Rebecca Gratz to Benjamin Gratz - June 12, 1820

Miriam writes to her aunt Rebecca, expressing sorrow and sympathies for deaths in their families.

Writing to her friend Maria, Rebecca describes the health of family and friends, social outings, and upcoming (and averted) nuptials.

Rebecca writes to her brother Joseph regarding the family's move within Philadelphia, visiting friends, a friend's forthcoming murder trial, cases of the measles, the war, and brother Hyman's travels to Mammoth Cave.

Sophie Roth, née Parille, born in Zloczow, Poland, was one of four children in a religious family. She refers to the German bombing and invasion in 1939, and the killing of doctors and teachers by Germans, aided by Poles and Ukranians. She worked in forced labor camps in Lazczow and Kosice until 1942, when she was shot and lost a leg. A Polish teenager, whom she tutored, travelled to Lemberg to obtain a prosthesis for her.

She describes hiding in a fish barrel and then in a Polish peasant’s stable with her family, in exchange for money, jewelry and the deed to their house. She details near-starvation and suffocating subliminal existence under a manure pile with nine other people. Forced to leave by their sadistic “benefactor”, her family found shelter in an unheated basement of a Polish teacher, Elena Sczychovska, and her husband, who was the local police commandant. Fourteen people were sheltered there during the last year of the war. She mentions the hostility of neighbors when her family returned to their home.

In 1947, she married a Hebrew teacher who lost his religious faith and his entire family. She remained a believer, attributing her survival to God’s miracles. A daughter was born in Paris in 1952 and the family emigrated, aided by HIAS and by Jewish Family Service in Philadelphia. She reads several poems, recalling horrendous Holocaust memories, into the interview.

Interviewee: ROTH, Sophie Date: March 9, 1988

Rebecca writes to her brother Ben, informing him of how the family is coping after the loss of their sister, Frances Etting. She also updates him on the travels of family members.

Miriam writes to her aunt Rebecca, sending her condolences after the death of Jacob Gratz, her uncle and Rebecca's brother.