If my heart didn't break then
Extent and Medium
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Creator(s)
- Jean Beller
Biographical History
Jean Beller (née Genia Bryl, d. 10 Oct. 1993) was born to a Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. During the Holocaust she was a prisoner at Auschwtiz. Jean immigrated to the United States in 1947.
Archival History
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Acquisition
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, gift of Bernard, Roseanne and Sheila Beller
Jean Beller began writing her memoir in Feb. 1958, and she completed writing it in July 1963. Sheila Beller, Jean's daughter, sent the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum a copy of the memoir in Jan. 1994.
Scope and Content
Jean Beller's memoir describes Jean's childhood and adolescence in Poland; her experiences as a student of elementary education in Tel Aviv, Palestine; her return to Poland before the outbreak of World War II; conditions inside the ghetto in Łódź, Poland; her experiences with Chaim Rumkowski; her work as a kindergarten teacher and as the head of an orphanage in the ghetto; her attempts to hide when the ghetto was evacuated; the death of her parents and a brother; her deportation to Auschwitz and other concentration camps; and her life in the United States after the war.
People
- Rumkowski, Mordecai Ḥayim.
- Beller, Jean.
Corporate Bodies
Subjects
- World War, 1939-1945--Concentration camps.
- Jewish children in the Holocaust--Poland--Łódź.
- Palestine.
- Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Personal narratives.
- Jewish ghettos--Poland--Łódź.
- Kindergarten.
- Hiding places.
- Education, Elementary.
- Jewish women in the Holocaust--Biography.
- Jewish orphans.
- Teachers.
Genre
- Personal narratives.
- Document