By Jacob Johnson on 1News…
“Let’s hope this never happens again.”
That’s the plea from an Auckland woman who escaped Nazi rule as a child more than 80 years ago, ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow.
Alicja Newman – whose real name is Sala – was only 10 years old when her mother forced her to walk out the gates of the Warsaw Ghetto, while a complicit German guard turned a blind eye.
“Mum had no idea what was going to happen on this particular day,” said Alicja’s daughter, Lisa. “The gendarme, as mum describes him, who was standing just outside the gate, apparently under his breath, very annoyed, said, ‘szybko!’, which means quickly, and her mother shoved her and she walked out.”
By the summer of 1942, nearly half a million Jewish people were crammed into a portion of Poland’s largest city, just over three square kilometres in size.
Looking at old family photos, Alicja, now in her nineties, recounts the horrors of life in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Read the full story on 1News here.
