Malka Baran-Survivor 2

Holocaust survivor Malka Baran was born January 30, 1927 in Warsaw, Poland. She is the daughter of Ezah and Bella Baran. The small family of three moved to Chestahova, Poland ten months after her birth. Malka was a part of small middle class family. The apartment where they lived was small, having only one room and the family’s printing business in another room in the building. After moving here her brother was born, making a cramped family even tighter. Up to the invasion of Poland she lived a good life, playing games, reading & going to a private school. She remembers when the Nazi’s came to Poland they had to stop going to school, unless they snuck to the teachers house for secret lessons and it was a very quick invasion only taking one day. One day shortly before sunrise her parents woke her and her brother up quickly telling them to layer on clothing. They all dressed very quickly, stashing things on their body, so they wouldn’t be found. Just as her father had put the final coin into his waist line a SS man came in shouting” out! Out!” They were thrown into the middle of the street, put in lines and marched to selection. Malka’s mother was separated from the rest of the family, although her father was with his children he still tried to switch. Malka’s father, brother and she were placed in work camps. After this memory it fades into darkness, but she does know that she was the only surviving member of her intermediate family. The work camp she was placed in was called Hassup, her job was to separate the repairable ammunition from the in-repairable. At Hassup she became ill with an itching disease and later typhus. The living conditions were horrible and continued to get worse until the day that the Russian soldiers invaded. During liberation she met a Russian-Jewish soldier who took a special interest in her. He wanted to marry and start a family with her, but his canton was moving to another part of the country. Malka and another friend went with the soldiers in an open truck. One night whole they were sleeping they felt something drop on them, they woke suddenly to find nothing but dead silence. The next morning they started crying after seeing that a blanket was placed on them in their sleep. A couple months later she finally reached her soldier. She never married him or started a family because after reaching him she never saw him again. Malka ended up becoming a teacher to children whose parents had died in the holocaust. When she came to Israel she found a cousin from Poland, she also became a preschool teacher, and received a scholarship for a teaching career in Jerusalem. After her and her husband married they moved to America to raise their family. “I look back and wonder on my birthday where would I be where would I be?" - Malka Baran “I loved walking up to gentlemen asking for the time and then going back to the same man to ask for the time again, oh the games we played as children.”- Malka Baran