Bella and Hermann Zucker papers

Bella and Hermann Zucker papers 

Bella Zucker (1925-2007) was born Bella Kuligowska in Serock (near Warsaw) to bicycle mechanic Bezakel Kuligowski and Chaya Kuligowska (née Cohen). She had five brothers: Abraham, Israel, Joseph, Benjamin, and Vigdor. After the German invasion, the family was forcibly moved to the Biała Podlaska ghetto. Benjamin was in Russia at the time, and Bella never saw him again. In 1940, she hid as a Catholic with a farmer and his wife until her brother Abraham asked her to return to the ghetto in 1941. By that time her brother Israel had died from heart problems and her parents and brother Vigdor had been transferred to Treblinka or Majdanek, where they perished. Bella last saw Abraham at Biała Podlaska and was transferred that fall to the ghetto at Brześć nad Bugiem (now Brest, Belarus), which was the last place she saw her brother Joseph. She escaped Brześć nad Bugiem and hid in a nearby farm, again pretending to be Catholic. She eventually obtained papers under a false identity, moved to Warsaw in the fall of 1942, applied for farm work in Germany, and moved to Langenwolschendorf (in Greiz) in 1943. After the village was liberated by the Americans in April 1945, she was evacuated to the displaced persons camp at Landsberg. In 1947 she married Hermann Zucker (1916-1992), born in Piaski (near Lublin). The couple immigrated to the United States in 1950 with their young daughter and settled in Chicago. 

Bella and Hermann Zucker papers