Klass was eight years old, on holiday with her family, when news of the Nazi invasion came over the radio. The family returned home to Lodz, but was soon forced to move to Warsaw, when the Germans occupied their building. Given one hour to take what they needed, Klass’s parents sewed jewellery and valuables into their clothing, preparing for an uncertain future.
Klass lived in the notorious Warsaw Ghetto until the 1943 uprising, when she made her escape to Warsaw’s non-Jewish side, where her father bribed the guards to release her and paid a Christian woman to hide Klass in her house. He visited her there – until one day he stopped coming, and Klass never saw him again. Aged 12, she was forced to sell soap and shampoo on the street to survive.
“The will to live is very great,” she said. “One has to put up with all sorts of difficulties and threats. But only when you are faced with death do you realise how strong the will to live is.”
When news of liberation came, Klass, then 14, was living on the farm where her mother worked. Hearing little international news, they were unaware that liberation was close until Allied forces arrived. Klass and her mother returned to Lodz, but were unable to recover their home and possessions. Mother and daughter waited for Klass’s father, but he did not return, and she never discovered what happened to him.
“It was a bittersweet time – we were liberated, but we were finding out how much we had lost: my father, other close family members, our home and possessions – and my youth and years of schooling,” she said.
Following the war, Klass was separated again from her mother, sent to England through an initiative to remove orphaned and semi-orphaned Jewish children from Poland. Her mother emigrated to Israel, and it was years before they saw each other again.
In 1950, Klass moved to South Africa, before emigrating to Israel, where she met her husband. Returning to South Africa, the couple brought up two children and grandchildren, all of whom live overseas. Klass is now a resident of Inyoni Creek retirement village.
“I started a new life in South Africa. I had some happiness over the years, and am happy that I could establish a family. Life has to go on,” she said.
Although Klass long avoided describing her experiences, she started to explore her memories through a Holocaust survivors group and a project to educate school pupils about her experiences. Eventually returning to Poland in 2000 alongside Jewish people from around the world to attend the March of the Living from Auschwitz to Birkenau, and on a trip to Lodz two years ago, she found her country had changed beyond recognition.
Despite everything, however, Klass said she has come to terms with what happened to her.
“You can’t change what happened; you have to accept things. But it should never happen again.”
-
-
-
-
