Can you share more about your mother: where she was born, her experience during the War, when and how she escaped, and if she ever talked to you kids about it?

My mom, Nechama, was from a tiny town in Eastern Poland called Bubar, and grew up with her younger sister and her parents. She always had a great love of music, and had been studying violin when, in September of 1939, the Nazis invaded Poland. Her parents had to flee in a hurry, hoping to get as far away from there as possible, realizing the great peril they would be in if they chose to stay. One important memory that she conveyed to me, which will stay with me until I die, was how the last thing she remembers looking at before leaving home forever was her precious violin hanging up on the wall. She had to leave it behind, but she and her family survived. The shtetl of Bubar was wiped out in WWII. 

They and several other Jewish families made their way on a dangerous journey by foot, freight and by cattle car to the east and north, winding up somewhere in Siberia, where her family shared a freezing one-room shack with another family for the duration of the war.  Food was often scarce during those years, and sometimes, the only thing they had to eat was soup made from onions and water–maybe a potato if they were lucky.  She remembered days that she and her sister had nothing at all to eat and cried themselves to sleep. Both her parents did what work they could find to barter for food and clothing. 

After the war, the family made their way west, living in what they call “D.P.” camps (Displaced Persons) with thousands of fellow refugees. First in Austria (where, to the best of my knowledge, my Mom met, fell in love with, and married my father, Chemya), and later in Stuttgart, West Germany (where my brother, Albert, was born in 1948). Finally, in 1949, they managed to make their way across the Atlantic to America, settling in Chicago, where I was born.