Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter papers

Pesl Pola Melamed Dichter was born in December 1923 in Rozyszcze, Poland (now Roz︠h︡yshche, Ukraine). The Melamed family was forced into a ghetto in late 1941, together with about 4,000 other Jews. They suffered terrible hunger and slave labor. Pesl’s father, Motl Melamed, was murdered by the Germans in the spring of 1942. The ghetto was liquidated in August 1942, and most of the residents were shot at a mass grave. Pesl Pola escaped the massacre because she was in a neighboring village where a Polish woman had hired her to knit. She hid in the forest until liberation in 1944 and then married Izak Dichter. Izak was born January 15, 1911, in Łuck, Poland (now Lutsk, Ukraine) and lived in Trojanowka (now Troyanivka, Ukraine). Their daughter Klara (Carmela) was born in December 1945 in Wałbrzych, Poland, and the family moved to the Eschwege displaced persons camp. They immigrated to Israel in 1948. Izak's mother Basia Dichter also survived.