Malka Baran Testimony

Marvin J. Pringle

Mr. Neuburger

Eng Comp 102-117

14 March 2013

Holocaust Testimony

“Malka Baran”

This is the testimony of survivor, Malka Baran, formerly Klin, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Baran was born in Warsaw, Poland on January 30, 1927.  When she was a year old, the family moved to Chestohova, Poland where they made their lives. She is the oldest of two children and they live a quiet life where her father owns a print shop in the building where and her mother is a homemaker. She speaks of her early life of attending a mostly private school where she loved reading.  The school was all Jewish and they spoke Polish and Hebrew.  While growing up she stated she didn’t experience any anti-Semitism, but knew it existed; the family didn’t associate with any non-Jewish Poles. Her life changed in 1939 when the German occupation of Poland began.  The Jewish population in Chestohova was ordered to wear stars to distinguish Poles and Jews.  Their city was turned into a ghetto and they were made to work for the Germans. One night, she and her brother were awakened by her parents and were told to put on cloths in layers. This was the last night she saw her mother and was traumatized by this loss for a long time.  She said, because of losing her mother, her memory of events is spotty from this instance.  She worked in a factory until liberated by the Russians. She doesn’t know how she survived her ordeal, maybe because she was so passive and didn’t make any attempts at resistance. She met her future husband in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp while in Austria.  She eventually moved to Israel where she became an educator working with children.  She married and eventually moved to New York and continued working as an educator until she retired after 35 years.

Two quotes by Mrs. Baran:

“we didn’t go freely”

“the Germans did it slowly and slyly”