Pollack, Sophie

Sophie Pollack, like other Jewish children living in Europe at the time of the Second World War, had her childhood snatched away from her at the hands of the Nazis. Born in Skierniewice, Poland, Sophie told us about her miraculous story of survival, after being placed in the Koluszki Ghetto and then just barely managing to escape and hide in a barn in the early years of the war. Only later did she find out that a few days after her escape, the Nazis had liquidated the Koluszki ghetto.  Sophie found a family that allowed her to hide with them in the winter and work on their farm during the summers. Sophie grants her survival during that period of time to the fact that she did not have the typical look of a Polish Jew, or at least what the Nazis believed a Polish Jew would look like. This was the only reason that she was able to live and to not be questioned about her true identity. However, as the years went by and the Nazi regime grew stronger and more frightening, her hiders could no longer take the risk of housing a Jew anymore and she had to go on her own.  She ended up surviving the war by hiding her Jewish identity in Germany, and she miraculously ended up finding her two sisters, spending the final years of the war with them. When the time of liberation came, she remembers the bombings, as she was in Germany at the time, but most of all she was just taken over by pure happiness. When the war finally came to an end, she went into a displaced persons camp (DP Camp). She stayed there until 1948, and her sister, as many people did in these camps, found a husband and got married.  Sophie is a Polish Jew, who not only survived the time of the war, but was actually able to reunite with her family, and go on to move to Canada and get married and have a family of her own.