Lisa Lukinskaya was born in a Lithuanian shtetl and survived the war when nuns in a nearby convent took her in. At war’s end she went home to find that her 23-year-old husband had been killed but at least the rest of her family had survived. Lisa tells us of starting over when the family moved to Vilnius and that’s where she met a dashing Soviet officer.
Lisa Lukinskaya’s story was read for us by Tina Grey in London. Lisa was interviewed in Vilnius in 2005 by Zhanna Litinskaya.
Roza Kamhi came from the town of Bitola in what is now North Macedonia. She and her boyfriend Beno Ruso joined the partisans when the Bulgarians occupied their region in 1941. Roza was jailed in 1943, Beno took to the hills. On the day of liberation, Roza saw Beno running up the street to embrace her. But why, she wondered, was 24-year-old Beno wearing the uniform of a general?
Roza Kamhi was interviewed for Centropa by Rachel Chanin in Skopje in 2005. Her story is read for us by Shelly Blonde.
Zsuzsa Diamantstein grew up in a middle class home in Targu Mures, Romania. Northern Transylvania was ceded to Hungary in 1940 and it was the Hungarian army that deported over 150,000 Jews to Auschwitz and other death camps. Zsuzsa managed to survive but found she had nothing in common with young people who had not gone through hell. Then she met Imre Diamantstein, who had just returned from the camps.
Sara Kestelman reads Zsuzsa’s story for us and it is based on the interview conducted in 2005 in Targu Mures by Julia Negrea and Vera Badic.
