Portrait of a Polish female inmate drawn by a fellow inmate in a Soviet labor camp

Aurelia Lusia Holcman was born on November 21, 1944, to Roza Holcman in a Soviet labor camp in Samarka, Kazakhstan, where her mother was sentenced to serve 15 years for pro-Polish political activities. Her father was Phillip Rosenblith, who was an American medic at the camp. He was eventually sent to Moscow where he was killed. Aurelia lived at the camp until her grandmother, Liza Rosenberg Holcman, was able to obtain a permit from the NKVD, the Soviet security and secret police apparatus, to take the baby out of the camp. Eleven month old Aurelia was very sick at this time and they first settled in Moscow. Aurelia and her grandmother then went or were possibly repatriated to Warsaw at the end of 1946. Her mother and grandmother were originally from Plock, Poland. Roza was released from the camp in 1955 and returned to her mother and child in Warsaw. Liza died in 1975. At some point, Aurelia immigrated to Sweden.

Jozia Berko worked as an underground delegate for the Polish Government in Exile which was formed in London following the German and Soviet occupations of Poland in 1939. She was imprisoned in a Soviet labor camp in Samaraka, Kazakhstan, by 1944 and died there in the late 1940s.

Roza Holcman was born to Abraham Chaim and Liza Lea Rosenberg Holcman on July 21, 1910, in Czerwińsk nad Wisłą, Poland. Roza was a lawyer. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, Roza and her mother fled Plock and headed east to the Crimea in the Soviet Union. Roza did work for the Polish Government in Exile which was based in London and was represented by underground delegates. Roza tried to enlist soldiers into the Polish Home Army in the east. In 1942, she was arrested and was sentenced to fifteen years in a Soviet labor camp in Samarka, Kazakhstan. It was there in 1943 that she met Phillip Rosenblith, an American dentist who served as a medic. He was later taken to Moscow where he was killed. Roza had a daughter, Aurelia Holcman, who was born at the camp on November 21, 1944. Her mother, Liza, was able to get a permit from the NKVD, the Soviet security service, signed by Molotov, to take the baby out of the camp when she was 11 months old. They went to Moscow and in 1946, returned to Poland. Roza was released from the camp in 1955, and joined Liza and Aurelia in Warsaw.

The drawing was donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in 2007 by Aurelia Holcman Vogel, the daughter of Roza Holcman.

United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Collection, Gift of Aurelia Holcman Vogel