I want to tell you i am always honored to support this program. My first year, 20 years ago, family endowed the program in honor of my father who passed away. He was an american g. I. In europe. Our first guest is halina yasharoff peabody. A few announcements, this season is made possible by the Lewis Franklin smith foundation. Also, the fisher foundation. We are grateful for their sponsorship. Firstperson is a series of twiceweekly conversations with Holocaust Survivors who volunteer at our museum and share their firsthand accounts of their experience during the holocaust. If time allows, you have an opportunity to ask a few questions. If we do not get to your question, you can always tag the museum on twitter, facebook and instagram using at holocaust museum. I hope you people understand that because i do not. [laughter] a recording will be made available on our youtube page. We have prepared a brief slide presentation. We begin with this photo of her being held by her father, isaac. Her mother is directly behind her, surrounded by family members and friends. Halina yasharoff peabody was born december 12, 1932 in krakow, poland. Her father was a dentist and her mother was a champion swimmer. The town in ukraine came under soviet occupation in 1939. At the time of occupation, her sister was only two months old. Officials detained isaac and then later deported him to siberia. Here we see a photo in 1940, after their father had been deported. In 1941, germany occupied all of poland. Realizing that they were in danger, her mother bought. Alse documents from a priest that identified them as roman catholic. Here is a false baptismal certificate stating that her religion is roman catholic. With her new documents, they traveled by train. They found shelter with a woman who took in boarders. On the left is the house where they were sheltered and on the right is a photo of the girls celebrating christmas while in hiding. Following liberation, they were reunited with isaac and settled in london, england. She has two sons, one of whom lives in england. Another lives just 10 minutes away. She has two granddaughters. Hannah and olivia. She speaks frequently of her experience during the holocaust. Here at thend museum. She engages with visitors at the survivor desk. She is also a contributor to the publication of echoes of memory. It features writing by survivors. She will be available to sign Copies Available in the bookstore. With that, i would like you to join me in welcoming our first person today, halina peabody. Please join us. [applause] warren which seat . You are the boss. I will take this one. [laughter] good morning. We are so happy to have you here. I am honored to be interviewing you here. Ms. Peabody thank you for coming to hear my story. Warren we have about four hours of stories to share with you. We will do our best and maybe have time for questions. I would like to start right away. Can you tell us about your early life in your hometown . I already announced it once. I will not risk it again. Tell us about the community and your family. I am always interested in the relationships between jews and nonjews before the war. Fill us in on your family and your town. Ms. Peabody i was born december 1932, so i was only six and a half when the war started. The relations i did not have that information on that. I was about to go to kindergarten in 1939, when we knew that the russians were coming, and they were going to take over our town. Everybody was very frightened. What happened was, a lot of people wanted to run away, and we were right there at the edge of romania. The river was a natural frontier with romania. You could go halfway. When my mother and father got married, they looked for a smaller town. They all came from krakow. That was a big city. My father was a dentist. He looked for a smaller town, which they found. It was a wonderful ocean city where people came for summer holidays. My mother, having been a champion swimmer was very happy because it had water. We used to go on boats. We had lovely beaches there. One was shady and another was sunny and you could go with a boat from one to the other. As a child, my mother taught me skating. When i was five, i was skating. My mother loved all sports. She was very good at swimming. Also, she danced and skated and rode horses. My mother was very brave. She thought that sports developed courage, which she proved later on. In 1939, when my father knew that the russians were coming, they basted off the First World War where the men were conscripted into the russian army. That was hard labor. In that case, men were more scared than the women. They never imagined that there would be problems for the women and children. In our case, i had a twomonthold sister. My father was worried. He decided to cross over by himself. There were other families that joined him and went over. We stayed back. When the russians occupied us, they made various laws that at six and a half, i could not appreciate. Everybody was very scared. My father had crossover. Slowly, things quieted down. They arrested people. They demanded gold and silver. We were just quiet and waiting to see what was going to happen. When winter came, everything was frozen over. This was a part of the world where you had a very hot summers. The river was frozen solid. The people who crossover like my father decided that perhaps the russians had settled then and settle down and maybe they could quietly cross back home. Without any trouble. They took white sheets and they tried to cross the river. Unfortunately, the russians had already sealed the border. They caught everybody. They put them in jail, and in my fathers case, he was a dentist. They accused him of being a spy because he went over and came in. They gave him 20 years hard labor and sent him off to the labor camp in russia. We were again left alone. In addition to which, under russian law, if he were a family of criminals, you were also sent somewhere to a russian labor camp. We were packed and ready to go. They did not take us for some reason. What they did was throw us out of our house because it was too rich for us to have a house. We were thrown out to a place up the road, not very far. Warren so once isaac was sent away, did you hear anything from him . Ms. Peabody we did. The first year, we did not hear anything. He was in prison. He didnt want to talk about it. When we were that picture