Testimony of Irit Irena (Shmaltzbach) Ben Zvi, born in Pawlosiow, Poland, 1940, regarding her experiences as a toddler in Pawlosiow, in hiding in a monastery and in Krakow

Testimony of Irit Irena (Shmaltzbach) Ben Zvi, born in Pawlosiow, Poland, 1940, regarding her experiences as a toddler in Pawlosiow, in hiding in a monastery and in Krakow Well-to-do secular family; her family owns a farm. Outbreak of the war; establishment of a German Army headquarters in the yard of the farm; good attitude of German officers toward her family; offer by an Austrian officer to move her to Austria; appointment of her father as the person responsible for the labor of the Jews in villages in the area; murder of her father; finds a hiding place in the granary of a Polish farmer; life in hiding in a pit; placed in a Catholic monastery by her mother, 1943; life in the monastery including receiving bodily punishments; baptized to Christianity; search by the Germans for Jewish children in monasteries; transfer to a Catholic family in Krakow; life in Krakow including receiving beatings. Refusal by the family to transfer the witness to her mother, and intervention by the Church in the matter; chance reunion with her uncle, a Red Army officer; release; move to Germany; aliya to Israel on the "Theodor Herzl" ship, 1949.