Gina Gotfryd collection

Gina Gotfryd collection 

Gina Greenberg Gotfryd was born in 1932 in Radom, Poland to Cyna and Shamai Greenberg. Gina’s father, Shamai, was employed as a businessman for a bus company. In 1939, Gina was in the second grade when the Nazis invaded Poland, and the town of Radom soon changed as anti-Semitic laws took hold. Jews were regularly rounded up for hard labor and had their possessions confiscated. Shamai was able to avoid these round ups by working as a mechanic for the Gestapo. In 1940, the Greenbergs were forced to leave their apartment and live with another family, before being forced into the ghetto in 1941. The family lived in constant fear of deportations, especially after Gina’s aunt and cousins were deported (it was later discovered the destination was Treblinka, where they were murdered). To avoid these deportations, Gina hid at her great uncle’s tannery, and Cyna worked at the munitions plant. This plan worked only for a while, however, as the Greenbergs were eventually all sent to a labor camp in Pionki in 1943. They worked hard labor until June 1944, when they were all packed into a cattle car and sent to Auschwitz. The family was quickly separated and Cyna and Gina were placed in the women’s barracks, where they continued to perform hard labor. Against all odds, Gina and her mother survived, and after the Russians liberated the camp, eventually made their way home to Radom. Months later, her father discovered that the two had survived, and joined them in Radom as well. The family had hopes of moving to America, and went to Paris in an attempt to gain visas. They were advised to settle in the Stuttgart displaced persons camp while they waited, and lived there for three years. Gina attended school at the camp until the family left for the United States in February 1949. In 1952, she married Bernard Gotfryd, a survivor from her hometown of Radom. 

Gina Gotfryd collection