that was with my sister, that is where we stayed. We stayed there throughout the Russian Occupation and after a year, we heard from my father. He wrote a little bit about the conditions. We were able to exchange a couple of times. My mother sent a package to him. Warren when you were a and half, the war changed everything , the warand a half changed everything when the nazis invaded. Ms. Peabody first of all, we were there when all of this was happening. We went to school. What the russians did was drop everybody one class because they wanted the opportunity to educate us. We were there for about a year and a half. Suddenly, one day the russians disappeared and we heard that the germans were going to take over. We went back to my house. We settled back in and we waited. We had no idea what to expect. Everybody was anxious, as usual. We did not know what the plan was. Eventually, the germans arrived with motorcycles and shiny uniforms. Very scary. They came down the road. I was looking at them and it was scary. I remember my mother taking me. She told me to stay inside. When the germans settled in, every local job, everybody in charge was german. They started putting in laws. The first was that the jewish kids do not go to school. We were also not allowed to go to parks. We had a curfew. Everything was rationed. We had much worse rations than the others. They just made it much harder for us. Every jewish person had to be working for the germans. Not for pay, just had to be working for them. If there was a not particular job for anybody, they were told to clean the sidewalks. My mother was known for other talents that she had. She was a fantastic knitter. She embroidered as well. They knew everybody and they knew my mother was a good knitter. They made her the chief knitter for the mayor because he had a lot of children. She was told that she would be knitting for the children. Everybody else had to do some job. They used to take whips of young groups of young people for various jobs at farms. They would say we need so many people and then they collected them and then the square, they would march them out. After they did whatever jobs they had to, they would be brought back. There was a Jewish Committee that wanted to not go directly to the people. The Jewish Community was tasked with getting the right number of people for whatever job they demanded. It went on a couple of times. And then they decided that they needed a big job to be done at the road. There was an old military camp. The winters were very cold. He said that they needed to find the trucks of the trees for winter. They needed many people. They asked a certain number of people, like 600 people they asked for and they were supposed to meet at the square in the morning. They marched them out. We waited for them to come back. Nobody was coming back. We did not know what was happening. Everybody got very anxious. Warren was this men and women and different age groups . Or was it just young people . Ms. Peabody mostly young people. Apparently, some people joined voluntarily, just to help. Nobody was coming back all day or all evening until evening. One person came back. It was a young man. He was shot in the arm. He told us what happened. The story was that when they got to the camp, there was no job for them to do the trees. What there was was an open air grave with sticks over it. They were told to undress, lay down on the sticks and then they were shot, and as they were shot, they fell into the graves. This man was one of the last that were shot and dropped in. They missed his heart and hit his arm. So he managed to get himself out of there and he came back and told us the story, at which point we realize that we were in grave danger. We lost all these people. Everybodys first thing was looking for a hiding place. Warren i watched your testimony and i read your story. I just want you to keep in mind the strength and resourcefulness of her mother and how old you were, all the responsibilities and choices that you face. At the time of the first shooting, there was no warning. All of a sudden this happens and the news comes back, how old were you . Ms. Peabody nine. Warren and your sister was very young. Her mother had to decide what to do. The remaining jews were trying to find places to hide because who knows and the next action could continue . Ms. Peabody we knew that we were in great danger. Everybody was looking for a hiding place. There was no room for children. We knew everything because we were part of it, except for my sister, who did not really know what was going on. My mother decided that she would take us to a lady who used to cook for us. Next time when they demanded a group of people, they said they wanted people to work in germany. Nobody believed anymore. We had realized this was not true. Everybody ran around and they hid. My mother, sister and i stayed with a lady who used to cook for us in the evening. They loaded them on the train and they took them away. It was a small town. The community was not that big. My mother thought that they would do something else, that what is going to be the next step . The germans decided that they did not want to go around looking for us again because there were fewer and fewer of us, so they just threw us all out. The town was cleared of any jewish person officially. We would go to another place, another small town at the road, up the road, not very far. We were told afterwards it became a ghetto, but it was that area that they told us to be in. Everybody obeyed. Everybody started looking for hiding places again. My mother explained to me. She said it is not going to work because they are going to do it over and over, and there is not much help from us. There she was with two children. They also did the same, exactly the same thing in the towns around this area, so they brought these little groups that remained, and they put us altogether in this place. The first thing we did was looking for hiding places. My mother said, it is not going to work. They are going to move us again. She was desperate. Everyone was looking to see what they can do and where they could run. There was not much to do. There were some crossing over the river to romania. I remember at one point she was hoping to do that, to send the kids over, but nothing worked. The next time comes and again, they are demanding a group of people to go work in germany again. Nobody