Oral history interview with Tania Lefman

Tania Lefman describes growing up on the border of Poland and Ukraine and living under the Polish regime until 1939; experiencing a good childhood; her father’s death when Tania was eight years old; the Russian invasion in 1939 and the decline of their standard of living; the German occupation beginning in 1941; being evicted from their home and forced to wear a yellow star; being sent with her family to the ghetto in Korets’, Ukraine, where they shared a small apartment with three other families; the Germans selecting Jews from the ghetto, separating them by gender, making them dig graves, and the subsequent massacre of the Jews; escaping the ghetto with her mother after one year; hiding in the woods with two other families in an underground bunker; living in constant fear and without warm clothing and food; being liberated by the partisans in 1944; the threat to survivors in Korets; going to an UNRRA displaced persons camps in Germany, where she lived for five years and met her future husband Henry Lefman; immigrating to the United States in 1950 and feeling free for the first time; marrying Henry in 1951; her two sons, one daughter, and five grandchildren; and feeling lucky to live in the US.