us-005578-irn36091-irn78823
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn36091-irn78823/alternateIDs/1
title: Birthday letter with a drawing of a girl with flowers and a toy boat created by a former hidden child
identifier: irn78823
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
type: RecordSet
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn36091-irn78823/acquisitions/1
record resource extent: overall: Height: 6.875 inches (17.463 cm) | Width: 5.625 inches (14.288 cm)
scope and content: Letter with birthday greetings and a drawing of a girl with flowers and a toy sailboat created by Ilona Goldman for her father after the war. The letter tells of her stay in summer camp where she shares a room with three girls and has a young woman as camp counselor. Ilona lived in hiding in Poland from 1942-1944. In spring 1942, at age four, she was separated from her parents and placed with the Polish peasant family of Hania Seremet, who agreed to hide her for a fee. Drawings were the only way for the talkative child, not yet able to write, to communicate with her parents. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Ilona with her parents, Salomon and Gusta, fled Krakow for Soviet controlled Lvov (Lviv, Ukraine). When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the family was forced into the Jewish ghetto where Salomon worked as an accountant at a meat factory owned by the Wehrmacht. In spring 1942, fearing the liquidation of the ghetto, Salomon arranged a hiding place for them outside the ghetto with a former employee, Jozef Jozak. However, he would not hide Ilona because it would be too hard to conceal a lively young girl. Ilona was smuggled to the countryside and placed in hiding as a Christian child with the Seremets. After 6 months, Salomon could no longer pay for her care, so Ilona was brought back to live in their hiding place, without the knowledge of the Jozak family. Ilona had to stay most of this time locked in a closet with only her drawings and the medical textbooks left by a previous tenant. The family lived in hiding until the Soviet Army liberated the city in July 1944. When the war ended in May 1945, they returned to Krakow.
date: approximately 1947
is or was included in: us-005578-irn36091
has record set type: Item
has or had some members with language: pol
has or had holder: us-005578
history: Ilona (Alona) Goldman (later Frankel) was born on June 27, 1937, to Gusta and Salomon Goldman in Krakow, Poland. Salomon was born in 1901 in Bochnia and had two brothers. Gusta was born in 1904 in Oswieczim and had five brothers and sisters. Both her parents were communists, an association that was illegal at the time. Salomon and Gusta married in 1936 and live in a lavish villa Salomon had built in Bochnia. He ran a successful construction supply business and the family lived comfortably, with servants and a nanny. In September 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland. The family fled to Lwow (Lviv, Ukraine) in the Russian-occupied section of eastern Poland. Her father worked as the chief accountant in a tannery/slaughterhouse factory. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union. The Jews in Lwow were forced into the ghetto. The factory where her father worked came under the control of the SS, but he retained his job. The manager, Herr Knaup, designated Salomon an essential employee which offered some protection from deportation. He also allowed the family to live in an alcove attached to the factory. Salomon would hide leftover blood and entrails from the slaughterhouse for the other Jewish workers. They would drink the coagulated blood right away and wrap the entrails around their bodies under their clothes to smuggle back into the ghetto. At some point, the Goldmans had to move into the ghetto. During one round-up, Gusta and Ilona were placed on a transport for the camps, but someone told Salomon and the boss from the factory, Bulani, came and got them released. In March 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the ghetto to Belzec extermination camp. At some point, Salomon was arrested and taken to Janowska camp. He was tortured for two days, and then released. Salomon constructed a hiding place in their room that you reached by crawling through the stove. There was an aktion to clear the ghetto of children and when Gusta found Ilona, they hid there with several…
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
physical characterisitics and technical requirements: Offwhite paper with 13 lines of cursive Polish handwriting in blue ink with a signature written vertically on the left side of a central vertical fold. On the right side is a horizontal image in blue ink of a smiling girl with short, dark hair in a short-sleeve button shirt tucked and belted into very short shorts, with ankle socks and shoes. She holds a bouquet of flowers in her extended right hand and a toy sailboat in her extended left hand. There is a half page of cursive Polish text on the reverse front, left side, end of letter, cursive, blue ink : caly statek całusów od / Ilonki [A boat full of kisses / Ilonki] front, image caption, hand printed, blue ink : TATUSIU W DNIU TWYCH URODZIN ŻYCZĘ CI WIELE RADOSCI I SZCZESCIA / ILONA [Dear Daddy On your birthday I send you wishes for much joy and happiness / Ilona] back, top of letter, cursive, blue ink : P[?] Ukochany [?] [?] Beloved[?]
history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009 by Alona Frankel.