Samuel and Franka Baral papers

Samuel Baral (b. 1904) was born in Kraków, Poland and married Franciska (Franka) Baral (b. 1906 in Kraków, Poland). They had three children, Aneta (b. 1929), Martin (b. 1932), and Jacob (b. 1935). Samuel ran a fur import business with his father and Franka kept a traditional Jewish home. After the German invasion of Poland in 1939, the family fled and sought refuge with relatives in Rzeszów, Poland and Lviv, Ukraine, but they returned to Kraków without Samuel because they thought that Franka and the children might be safer on their own.

In 1941, Franka and the children were forced into a ghetto where Samuel joined them. Franka worked outside the ghetto in a factory and was able to help Martin and Jacob escape under the barbed wire fence. They went to the home of their former housekeeper where they stayed for a few months before going to their aunt’s home in the Bochnia ghetto. Franka, Samuel, and Aneta hid in an attic in a different section of the ghetto, until Franka and Aneta escaped to Tarnów, while Samuel went to Płaszow. Samuel survived the Holocaust by being placed on Oskar Schindler’s list. In Tarnów, Franka worked as a seamstress. She made dresses for Aneta and herself and they convinced the guards they were Germans and walked out of Tarnów. They returned to Kraków, looking for Martin and Jacob, and joined them in Bochnia where they hid on the outskirts of town and posed as Catholics.

In 1943, the Germans turned Bochnia into a labor camp and Franka and the children fled to Hungary. The family was smuggled out in a truck with a false bottom and abandoned in the forest. Franka decided they should separate and walk to Slovakia. She arrived at the border in a day and a half and learned that the children had been arrested. After a few weeks, the family was sold to an underground Jewish organization which arranged for their transportation to Hungary. In July 1943, they arrive in Budapest. Franka obtained lodging at a hotel, but was warned that the Gestapo was searching for them and they fled once again.

Around this time, Franka arranged to rescue three more children, two of them cousins, from Kraków, where they were in danger of being deported. Franka met Ilona Nemes who agreed to hide her and the six children in her home. This soon become unsafe and Ilona took them to her family’s farm in Nyiregyhaza, Hungary where they lived for the rest of the war.

After the war Franka obtained an emergency certificate from the British Mission in Romania, granting permission to travel to Istanbul. She and the six children left by train for Bucharest. On June 5, she received permission from the British to leave Romania. With the help of the Red Cross, Samuel located his family and they were reunited in Romania. In 1946, the family immigrated to Palestine where Aneta served in the army during the War for Independence. Around 1948, Martin immigrated to Australia to live with an uncle and the rest of the family joined him in 1953.