Miriam Korber papers

Miriam Korber (1923-) was born to Leon and Klara Korber (née Hutman) in Câmpulung Moldovenesc, Romania in 1923, where her father was a glasscutter and tinsmith. Miriam and her sister, Silvia (1927-), attended elementary school and later, a girl’s school in Câmpulung. Both Miriam and her sister took piano and Hebrew lessons and were paid to help out in their father’s shop. In September 1940, upon the advent of a series of anti-Semitic laws, Miriam was no longer allowed to attend school and was forced to suspend her formal education during the 7th grade. After a year of increasingly hostile restrictions on Jews in Câmpulung, which included curfews, wearing of a yellow star, and subjection to house searches, Miriam and her family were told to prepare for deportation on October 10, 1941. Miriam’s family and other Jews from Câmpulung and Bukovina were deported to Ataki and from there traveled to a transit camp in Mohyliv-Podilskyi. Through rumors, they learned to avoid further convoys as these would take them to a camp, so instead, Miriam and her parents and sister paid a German civilian to take them to the Djurin Ghetto in Transnistria (present day Moldova), where they lived in a room amongst several other families. In August 1942, Miriam got a job on a farm, where she was given three meals a day, though received far less than was promised. After becoming ill, she returned to her family and took up knitting to earn money. In 1943, Miriam’s father was taken to Odessa to work. The Djurin Ghetto was liberated by the Red Army in March, 1944, at which time Miriam walked back to Botoșani, where her maternal grandparents lived. There, she found her father and sent for her mother and sister, who had remained in Djurin. By 1945, Miriam graduated from high school and immediately began medical school in Iaşi, Romania. In 1951, she began work in a laboratory at the Institute of Oncology and eventually became a doctor of pediatric oncology. Miriam married Israil Bercovici in 1951 and had a daughter, Ada in 1953. She never left Romania.