Part of an ongoing series on Holocaust survivors and partisans in Northern California
For historians, Sept. 1, 1939, marks the start of World War II, when Nazi Germany invaded Poland. For 93-year-old Polish-born Misia Olszak Nudler, it’s also the day that her life turned upside down.
The youngest of six sisters, Nudler was born in 1927 in Zaręby Kościelne, a Polish village about 60 miles from Warsaw that at one time had two Jewish cemeteries and four synagogues.
Nudler, a resident of the Reutlinger senior-living community in Danville, said her upbringing was comfortable. Her father, Gitman, was a fur salesman. Her mother, Edes, was very involved in her children’s education. Nudler remembers attending school from 8 a.m. until 2 p.m. and then heading to a Yiddish school for two hours.