In the span of three years, Sara Zyskind lost her entire family to the horrors of the Łódź ghetto.

After her mother died in the ghetto, 14-year-old Sara moved in with her aunt Cesia. On January 16, 1942, the German authorities began the first wave of deportations of Jews from the ghetto.

 Cesia and her five children were among this wave of deportees murdered at Chełmno killing center. 

In her diary, Sara recorded the devastating scenes she witnessed. “I saw two wagons full of little children drive past the open gate,” she wrote.

 “The children were shrieking at the top of their lungs. They were calling out for their mothers.”

By the end of September 1942, German authorities had deported approximately 70,000 Jews and about 4,300 Roma to Chełmno. 

Sara only narrowly avoided deportation by hiding with her father, Anszel, in an abandoned house. Eventually, Anszel died of starvation during Passover 1943. 

Sara went on to survive Auschwitz-Birkenau and Mittelsteine, a subcamp of Gross Rosen.

 After her liberation, she returned to Łódź. She met and married fellow Łódź survivor Eliezer Zyskind, and the couple immigrated to Israel.

Photo: USHMM, gift of Eliezer Zyskind

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