Irene Hass Shapiro collection

Irene Hass Shapiro collection 

Irene Hass Shapiro collection 

folder 1 

Contains the donor's recollections of the German invasion of Bialystok (Poland) in September, 1939, the Soviet occupation which occurred shortly thereafter, and the German return on June 27, 1941; the burning of the Jewish quarter; the mass executions of Jewish men; her transfer into the ghetto on August 1, 1941, along with 60,000 other Jews, where she stayed until the ghetto was liquidated in 1943; her transfer, with her mother, to Blizhyn (Poland); her transfer, again with her mother, to Auschwitz concentration camp in May 1944; her transfer to a munitions work camp at Lippstadt (Germany); and her mother's death from exhaustion and starvation in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Irene and her sister, who became a Christian ward of a Polish family, were the only family members who survived. Two black and white photographs and a fragment of a third black and white photograph of members of the Hass and Finkelstein families, as well as a captioned photocopy of each photograph, are included.