believed them by then. We were there during the Russian Occupation. My mother knew some farmers there. When the call came that they needed people from that group, they did not im say. Sorry. Everybody obviously scattered. But in a different area, so not everybody knew each other. My mother knew a few farmers quite well. She split us up. I was with one farmer up in the loft. She and my sister, they were with another farmer. They paid them in advance and they were going to stay there until they stopped looking for people. All day long, i sat there and i waited for my mother, not knowing what would happen to her. I kept thinking that she was caught. The lady who had meat would go into town and i was very anxious to know what was happening and always thinking that my mother would be caught. I spent all day long waiting and being anxious. Towards the evening, they caught enough people and loaded them on the train. I wondered if my mother was coming back, but she did. She told me her story when she came to meet me. She said, we are never going to do this again. We are never going to split up. Whatever happens to us, we are going together because i thought all this time that you were caught. She said we are not going to do that again. She probably had the same fear again for you. She had no idea about her. Exactly. Dy that was her decision. Of course, i agreed. We started thinking, what could be done . What can we do . They came up with this idea because we were all female. As you probably know, the men can be recognized and identified, but the women, they could not check. I was blonde and green eyed. They thought that we could pass as catholics. So they went to a priest and they got those papers. So we left there. Our friends put us on a train, and we had a couple of suitcases and some money that they collected for my mother. We said goodbye and my mother said we were going somewhere on the way to krakow and it would take four days and four nights. We were going to go as catholics. My mother sat me down and gave me my new name. I had no idea about the catholic religion. I knew very little about my own. All i knew was that i was jewish and i was going to Hebrew School on sundays. But my father taught me to read polish. He wanted me to read the newspaper going to kindergarten. So you are bilingual in kindergarten . Ms. Peabody we did not speak english. I just knew polish. My mother was pure polish. They hoped that we had a chance, and we got on the train and said goodbye to our friends, who did not survive. It was going to be a long trip, a hard trip. My mother carrying my sister and me by the hand. We settled in to the carriage and we started on our trip. My mother had taught me my new name, my grandparents, where i was born. That was all i had to learn. Thats all, at eight or nine, thats all you had to learn. Let me just ask you before we get to what happens on the train, at this young age, you have a new relationship with your mother in some ways because you have to Work Together to keep this charade up. You have to remember all of this. You had to grow up quickly. Nobody wanted to die. My sister was the lucky one. She did not know. You were almost partners with your mother. Peabody we were definitely partners. Partners. So what happens . Ms. Peabody we got on the train. A young man sat next to my mother and started talking. My mother told me, this young man kept asking me questions and pushing me. I had no choice and i admitted to him that we were jewish. At that point, he said, in that case, im going to have to hand you over to the gestapo. I am going to the same place and i am going to accompany you and the kids. When we get there, i am going to have to hand you over to the gestapo. And probably shot. You knew there was great danger if he turned you in. Ms. Peabody i understood very well because my mother said that the children did not survive. They had no use for children. If youve that caught and taken to a concentration camp, they separated the sick, the old and the children. You had to be about 13 or 14 for them to keep you for work. Other than that, you did not have a chance. My mother knew that. She did not want to survive without the children. I knew that this was what was going on in her mind. We had no choice. We were caught. We traveled with him, and he was very careful to keep us in his eyesight. We had nowhere to run. My mother was trying to think of what we could do. In the end, she decided there was not much we could do because we cannot run. So she started talking to him about a deal. She gave him our tickets for the suitcases. She gave him all the money that she had. She even promised him the coats on our backs, but one thing she asked him was that when we get to the gestapo, have us shot quickly, all three of us. She explained to me that it would be less painful than being separated. She could not bear the thought because she knew that the children had no way of surviving. She did not want to survive by herself, so she only wanted it to be quick. She said this way would be the quickest. So that is how we traveled. I had nothing to say about it, except thinking that this is what is going to happen. It took a long time. We were on this oldtime train. We were tired and exhausted. Four days. Ms. Peabody exactly. And you knew what was coming. Ms. Peabody we were so tired. I do not think that i thought about it much. When we finally arrived, this is so clear in my mind. As we were walking down the steps to the platform, i suddenly realized that now he is going to take us to the gestapo and we are going to be shot. I started pulling at my mother. I dont want to die. We continued walking. My mother turns to him and says, perhaps you could let her go. She is blonde and green eyed, maybe she could survive. I said, i am not going without you. I didnt know what he would say, but i was not about to go. So we continued walking. Finally, she said this to him. She said i gave you everything that we have. Keep it. Why dont you let us go and let us try our luck . She added, why do you want this on your conscience . Whether that or something touched him, he said to us, you do not have a chance. It sounds better in polish. He said you do not have a chance, but he left us. Were, in a strange town on the main road. I recall that your mother said to him, do you have children . Ms. Peabody that was before, yes. Remember what i said about her mother