Anschel and Fela Warschau papers

Fela Warschau was born on Oct. 15, 1926, in a town outside of Łódź, Poland. At the beginning of World War II, Fela was working as an apprentice in a textile mill. Shortly after the German occupation of her town, the Germans established many laws limiting the liberties of Jews, and ultimately a ghetto was established. Her father, who was a jeweler, was often compelled by the Germans to work for them. In 1942, the town ghetto was liquidated and was incorporated into the larger ghetto in Łódź where she remained until late summer 1944. In the end of August, the ghetto in Łódź was liquidated, and her family was deported to Auschwitz, a concentration camp in Poland. After a short time in Auschwitz, Fela and her sister were deported to Sasel, a subcamp of Neuengamme, in the Poppenbüttel district of Hamburg, Germany. There she performed forced labor for several months, clearing away debris from Allied bombings. She was deported once more to Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany, arriving a short time before her liberation by the British Army on April 15, 1945. After her liberation, Fela was in the Feldafing displaced persons camp until 1951 when she immigrated to the United States.