rest of the family endured transit camps and forced labor in Austria. They were stripped, humiliated, beaten, and starved. The mother was assaulted while stealing food. The father became gravely ill, and they feared his circumcision would be discovered in hospital.
Eventually, Soviet tanks surrounded the camp. Prisoners waited in disbelief until it became clear the war was over.
The family survived, but the boy was still missing.
When the camp fell silent, the absence of gunfire and shouted orders was almost more frightening than the noise had been. The prisoners did not dare leave their barracks at first. Then they saw the Russian tanks standing outside the camp. The Austrian guards had fled. Slowly, people emerged, disbelief giving way to the realization that the war was over. They had survived.
Survival, however, brought no immediate peace. The family was intact except for one absence that overshadowed everything: the boy was gone. His parents did not know whether he was alive or dead. When conditions allowed, they set out to search for him. The father stole a horse and cart and loaded it with sacks of brown sugar, using the sugar to barter for food along the way as they traveled back toward Hungary and the village of Markali, the last place they had been together.
No one there knew where the boy was. The father then traveled to Budapest, where the Red Cross was attempting to reunite families torn apart by the war. No record could be found. On his way back to the railway station, he noticed a group of orphaned children walking along the road. Among them, unmistakably, was his son.
The boy, meanwhile, had been taken to a Jewish orphanage in Budapest. He had never attended school before and was just beginning to learn to read and write. One day, walking down the street with his alphabet book, he looked up and saw his father standing there. He did not know his father was alive. He thought he was dreaming. The reunion was overwhelming. His father grabbed him and ran to the train station to bring him back to the rest of the family. There was shouting, crying, and joy beyond anything they had ever known.
They were reunited. The family survived the war together.
Yet survival did not erase the wounds. The boy never fully forgave his parents for leaving him alone in the forest. To be 13 years old and abandoned, even for reasons of survival, left a pain that never entirely healed. He understood the logic: if they had returned for him, the Germans would have found them all and killed them. The only way the family could live was without him. Still, understanding did not remove the hurt.
Decades later, the memories remained. Nightmares still came. The mind did not release its grip on the past simply because time passed. The Holocaust had taken more than homes and families. It stripped people of language, belonging, and the certainty of ever feeling at home again. Survivors spent their lives searching for that sense of safety, often without ever finding it.
What bound the siblings together was not only loss, but survival. They had endured something no one else could fully understand. Humor became a shield, grief a shared language. They laughed together and cried together. They took care of one another, as their mother had taught them to do. That bond endured through marriages, children, and changing lives. No matter where they lived, they gravitated back to one another.
Looking back, the story defied comprehension. Two parents in their 30s with 4 young children, surrounded by death at every turn, made impossible decisions under conditions no one should ever face. That they survived at all felt miraculous. Fear of dying tomorrow, of having only days or weeks left, forged a closeness that might never have existed otherwise.
Their survival was not just a testament to courage, but to ordinary people’s capacity to endure extraordinary horror. The war ended, but its imprint remained, carried in memory, in dreams, and in the unbreakable ties of family.
