This week in our Holocaust Studies class, we had the privilege to hear two fascinating and incredible Holocaust survivors. We were honoured to hear from Stefania Sitbon, from The Zookeeper’s Wife, and Pinchas Gutter, who partakes in the New Dimensions in Testimony project which we previously visited earlier this semester.
Stefania survived the war in the Warsaw Ghetto and a local zoo. Her father was part of the resistance and this also helped her family during the war. Stefania shared with our class her story and how she survived the war through the goodness of others. While she was hiding in the zoo the woman who owned the zoo would play the piano to warn them when the Nazi’s were coming, warning everyone and giving them time to hide. After living in the zoo, for two months, as a family, her mother decided it was time to protect her children by sending them away. She stayed with Stefania in a local village. After the war Stefania’s family. 2 brothers and her parents, moved to Israel.
Pinchas Gutter’s family owned a wine cellar before the war. When the war broke out the Nazis it took. Their family decided to move to Warsaw, where later a ghetto would be formed. The Gutter family survived by buying grapes off of the black marker and sold wine and challot for shabbat. They hid from many of the selections in the Ghetto, but eventually Pinchas and his family were sent to a concentration camp, and never saw eachother again. Pinchas became a caretaker to a police officer’s wife, and he helped him survive the many selections during his time at the camp. Over 50 years after the war had finished, Pinchas was reunited with his best friend from the camp who he thought had died.
As a class we loved hearing these stories, and it has become increasingly prevalent to us how important it is to hear these stories to remember them for generations to come. Both of these brave survivors made it through the war by the grace of G-d and the generosity of others. We can clearly see G-d’s hand in each of these people’s lives.
– Anat Usatinsky and Tiferet Nickerson
