Terms
& places.

The German head of the Łódź Ghetto Administration (Gettoverwaltung) from 1940 to 1944. A coffee merchant from Bremen rather than an SS officer, Biebow deliberately kept the ghetto outside SS control and profited enormously from its forced labor. Nina met him briefly inside the factory — "a very big man, very tall," she remembers — in a situation that wasn't particularly threatening. He was tried by a Polish court after the war and executed in 1947.

German playwright whose The Threepenny Opera (1928), composed with Kurt Weill, was already playing again on the Berlin stage when Nina passed through the city in 1946. Seeing the production was one of her most vivid memories of that bombed-out, occupied city — culture resurfacing amid ruins.

The woman who adopted Nina in the Łódź Ghetto after her parents died. Nina first saw her in the hallway of the Ressort — "a strikingly beautiful woman with flowing black hair." Luba had been searching, at Rumkowski's urging, for an orphan to take in, and through Mr. Levkovitch she found Nina. An intelligent woman, she told Nina early on: "If you were my daughter, I would beat you. But you're not, so I can't do that. Always remember: your mother wouldn't have done that." Nina and Luba survived Auschwitz and Halbstadt together. After liberation Luba stayed behind in Poland to arrange emigration to Canada, to her late husband's family.

A German official who served under Hans Biebow in the Łódź Ghetto administration. Nina names him alongside Biebow as one of the Germans her adoptive father dealt with directly.

Nina's paternal grandparents, who died many years before she was born. Nina never knew them. Their names are all she recalls.

Nina's mother. Born in Kielce into a family that included rabbis. Small and thin, she wore her hair in a large bun. A graduate of a Polish school in the era before Polish independence, she read to Nina in Polish, Russian, and German, translating Gogol and Lermontov aloud from the leather-bound volumes that lined the family's shelves. She sang Nina songs from the Polish uprising of 1905, and was rarely apart from her. She died in the ghetto hospital after surgery for breast cancer. Watching the nurses care for her mother is what first drew Nina to nursing.

Nina's father. A textile merchant in Łódź, tall and thin, elegantly dressed, with glasses. A cultured man whose home was always full of guests and friends. Nina credits him with raising her "to believe in people" and to see education as a good in itself. In 1933 he returned from a business trip to Berlin with the first banana Nina ever tasted — and with a darkened account of the Reichstag fire, whose meaning she was too young to grasp. He died in the Łódź Ghetto of complications from pneumonia. Nina was thirteen.

Łódź physician whose private clinic Nina was born at on April 20, 1928. The building had a statue of a stork beneath it. As a child, Nina's parents took her on walks past the clinic and pointed out the spot.

The aunt of a childhood friend of Nina's, and one of the few doctors in her ghetto circle. A striking redhead — "in Poland, with a name like that… as children we really admired her." Nina reencountered her in the chaos of Auschwitz, where the SS shaved Hadassah's head in a way that left one long red strand. Given the chance to serve as a barracks doctor, she promised to return for Nina after evening roll call. She did not return — her block was transferred that day to Bergen-Belsen, where she died of typhus.

The younger sister of Nina's elementary-school friend. Janka died in the Łódź Ghetto in the final days before deportation. Her mother, reunited with Nina in Auschwitz, kept saying how fortunate little Janka had been to have died before reaching that place. Her mother, too, died at Bergen-Belsen.

A Jewish innkeeper and cymbal player in Pan Tadeusz whose musical performance invokes Polish history and freedom. Mickiewicz portrays him as a Polish patriot — the point Nina tried, in half-Hebrew and half-Polish, to make to her Cyprus ulpan examiner when he asked about Mickiewicz's attitude toward Jews.

The USC Shoah Foundation interviewer who recorded Nina's testimony in Tel Aviv on October 29, 1998. Her questions structure the entire account.

Manager of the Schneider Ressort in the Łódź Ghetto. He recognized Nina's intelligence, promoted her to lead a small collar-embroidery workshop, and introduced her to Luba Chesnowitz. Nina tutored his twin daughters after work. When the ghetto was liquidated, only he survived from his immediate family — his wife and both twins perished at Auschwitz.

Mr. Levkovitch's young daughters, seven or eight years old. Nina had been fascinated by twins since early childhood and took it upon herself to teach the girls to read, write, and hear stories. They were hidden during the Sperre and survived that selection, but both were murdered at Auschwitz after the ghetto was liquidated.

Floor supervisor at the Schneider Ressort (the tailoring factory that made German army uniforms). An older man with glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He asked Nina if she knew how to sew, discovered she did, and assigned her to button-sewing — and later, after she proved able to calculate thread lengths for an embroidered collar, referred her to the factory manager. His small kindness set in motion the chain of events that led to her adoption.

The SS physician at Auschwitz-Birkenau responsible for selections on the arrival ramp and for cruel medical experiments on prisoners, particularly twins. Nina passed through his selection in August 1944: "A very handsome man, very aristocratic-looking, with glasses." After the war, Mengele escaped to South America and died in Brazil in 1979 without ever facing justice.

