Rena Quint

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Rena Quint , née Frajda Lichtensztajn (born December 18, 1935 ) is a Polish-American-Israeli Holocaust survivor .

biography

Rena Quint grew up as Frajda Lichtensztajn in the Polish city ​​of Piotrków Trybunalski .

After the occupation of Poland in September 1939, her family had to move to the newly created Jewish ghetto in Piotrków. In October 1942, she was herded into the synagogue with her mother, two brothers and other residents of the ghetto . While Rena was able to escape through a crack in the door, her mother and brothers were taken to the Treblinka extermination camp and murdered.

Rena was taken to see her father, who was a slave laborer in a glassworks at the time of the abduction . With short hair and in boys' clothes, Rena, now called Froyim, began working as a water carrier in the glassworks.

At the end of 1944, the Piotrków Jews who were still alive were taken to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in cattle wagons . Rena's father left the girl in the care of a teacher, since otherwise he saw no chance for her to survive. On April 15, 1945, the British liberators from the concentration camp found the girl, who was suffering from diphtheria and typhus, amid mountains of corpses.

Rena recovered in a hospital in Hamburg . She was taken to Sweden where she was adopted by a mother whose daughter had just died. Rena was given the identity of the deceased girl, her name was now Fanny, born on February 15, 1936. With this new family, Rena traveled to America, invited by relatives of her new mother, who died shortly afterwards.

Rena was taken in by a childless couple in Brooklyn in the fall of 1946 and has now been given her definitive name. At that time she was not yet 10 years old. She grew up as a typical American girl. In 1984 the family emigrated to Israel .

In 1989, Rena Quint returned to Poland for the first time. She began to research her own story and tell about it in front of an audience.

literature

  • Rena Quint, Barbara Sofer: A Daughter of Many Mothers: Her Horrific Childhood and Wonderful Life. September 1, 2017, ISBN 978-1-946124-25-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g Anja Reumschüssel: Daughter of many mothers. In: Der Spiegel . September 3, 2014, accessed August 15, 2020 .
  2. ↑ a b c d e Amanda Borschel-Dan: Child Holocaust survivor can never remember her stolen past. In: The Times of Israel . May 4, 2016, accessed August 15, 2020 .
  3. ^ Greer Fay Cashman: Busy Heddy. In: The Jerusalem Post . August 8, 2019, accessed on August 15, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Quint, Rena
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Lichtensztajn, Frajda (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Polish-American-Israeli Holocaust survivors
DATE OF BIRTH December 18, 1935