Brown plastic eyeglasses worn by a Jewish resident of the Lvov ghetto

Gusta Gruber was born in Oswiecim, Poland, in 1904 to Shlomo and Rivka Gruber. Shlomo was the seventh child and only son of Isser and Perl Gruber. He was a scholar and ran a prosperous wholesale wine store from the first floor of their large home. It was a religious household, but the children were raised to be independent. Gusta had five brothers and sisters: Moshe, Minka, Feige, Salka, and Leibek. Gusta and Salka were active in the Zionist organization Hashomir Hatzair and emigrated to Palestine in the 1920s. Salka eventually married Moshe Sandel and had two children. Gusta had gone to be with a man with whom she was in love, but she became ill with malaria and had to return to Poland. She had fair hair and skin and could not withstand the harsh climate. She moved to Krakow and lived a Bohemian existence. She was a member of a communist cell, an illegal organization, and was briefly jailed for her activities. In 1936, Gusta married a wealthy business man and widower, Salomon Goldman, born in 1901, who was a dedicated communist. They settled in the large house he built in Bochnia, his native village, and had a daughter, Ilona (Alona) on June 27,1937, in Krakow. Germany invaded Poland in September 1939 and the family escaped east to Lvov (Lviv, Ukraine) which was under Soviet control. Salomon worked as an accountant in a slaughterhouse and tanning factory. In June 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied Lvov. In November 1941, the Germans segregated the Jews into a ghetto, shooting thousands of the sick and elderly as they walked there. The factory manager, Herr Knaup, registered Salomon as an essential employee, which provided some protection from deportation and the Goldmans lived at the factory. During one round-up, Gusta and Ilona were placed on a transport for the camps, but someone told Salomon and the boss from the factory, Bulani, came and got them released. Salomon stole entrails and blood from the slaughterhouse for the Jewish laborers who came from the ghetto to work in the factory. The workers would drink the coagulated blood immediately and wrap the entrails around their bodies under their clothes to smuggle back into the ghetto. The Goldmans eventually had to move into the ghetto. In March 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the ghetto to Belzec extermination camp. At some point, Salomon was arrested and taken to Janowska camp. He was tortured for two days, and then released. He constructed a hiding place in their room that you reached by crawling through the stove. There was an aktion to clear the ghetto of children and when Gusta found Ilona, they hid there with several others. In early June 1943, the Germans destroyed the ghetto, killing thousands of Jews. The remaining residents were sent to Janowska forced-labor camp or deported to Belzec. Prior to the liquidation of the ghetto, Salomon arranged a hiding place nearby with a non-Jewish Polish man, Jozef Jozak. Jozef also had fled Krakow and met Salomon when he came to have a letter read for him. He was a carpenter and once worked for Salomon. His Russian Orthodox wife, Rozalia, opposed this plan as it put them and their two children in danger. Signs posted in the city threatened those who helped Jews with death. They agreed to hide Gusta and Salomon, but refused to take Ilona as it was too risky to hide a young child. They arranged to have a Polish woman, Hania Seremet, take Ilona to her village, Marcinowice, and hide her as a Christian girl for payment. Hania had previously abandoned a young Jewish boy at the ghetto fence when his parents were killed and the payments stopped. After a few months, Salomon and Gusta had no money; the last payments were made with the gold caps from Gusta’s teeth that Salomon dug out with his pocketknife. After the payments stopped, Hania dumped Ilona at the Jozak’s door one night. Salomon and Gusta had to hide Ilona with them, without the knowledge of the Jozak’s. Ilona was lice ridden, but healthy and well-fed. She did not remember her parents and spoke a Polish dialect they could not understand. Gusta finally told the Jozak’s of Ilona’s presence. The three rarely moved from the small hiding room and often spent time lying on the bed telling stories. They were always hungry and every day Gusta would create an elaborate menu that Salomon would record in a notebook. A cookbook received on their wedding day was one of their few remaining possessions. Rozalia never stopped wishing they would go away and would leave the family without food, sometimes for days. During these times, Gusta would disguise herself and sneak out to find food. The Goldmans were hidden by the Jozak's until the liberation of Lvov in July 1944 by the Red Army. They had trouble walking at first, having barely left the small room for eighteen months. The Jozak’s sixteen year old daughter had died of tuberculosis in Gusta’s arms during the war and Gusta had contracted the illness, She was placed in a hospital for terminal TB patients. Salomon put Ilona in the care of a wealthy Jewish couple, the Fishmans, who had survived the war in hiding. Salomon, still a dedicated communist, sold the newspaper Czerwony Shtandar (The Red Flag) on street corners to earn money. The Fishmans complained that Ilona was an unpleasant child who did nothing but cry and that Salomon must come and take her. He then placed Ilona in an orphanage. After Gusta’s recovery under the care of Dr. Ordung, the family was reunited and lived in one room in a shared apartment. Salomon worked again as an accountant at the slaughterhouse/tanning factory. After the war ended in May 1945, they returned to Krakow. Salomon’s brothers had both gone to the Soviet Union during the war. Henryk returned from Siberia, but David never returned. Gusta’s only remaining sibling was Salka who had emigrated to Palestine before the war; the other five siblings and their families were killed in the camps. Their home in Bochnia was nationalized by the Communist government and divided into four apartments. Salomon had joined the Polish Communist Party immediately after liberation and was appointed state comptroller for all the breweries in Poland. Ilona attended a camp for Jewish children in Zakopane that was attacked by antisemitic Poles. Eight year old Ilona was enrolled in school and it was learned that the little girl who was always bent over a book or a piece of paper did not know how to write. She could read fluently and had felt no need to add words to the stories she drew. In 1949, an anonymous person made threats against Salomon’s life because he was Jewish. The family decided to leave Poland and sailed for Israel in December 1949, arriving on January 1, 1950. Salomon, 58, died in 1958. Alona married Zygmunt Frankel in 1958 and has two children. She became an award winning children’s author and illustrator. Gusta, age 90, died in 1994. In 2004, Alona wrote a memoir of her wartime experiences, A Girl, which was awarded the Sapir Prize.

The eyeglasses were donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2009 by Alona Frankel, the daughter of Gusta and Salomon Goldman.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Alona Frankel