Issue Date: 10/26/09
The full story: Holocaust survivor Yaja Boren speaks at Palomar College
|
Boren, a featured speaker during Political Science Days, held Oct. 21-22 by the Political Science and Economics Departments; was in fourth grade when Hitler's army began to occupy her hometown of Kadom in Poland.
"That is when people started disappearing," Boren said.
She shared vivid recollections from a young girl's perspective of how things progressively got worse for her and her family, and their fellow Jews.
When the occupation began, Boren was no longer allowed to attend school and was forced to wear an armband and carry photo identification labeling her as a Jew.
"I was 10 years old," she said. "When you are young, you have hope that things will get better."
But things did not get better, she said.
"We were not allowed to have valuables - no pets, no fur - and the rations we were given were not enough to feed a baby," Boren said.
Boren and her family lived in a one-room apartment in a crowded building. They had to take on boarders to make ends meet, and at one point there were 13 people living in the apartment.
"We had a table in the middle of the room, one bed, and us kids slept in chairs we pushed together," she said.
Her father, a baker, was marked as a Communist, forcing him into hiding. She recalls the night the SS guards came for him. Her mother was beaten and dripping with blood when she finally took them to his hiding place. Outside, the young Boren saw wagons being drawn by Jewish men. The wagons were piled with naked bodies. They never saw her father again.
Pretty soon, all children and adults were forced into day labor. Boren's job was digging trenches for the German army.
"It was difficult to work. It was cold in Poland. I never owned a warm coat. I had no gloves, no socks, and there were holes in my shoes. At noon we got one ladle of soup."
But things got worse. On Massacre Sunday in 1942, they began hearing the trains roll in and the cries and shouts of Jews as they were taken away to concentration camps.
"My mother felt it was the end and said she would never see me again. The noise went on for three days and three nights. On the third night, everything was silent," she said.
They were forced into line according to age. Her and her two sisters were separated from their mother and taken to a concentration camp, where their job was to sew buttons on German uniforms. If they didn't finish, guards would have German Shepherds would chase them.
Be the first to comment on this story