us-005578-irn512965-irn520826
type: RecordSet
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn512965-irn520826/alternateIDs/1
title: Diploma
identifier: irn520826
date: 1950 July 26
scope and content: School diploma, printed form in black ink, with handwritten sections in blue ink, from St. John's Wood Synagogue school in London, issued to the donor.
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…
record resource extent: 1 diploma,
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
has record set type: Item
has or had holder: us-005578
has or had some members with language: eng
is or was included in: us-005578-irn512965
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn512965-irn520826/acquisitions/1