Book

Soon after Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Gusta and Salomon Frankel, with 2 year old Ilona, fled Krakow for the Russian controlled Lvov. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, the family was forced into the ghetto where Salomon worked as an accountant at a factory owned by the Wehrmacht. In the spring of 1942, fearing the liquidation of the ghetto, Salomon arranged a hiding place for them outside the ghetto with a former employee, Jozef Jozak. However, He would not hide Ilona because it would be too hard to conceal a lively 4 year-old child. Ilona was smuggled out to the countryside and placed in hiding as a Christian child, with a Polish woman who was paid to hide her. After 6 months, they could no longer pay for her care, so they had to bring Ilona back to live in their hiding place, without the knowledge of the Jozak family. Ilona had to stay most of this time locked in a closet with only her drawings and medical textbooks left by a previous tenant. The family lived in hiding until the Soviet Army liberated the city in July 1944. When the was ended in May 1945, they returned to Krakow.