us-005578-irn512965-irn520817
is or was included in: us-005578-irn512965
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn512965-irn520817/alternateIDs/1
has record set type: Item
conditions of use: No restrictions on use
scope and content: Holy card acquired by 6 year old Selma Scharzwald in May 1943 when she was living in hiding with her mother as a Polish Catholic under the name Zofia Tymejko. She received the card during a trip to Czestochowa, Poland, when she visited the church at Jasna Góra (Klasztor Paulinów). The trip was organized by her mother's employer, the Regional Agricultural Cooperative in Busko Zdroj. Zofia and her mother, Laura, escaped from the ghetto in German occupied Lvov, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine) after her father was shot by the Gestapo in 1942. They adopted false identities as Catholics and lived briefly in Krakow, then moved to Busko Zdroj. Selma attended Catholic school and had her First Communion after the city was liberated by the Soviet Army in January 1945. They emigrated to England in 1948 after there were violent anti-Jewish riots in the area. That was when Zofia learned that she was Jewish; news that shocked her after her upbringing in an antisemitic environment where she had been taught to hate Jews.
archival history: The holy card was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2002 by Dr. Sophie Turner-Zaretsky.
biographical history: Selma Schwarzwald was born on September 2, 1937, in Lvov, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine), to Daniel and Laura Litwak Schwarzwald. Her father had a successful timber export business. Her mother had studied economics at the Lvov Academy of Commerce before her marriage. Lvov was in eastern Poland which was occupied by the Soviet Union in September 1939. It was then occupied by Germany following their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Daniel obtained a job as a guard in a hostel for Organization Todt construction workers, a Nazi civil and military engineering group. His work permit provided a little protection for the family, but in November 1941, they were forced into the Lvov ghetto, along with Laura's parents, Josef and Mina Litwak, and three of her siblings, Emanuel, Adela, and Fryda. Her brother, Edek, had emigrated in the early 1930s to Palestine, where he died of typhus in 1935. In March 1942, the Germans began to deport ghetto residents to the Belzec killing center. Laura watched the deportations from their apartment and one day, a Polish landlady suggested that Laura and Selma should flee and seek refuge in a nearby Polish resort town. She supplied them with a Christian Bible and prayer book to give them cover. In August, Selma’s grandparents were deported to Belzec. By this time, the ghetto was nearly empty. Daniel worked to secure false documents for then, but with the deportations so frequent, a hiding place was arranged for Laura and Selma. They hid in a platform under the roof of an adjacent house. Laura had to throw Sophie across an airshaft to someone who would catch her on the other side; then Laura would jump across. Daniel obtained a birth certificate for Selma and a marriage document for Laura. He also obtained false papers for Adela and Fryda. On September 1, Daniel went to the Judenrat [Jewish Council] to make different living arrangements. But while he was there, the Gestapo arrived to arrest the entire membership of the Council in reprisal of the dea…
has or had some members with language: pol
conditions of access: No restrictions on access
title: Our Lady of Czestochowa holy card received by a young Jewish girl living in hiding as a Catholic in Poland
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn512965-irn520817/acquisitions/1
has or had holder: us-005578
type: RecordSet
date: 1943 May
identifier: irn520817