United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
The Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter papers are arranged as a single series.
Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter papers consist of Pesl’s handwritten Yiddish memoir about her life in Rożyszcze, Poland, her experiences in the Rożyszcze ghetto and in hiding during the Holocaust, and her postwar life with her husband Izak Dichter and their daughter Klara in the Eschwege displaced persons camp in Germany before they immigrated to Israel in 1948. The papers also include a photograph of Pesl and Izak, a photograph of the couple with their daughter and Izak’s mother, and a photograph of Pesl and Klara with other survivors at Eschwege.
Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter papers
Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter was born in December 1923 in Rozyszcze, Poland (now Roz︠h︡yshche, Ukraine). The Melamed family was forced into a ghetto in late 1941, together with about 4,000 other Jews. They suffered terrible hunger and slave labor. Pesl’s father, Motl Melamed, was murdered by the Germans in the spring of 1942. The ghetto was liquidated in August 1942, and most of the residents were shot at a mass grave. Pesl Pola escaped the massacre because she was in a neighboring village where a Polish woman had hired her to knit. She hid in the forest until liberation in 1944 and then married Izak Dichter. Izak was born January 15, 1911, in Łuck, Poland (now Lutsk, Ukraine) and lived in Trojanowka (now Troyanivka, Ukraine). Their daughter Klara (Carmela) was born in December 1945 in Wałbrzych, Poland, and the family moved to the Eschwege displaced persons camp. They immigrated to Israel in 1948. Izak's mother Basia Dichter also survived.
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