Rebecca Gratz to Maria Gist Gratz - April 04, 1820

Writing to her brother Ben, Rebecca expresses her sympathy about the financial struggles Ben's sons are experiencing. She also discusses housing arrangements for Ben's family's upcoming visit and updates him on the health of family members.

Rebecca writes to her friend Maria, announcing the birth of Rachel's daughter, and encourages Maria to focus on her health rather than attend religious service.

GeniaKlapholz, nee Flachs2, was born in 1912 in Wisnicz, near Krakow, Poland to a religious family. After the town was ghettoized, she witnessed her baby niece kicked to death by a German soldier. Genia and a younger sister escaped and paid a woman in a neighboring village who hid them for eight days. They had to return to Wisnicz and were then transported to the Bochnia Ghetto, where they worked in a uniform factory for one year, enduring terrible conditions. They moved next to the Szebnie transit camp, where they saw Jews from Tarnow burned alive. Genia reads aloud her Yiddish poem, “In Memory of My Sister, Serl, of Camp Szebnie.” (Included with the transcript are Yiddish transliteration and English translation of this poem. Also included are the Yiddish transliteration and English translation of another poem, “The Death March from Auschwitz.”) Genia worked for three months as a cleaning woman in a factory at Szebnie before deportation to Auschwitz in 1942, which she describes in detail. She discusses the brutal treatment during her two years in Birkenau. She worked in the ammunition factory from which four youngwomen smuggled gunpowder for the attempted explosion of the crematoria and she witnessed their hanging. She describes in detail a delousing procedure, when she had to stand in the snow, naked, for hours. She also tells of her foot operation, performed without anesthesia. Forced to leave Auschwitz on a death march in January, 1945, she managed to escape with two other women and they found shelter with a Polish woman and her family in Silesia. This family was recognized as one of the “Righteous among the Nations” by YadVashem in 1991. Documentation from YadVashem accompanies the transcript. Genia was liberated by the Russians, March 28, 1945, and returned to Krakow in search of her family. She was in Displaced Persons camps in Einring, Regensburg and Landsburg, where she met and married her cousin, Henry Klapholz. With their baby son, they immigrated in 1948 to the United States, where they bought a farm in Vineland, New Jersey. In 1955, they moved to Philadelphia.

Rebecca updates her sister-in-law Maria on events among family and friends that happened since the latter's departure from Philadelphia.