Testimony of Eleonora (Hilkowicz) Stern about her experiences in the Holocaust and memoirs of Halina Wilder concerning the rescue of Eleonora Gilkowicz in Warsaw in 1943

Testimony of Eleonora (Hilkowicz) Stern about her experiences in the Holocaust and memoirs of Halina Wilder concerning the rescue of Eleonora Gilkowicz in Warsaw in 1943 - testimony of Eleonora Stern, taken as part of the Zikaron BaSalon project in 2022: Family life in Warsaw; war erupts; ghettoization; internment in the Warsaw ghetto; witness exfiltrated from the ghetto by her father and placed with friends; witness sent to a convent near Warsaw; stays there under a false identity until 1948; removed from the convent by activists in reclamation of Jewish children; efforts to trace relatives (all perished); witness adopted by a Jewish family in Warsaw; immigrates to Israel with adoptive parents in 1950; studies and starts a family; tracing Halina Wilder's statement about the rescue of Eleonora Gilkowicz; tracing relatives by means of the Yad Vashem database of names. - memoirs of Halina Anna Wilder about rescuing a Jewish girl in Warsaw in 1943: Bombardments of Warsaw at eruption of war; in a bombardment in September 1939, the witness's mother and infant son are killed and the witness herself is injured, resulting in disability and lengthy hospitalization; life in Warsaw at the time of the ghetto uprising; placement of a Jewish girl named Eleonora Gilkowicz with the witness by her father (no previous acquaintance); concealing the girl for several days; placing her in a convent under the alias Nora Baranska (or Baranowska); loss of contact with the convent; witness expelled from Warsaw during the Warsaw uprising; returns to Warsaw at the end of the war. Submitter's remarks: The submitter, Eleonora (Hilkowicz) Stern (previous surnames: Baranowska, Rosenberg), gave her testimony on Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day, 2022, at the Torq high-tech company as part of the Zikaron BaSalon project. She received Halina Wilder's statement from ŻIH (Jewish Historical Institute, JHI), and with the help of ŻIH she located documents associated with her father, Gustav Gedalia Hilkowicz, who perished in the Holocaust.