Paul Calvert spoke with Ester Manheim

Ester at Belcez conserntration camp visiting with a German friend

Over six million Jews perished in the Holocaust. For those belonging to a generation disconnected from those horrific events, a visit to the Holocaust Memorial Yad Vashem in Israel quickly tells the extent of the brutality. Meeting holocaust survivors and hearing their stories is equally moving. Ester Manheim is a holocaust survivor now living in Tel Aviv, Israel. Paul Calvert spent some time with her to find out her story. Helping us to never forget what happened.

I am from Poland. I was born in the beautiful city of Krakow. If I was a painter I would take a rose colour to paint my childhood. I lived in a very beautiful house; my parents were comfortable as far as money was concerned, my father owned a paper factory; I was a student in a Hebrew private school so I didn't feel any Anti Semitism. Everything was good; my room was nice with my only sister, it was a lovely warm house full of love. Everything was really good until the first of September 1939.

Two days before I came back from a scout's camp we felt the Anti Semitism.

"The Jews are guilty"; "the Jews are responsible that Hitler came"; everything that is bad is because of the Jews. It was very sad. We opened the radio and it told of the war. My mother turned to us and said "very heavy clouds are coming, I hope we will survive it".

That Friday evening I remember the taste, what we ate, how good it was. A few days later I escaped with my father from Krakow.

As a young girl of 15 I went to my Aunts farm. My father left me there. Later we went back to Krakow and many refugees were coming into the city. My Grandmother and Grandfather came to stay with us and my Aunty and Uncle with two kids. My room wasn't my room any more.

I remember in those days I was sleeping on 2 chairs because I had no bed. My bed was for Grandma or an Aunt not for a young girl.

At this point began all the troubles.

I went back to school and one day came the janitor and said something to the teacher. The teacher looked down and told us "children today is the last day of school, Jewish children are not allowed to learn, go home".

It was a private Hebrew school. That was the last day of my childhood. I was happy at school. We got together as a group and the teacher would help us privately but from time to time the teacher didn't come, why, because he was taken on the streets to work because he was a Jew.

They made us clean the streets of Krakow for one week because we were Jews. I was a spoilt girl and now I am cleaning the streets but that was nothing compared to what was coming.

On one day all Jews must go and receive a yellow star. We were not allowed to go in a tramway, I was not allowed to go in a store where I bought my cakes, coffee houses; for dogs and Jews it was forbidden. When I was five years old I went to the store and ate cake, today I am a dog.

What had I done, I had only been born in a Jewish house that's all!

Then came the ghetto, the ghetto in Krakow.