us-005578-irn520846-irn523472
biographical history: Pola Kaplan (later Anna Cheszes) was born in Białystok, Poland, in 1940, though she is not sure of the exact date. Her mother was Dora Szapiro (?) Kaplan; her father’s name is not known, but he worked as a printer. In September 1939, the Germans occupied Poland. Her parents fled Łódź for Bialystok. Not long after the Germans invaded western Poland, the Soviet Union occupied eastern Poland, where Bialystok was located. In the spring of 1941, the Germans launched a surprise attack on the Soviet Union and by that June, had occupied Białystok. German killing squads, assisted by the local population, launched a pogrom to eliminate the Jewish community. At least 1000 Jewish men were forced inside the great synagogue which was then set on fire and burned to the ground. Anna’s father was either killed in the fire or in Pietrasze in July when over 3000 Jewish men, the intelligentsia of the town, were marched out to a field and shot. That August, Anna and her mother were forced into the Jewish ghetto established by the Germans in Białystok. In 1943, Dora arranged a false identity for Anna as a Christian child and planned to get her smuggled out of the ghetto. She knew a Jewish electrician from Łódź, Michał Kempinski, who had a false identity as a non-Jewish Pole and was able to travel in and out of the ghetto. In May, they bribed a German guard to look the other way and Kempinski snuck Anna out through a hole in the barbed wire fence. Kempinski was married to Helena, a Polish Christian. Helena’s brother, Tadeusz Strzelczyk, and his Jewish wife, Madzia (Michla) Jozefowicz, took in three year old Pola and decided to raise her as their own daughter. They secured false papers for the child and a friend of theirs, Stanisława Horodko, arranged to have Pola, now named Anna Strzelczyk, registered in the Christian baptism records for June 8, 1943, in Białystok and named herself Anna’s godmother. The Kempinski’s and the Strzelczyk’s had escaped German occupied Łódź for Bialystok in the…
record resource extent: folder 1
has or had identifier: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn520846-irn523472/alternateIDs/1
type: RecordSet
title: Anna Cheszes papers
results or resulted from: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/units/us-005578-irn520846-irn523472/acquisitions/1
has or had some members with language: deu
has beginning date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1940-01-01
scope and content: Contains photographs and documents relating to Anna Cheszes' experiences as a hidden child in Kowale, Poland, during the Holocaust.
has or had some members with language: pol
has or had holder: us-005578
is or was included in: us-005578-irn520846
has record set type: Item
has or had subject: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/vocabularies/ehri-terms/701
identifier: irn523472
has end date: http://lod.ehri-project-test.eu/dates/1945-12-31
archival history: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum