Chronological Index of this Site (under construction)
1921 Nina is born in Lvov Poland. Her father manages a family lumber mill; her mother inherits a soap factory.
1928 Lumber mill burned in a fire.
1931-34 Nina attends Gymnasium (high school).
1935 Nina is accepted to the University (Hebrew) Med. School, didn't go because the war broke out.
1938 November 9: "Kristallnacht" pogroms against Jews [UCSB web project]
1939 September. Soviets and Germans invade Poland. First the Germans, then the Soviets occupy Lvov.
Nina works with nuns as a nurse, Russian nurses and doctors come in and remove Nina (she was not a certified nurse).
1941 July. Germans invade the Soviet Union (and Lvov). The Soviets flee Lvov, but Nina's family decides not to leave.
- Lives on Kopernika St., Russians quartered in apartment, she lived with her aunt, she did not want to live at the address her father was arrested.
- People began to disappear (middle sister first)
- Polish and German collaboration
- Wear star of David
- Lvov Ghetto
- Mother is murdered
1942 - Relocation of Jews -Lived in Newly abandoned quarters of non-Jewish Poles who had lived in poverty but were moved to a better part of the city.
- Relocated to a Janovska, a concentration camp set up by a cemetery
- September, Helped build ghetto
- "Selected" as no longer fit enough to work, survives a mass shooting into a mass grave
- Finds refuge at a farmhouse, but flees once she has recovered
- Joins a Polish partisan unit in the forest
- Is assigned to work undercover at a German postal station, stamping false ID cards
Timeframe is a little unclear in 1942 and 1943 (events blended together in memory).
1944 -Working in post office in Russian which is occupied by the Germans. Nina is posing as Maria, a Polish girl. Meets Hendrick (the lawyer) and Danosha (his girlfriend)
- Runs away from the post office and arrives in Zmerinka, Romania
- Joins the Soviet army as a nurse when it arrives
- Travels with Russian Front to somewhere near Cracow, Poland
- Deserts Soviet army and returns to Lvov to search for family
- May 8, 1945: the war ends
1944-45 Meets husband Josef
1947 - moves to US
After World War II (text)
1988 - husband Josef's death
1993 - Nina tells her story for the first time, at Carpinteria High School (teacher Casey Roberts tells about it)
1995 - Students from AP English and History classes at Carpinteria High write up Nina's story
1996 - Nina tells her story at UCSB; a friend helps her to rewrite the Carpinteria High text.
1998 - beginning of a series of taped interviews of Nina telling her life story
last updated Oct. 9, 2007, by Harold Marcuse |