Poland's most celebrated poet and the central figure of Polish Romanticism. His epic Pan Tadeusz (1834) — Poland's national epic — closes with a famous scene in which the Jewish innkeeper Jankiel plays the cymbal to summon the hope of Polish freedom. In Nina's Cyprus ulpan entrance exam, the examiner asked whether she knew Mickiewicz and what his attitude toward Jews had been — a question Nina answered, in halting Hebrew and Polish, by pointing to Jankiel.

A Hungarian Kapo at Auschwitz. Nina did not know her personally. Her name ("Little Red") hints at one of the camp's calculated cruelties: the SS deliberately assigned Hungarian functionaries to supervise Polish prisoners, and Polish functionaries to supervise Hungarian prisoners, to prevent any shared language from softening the enforcement.

The Lagerälteste (barracks elder) who took charge of Nina's block at Auschwitz-Birkenau (Block 25, Camp B-2C). Originally from Tel Aviv, she had come to visit Krakow before the war and been trapped by the invasion. Sent to Auschwitz in 1942, she survived long enough to become a block elder. When Nina brought back a pot of soup on her first morning, Yehudit pulled her aside, studied her, and told her deputy: "You see — she'll make it through Auschwitz." The extra ladle of soup she reserved for Nina afterward was likely one of the reasons Nina lived.

The Judenälteste — "Elder of the Jews" — of the Łódź Ghetto from 1940 until its liquidation in August 1944. A former industrialist, he pursued a strategy of "salvation through labor," believing that making the ghetto indispensable to the German war effort would save its inhabitants. Historians still debate his choices. His September 1942 "Give me your children" speech, delivered on the eve of the Sperre, is among the most harrowing documents of the Holocaust. It was Rumkowski's call for ghetto families to adopt children from the orphanage that led Luba Chesnowitz to search for an orphan — and to find Nina. Rumkowski was deported on the final transport to Auschwitz and murdered there.

A major Hebrew poet known for his ballads, sonnets, and nature poetry. Nina's second Hebrew lesson in the Cyprus ulpan was a Tchernichovsky ballad — indecipherable to her at that stage, until the two boys from Bnei Akiva sitting on either side of her helped her write out the Hebrew letters.

Hebrew: "Sons of Akiva." The largest religious-Zionist youth movement in the world, founded in 1929, combining Torah study with commitment to settlement in the Land of Israel. Two Bnei Akiva boys sat on either side of Nina in her Cyprus ulpan and helped her write her first assignments in Hebrew.

Hebrew: "Flight." The organized and largely clandestine movement, active 1944 – 1948, that helped hundreds of thousands of Jewish survivors cross postwar European borders toward Palestine. Nina worked as a guide on the Bricha routes between the Soviet and British zones of Germany, leading groups of up to 200 people at night through fields.

The secret state police of Nazi Germany, responsible for investigating and prosecuting enemies of the regime. Nina mentions the Gestapo in two contexts: Łódź Jews who collaborated with them, and the Polish neighbors who betrayed her Warsaw cousins to them.

Hebrew: "The Defense." The Jewish paramilitary organization in British Mandate Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which became the core of the Israel Defense Forces. In Cyprus, Haganah emissaries trained Nina on the Bren and Sten guns; she quickly moved from the basic course to the instructors' course and became a first-aid instructor.

Hebrew: "The Young Guard." A socialist-Zionist youth movement founded in 1913, combining pioneering settlement with Marxist ideology. In postwar Germany, Nina was sent by the movement to open a chapter at a DP camp, and later the movement decided her group should continue on to Italy en route to Palestine.

A Christian denomination whose members were persecuted under the Nazi regime; approximately 10,000 were imprisoned in concentration camps for refusing military service and refusing to swear allegiance to Hitler. Identified by a purple triangle in the camps. The American family who led Nina to record her testimony were part of a Witness community that had helped Holocaust survivors in the United States.

German: "Elder of the Jews." The Nazi-appointed head of the Judenrat. In Łódź, this was Chaim Rumkowski.

German: "Jewish Council." The administrative body Nazi occupiers required Jewish communities to establish within each ghetto. The Judenrat was compelled to implement Nazi orders — including compiling deportation lists — while trying to maintain basic services. In Łódź the council issued the public notices Nina recalls seeing on ghetto walls.

Prisoner functionaries appointed by the SS to supervise forced labor and other prisoners. The term likely derives from the Italian capo (head). Some Kapos were brutal, others protected fellow prisoners — the position forced impossible moral compromises. After the war, survivors were sometimes met with the question "Were you a Kapo?" — Nina describes hearing it from Israelis in 1948, an echo of the postwar suspicion that survival itself required guilt.

Hebrew: "Kibbutz on the Way." A communal-living arrangement organized in DP camps and staging points by Zionist emissaries to prepare young survivors for emigration to Palestine — a preparatory kibbutz, distinct from the agricultural kibbutzim established in the Land of Israel. Members lived together, studied Hebrew, and waited.

German: "Camp Elder." A prisoner appointed by the SS to administer a camp or barracks, the top rung of the prisoner hierarchy. Yehudit Reis held this role in Nina's Auschwitz block.

