Thread by @Israel

🧵"Hanechka"- That's what my friends & family called me as a young girl in Biala Rawska, Poland.

I was one of two Jewish children from Biala Rawska to survive the #Holocaust nearly 80 years ago.

Today I'm sharing my story on @Israel.

Ask me questions using #HannahsStory.

I was born Hannah Hershkowitz in Biala Rawska, Poland where Jews & Poles lived together for centuries.

My parents Hershel & Zisel were respected members of our town. My Polish neighbor Marisha was my best friend. I had a wonderful childhood until my life was turned upside down.

I was 4 when the Germans arrived in our town.

First the curfews started.

Then the yellow stars, which I noticed one evening sewn into my mother's black & father's gray coat.

📸 "I Wish I Was a Butterfly" by Hannah Gofrit

#HannahsStory

After that the Jews were ordered to move into a Ghetto built on the Jewish side of town where my grandmother & aunts lived.

Jews were not allowed to leave the ghetto.

My mother was a talented seamstress who had many German and Polish customers. This kept us out of the ghetto.

Many of her customers would pay her in food.

Every day we cooked a large pot of soup which we would bring to the entrance of the ghetto and distribute to starving Jews.

My father traveled to and from the ghetto and helped Jews sell their belongings for food.

#HannahsStory

As the months went by the situation worsened for the Jews in our town.

In September of 1941, I got ready for my first day of school. I was six years old.

When I arrived at the school the guard stopped me and said you can’t study here. You are a Jew.

📸 Me around age six

I didn’t know what being Jewish meant, but I decided in that moment:

“If I am a Jew, I am a proud Jew, and I will will not cry,” and this is the message I took with me throughout the #Holocaust.

#HannahsStory

One evening, German soldiers knocked on our door & told us that all the Jews had to meet at the school building.

They started reading names off the list.

My grandmother & aunts were called and climbed onto a wagon.

We never saw them again. They were killed at #Treblinka.

The only Jews left in the town were people that the Germans needed.

One night my father came home & said we had to leave.

My best friend’s father, who was Polish told my father that we were on a list to be deported. We ran deep into the forest & came to a farmhouse.

We went to the pigpen & hid under a stack of hay.

A friend of our neighbor, brought us food & hid us as long as we could pay.

Winter started & it was freezing, but I felt like the luckiest girl in the world because I had my parents.

📸 My father of blessed memory

#IHMD2022

One morning the owner of the house rushed in and started yelling that the Germans are hunting Jews in the forest.

She started screaming that the Germans will find us and kill her because I will cry. I knew I wouldn’t cry.

"Remember?" I told myself. "You're a proud Jew."

Her son put me in a potato sack & carried me away until the Germans left. Eventually, I returned to my parents.

The Germans continued to hunt for Jews in the forest.

Our neighbor Moshalkova was able to obtain fake passports for my mother & I, but not my father.

#HannahsStory

My mother told my father that we would not leave until he was able to get a passport.

He insisted on joining the Polish partisans in the forest. He told us that when the war was over he would come get us.

We never saw him again. He was caught and murdered in the forest.

We escaped to #Warsaw where no one knew we were Jews and were hidden by the Skovroneck family.

Mr & Mrs Skovroneck had two daughters Hanka and Basha who were in school.

For two years we lived with them.

For two years I did not leave the building.

For two years I did not walk around the apartment.

For two years I did not go near a window.

I sat by the door listening to people going up and down the stairs, alerting the Skovronecks if I heard German.

The apartment was close to the Warsaw Ghetto. Mrs Skovroneck said that in the market there was talk that something was happening in the Ghetto.

One night we heard explosions & knew that the few Jews left in the ghetto were fighting the Germans but that they didn't have a chance.

The air-raid sirens went off (the Germans were bombing the ghetto) & the building tenants went down to the shelter. My mother & I stayed in the apartment.

I looked out the window & saw bombs falling. I was in shock.

We later found out that not one Jew was left in the ghetto.

No one knew that my Mother & I were in the Skovroneck’s apartment.

When guests came we hid in a closet. We could not move or make any noise.

I would pretend that I was a little elf in the forest & imagined myself exploring nature near my village. We stayed like this for hours.

One day we heard Germans in the building.

My mother and I ran to the fifth floor and prepared to jump to our deaths.

Hannah Skovroneck stopped us and took us to the roof of the building.

We stayed there until the Germans left and we lived.

I was ten years old when the war ended.

We went back to our village and walked past our old house.
Everything looked the same, but a Polish family sat at our table as if we had never lived there.

We were alone.

My father was gone.

#HolocastMemorialDay

(Me at age 10)

Only 35 Jewish adults and 2 children from our village survived.

I was one of them.

The next morning we left Biala Ravska forever.

(My book at the Biala Rawska memorial in Treblinka)

We eventually moved to Lodz. It was a Friday & my mother & I passed a home with a set of candles in the window.

"It's Shabbat" my mother said.

We knocked & a Jewish woman opened the door.

My mother burst into tears & hugged her.

We were once again with other Jews.

My mother married Yosef Kupershmit from Lodz, who survived Auschwitz & lost his wife and daughter. A year later my brother Avraham was born.

I joined a Jewish youth group “Ha Chalutz” and decided that the only home for me was Israel.

(Yosef, my mother & Avraham at my wedding)

On January 29, 1949 we arrived at the Haifa Port in Israel.

I knew I was home.

I moved to Tel Aviv & studied nursing.

I married Yitzchak Gofrit (may his memory be a blessing) & gave birth to Ofer.

My mother Zisel lived a long life & kept sewing until she could no longer see.

The Skovroneck family was honored by @YadVashem as a Righteous Among the Nations.

I eventually wrote a children's book about my experience which was published by Yad Vashem in six languages.

I have shared my story with thousands of people around the world.

I was also the first #Holocaust survivor to speak at Zikaron Basalon (Remembering in the Living Room), an organization through which hundreds of Holocaust survivors share their stories with young people in intimate group settings.

#HolocaustMemorialDay

zikaronbasalon.org

Today, I am 86 years old, live in Tel Aviv and am a proud mother to Ofer, grandmother to Shani, Gal, Ben & Leah and great grandmother to Adam and Eilah.

Biala Ravska will always stay with me.

Am Yisrael Chai.

You can ask me questions 👇& using the #HannahsStory.

Thank you.