Józef V. Czarski collection

Victor Penzer (1919-1999, false identity Józef Czarski) was born on July 18, 1919 in Kraków, Poland to Jozef Penzer and Rosalia Penzer (née Feldblum). He had one brother, Isidor Penzer (b. 1912, later Edward Panzer (SIC). His father was a textile merchant. By 1931, numerus clausus had been enacted in the Polish university system to exclude Jews, prompting Victor’s brother Edward to study medicine in Italy. Victor enrolled in the medical program at Jagiellonian University in Kraków in 1937.

After the invasion of Poland in September 1939 by Germany and the Soviet Union, Kraków was occupied by the Germans. Victor fled to Lwów, Poland (Lviv, Ukraine) and then back to Kraków. He obtained false-identity documents and lived under the name Józef Czarski. Victor also joined the Resistance. He was arrested in Kraków in February 1943 and deported to Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau). In January 1945 the Auschwitz camp system was evacuated due to the approaching Soviet Red Army. Victor and the other prisoners were forced on a death march to Mauthausen, where he was in the Melk and Gunskirchen subcamps. He was liberated from Gunskirchen by the United States Army in May 1945.

After liberation, Victor was in Gnadenwald DP camp where he met fellow survivor Stella Sławin (1921-2018), whom he would later marry. He resumed his medical education first at the University of Innsbruck and then at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, near to where his brother Edward was working as a doctor at Föhrenwald DP camp. Victor and Stella immigrated to the United States in 1949, first living in New York and then settling in Boston, Massachusetts in 1950. He and Stella had three children: Martha, Danny, and Rosie.