A teacher-training institution named for Pinhas Rutenberg (1879 – 1942), a Zionist leader and founder of the Palestine Electric Corporation. The seminar sent teachers from Palestine to the Cyprus detention camps to run intensive ulpan courses. Nina took its six-week Hebrew course, studying from morning until ten at night.

The Nazi paramilitary organization that ran the concentration camp system and staffed its guards. Nina encountered SS officers inside the Łódź Ghetto factory and was guarded by SS women at Halbstadt.

United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. An international agency established in 1943 to provide aid to countries liberated from Axis powers. In the DP camps, UNRRA supplied food, clothing, and basic services. "UNRRA would send us rags," Nina recalls of the Cyprus years, "but who cared?"

The Institute for Visual History and Education, founded by filmmaker Steven Spielberg in 1994 after Schindler's List. Between 1994 and 1999, the foundation recorded nearly 52,000 video testimonies of Holocaust survivors and witnesses in 56 countries and 32 languages. Nina's testimony was recorded as part of this project in Tel Aviv on October 29, 1998.

German: "Work Sets You Free." The cynical slogan mounted above the entrance gates to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Nina passes through a gate on her arrival but is not certain, in memory, whether she read those words there or reconstructs them from postwar photographs.

After World War II, the Allied forces established camps across occupied Germany, Austria, and Italy to house the millions of refugees — including several hundred thousand Holocaust survivors — who could not or would not return to their former homes. Nina's first postwar landing was the DP camp at Schlachtensee in Berlin.

German: "A worry is a worry." The resolution Nina's Marysin class arrived at, over half a year of German-language debate, to the question "Whose problem is bigger: the man who has no pants, or the man whose pants aren't ready yet?" A schoolroom phrase that carries a deeper claim — that the weight of a worry is measured by the one who carries it.

Introduced in 1940 to prevent the smuggling of valuables out of the Łódź Ghetto, the ghetto's internal currency bore Rumkowski's signature and was known colloquially as Rumkies. It came in both coins and paper notes, and it had no value beyond the ghetto walls. Workers were paid in it; ration coupons were priced in it.

A European secondary school emphasizing academic preparation for university, typically spanning ages ten to eighteen. In postwar Łódź, Nina returned briefly to a Polish Gymnasium that allowed two years of schooling in one, to catch up after the war.

A derogatory term used in the Łódź Ghetto for Jews perceived to be collaborating with the German administration or holding positions of privilege. The word carries an implication of receiving better rations in exchange for cooperation — a moral accusation that survived the ghetto in memory.

German: literally "Sky-Journey Commando" — "Sky Commando." A grim euphemism used among prisoners for those destined for the gas chambers. On Nina's first day at Auschwitz, a barracks worker climbed onto the heating duct and announced to the newly arrived women: "This is a Himmelfahrtskommando. No one leaves here."

German: "Jews out!" A widespread Nazi slogan used during the forced expulsion of Jews from their homes and during the seizures that ordered Nina's family into the Łódź Ghetto.

Polish: "My Little Voice." The title of the children's newspaper Nina's class produced — first before the war, then again in the ghetto schools in Marysin. Children wrote the content and met with the editor.

Polish: "Mrs." or "Ma'am." A respectful form of address. Nina uses it for her teachers — Pani Prechnerova, her Marysin homeroom teacher — and for other women of standing in her childhood.

German: "Department" or "Workshop." In the Łódź Ghetto, the network of factory divisions where Jewish prisoners performed forced labor. Rumkowski's "salvation through labor" strategy depended on keeping the Ressorts productive for the German war economy. Nina worked in the Schneider Ressort, which sewed army uniforms.

The wartime rumor — impossible to believe at the time, and still wrenching in the telling — that small bars of soap stamped RIF were made from Reines Judenfett ("Pure Jewish Fat"). In reality the letters stood for Reichsstelle für Industrielle Fettversorgung ("Reich Center for Industrial Fat Provisioning"), and no human remains were in the soap. The rumor endures in Nina's testimony as a measure of what was already imaginable: "It was hard for us to believe something like that could be true."

Hebrew slang for a native-born Israeli, from the prickly-pear cactus that is said to be tough on the outside and sweet inside. Nina notes that many of her Sabra friends later in life "would really like to hear from me, but they don't always know how to ask."

Hebrew: an intensive Hebrew-language program, originally developed to teach new immigrants quickly enough to function in the country. Nina's six-week ulpan in Cyprus was run by Rutenberg Seminar teachers sent from Palestine.

A derogatory Polish diminutive of Żyd ("Jew"), used as an antisemitic slur. Nina began hearing it in postwar Łódź: "Look, look — they say Hitler killed all the Zhidkes and look, look how many are still walking around here." A turning point in her decision to leave Poland.

German: "Gypsy Camp." The segregated section of the Łódź Ghetto where approximately 5,000 Roma (Romani) were held from November 1941 to January 1942. All were murdered at Chełmno. Nina heard of the Zigeunerlager but never saw it.