Rozia Topor memoir

Rozia Topor was born in 1926 in Ostrów Wielkopolski, Poland to Aharon and Regina (nee Grosman) Topor. Rozia had a younger sister Faiga (1930) and a younger brother, Moniek (1934). The Topor family was one of only a handful of Jewish families in town, and from the outset of World War II, suffered much from anti-Semitism. As Gestapo forces entered the city, many of their possessions were taken, and the family decided to leave. They moved to Kalisz where her uncle Jozef Grosman lived with his wife Sabina Stella and their daughter Rose. As persecutions began there as well, the family left again to Łódź. Upon hearing that a ghetto was being built in Łódź, the family moved one last time to Warsaw, where they were eventually forced to move into the ghetto there. Conditions were terrible, as many starved and died in the streets. Aharon soon contracted dysentery and died, and Regina died of the same disease soon after. Orphaned at thirteen years old with two younger siblings, Rozia escaped the ghetto for Krakow to join an aunt, stopping in Rzeszów briefly to stay with the recently relocated Grosman family. As they left for Krakow, there was only room for two, and Rozia was forced to leave her sister Faiga with another aunt on the way in Nowy Żmigród. Rozia eventually learned that her sister and aunt were later deported to an unknown concentration camp where they were killed. In Krakow, the two children stayed with her aunt but she was unable to support both of them, and Rozia was forced to give her brother to an orphanage. This proved to be the last time she saw her brother as well, as all the children were soon deported to Auschwitz and killed. Rozia was rounded up by Gestapo forces as well, and was sent to Płaszów for hard labor. She was then sent to Skarżysko-Kamienna, and then on to Częstochowa, where she worked at ammunition factories in both locations. She was ultimately liberated by the Russians, and joined with other prisoners and left for Łódź. She found work nursing for a family and as a waitress, before sailing for Palestine in 1946, where she soon was married.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Rose Gelbart

Rose Gelbart donated this collection to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Nov. 8, 2008.