Shulamit Bastacky, right, speaks at Community Day School in 2018. Photo courtesy of Community Day School
Shulamit Bastacky’s childhood was spent in hiding. As an adult, though, she was anything but covert.
During her years in Pittsburgh, Bastacky, a Holocaust survivor who died Jan. 1 at 79, spoke with thousands of students in scores of public settings. The conversations, which often recounted Bastacky’s haunting childhood, were unforgettable. In a classroom, at a library or over lunch, listeners learned how two months prior to Bastacky’s birth on Aug. 25, 1941, in Vilnius, Lithuania, the Nazis occupied the Lithuanian capital and quickly began murdering its Jewish population. Terrified about their newborn’s chance at survival, Bastacky’s parents, Simon and Dora, gave their baby away. Bastacky was taken in by a Polish Catholic nun, who, at great risk and for nearly three years, kept the Jewish child hidden in a cellar.