Embroidered floral smock worn by a Jewish girl in prewar Poland

Chana Minuskin (later Helen Matlow) was born on June 4, 1924, in Zdzieciol, Poland (Dziatlava, Belarus), to a Jewish couple, Aaron and Dwora Medwecki Minuskin (later Dora Haidukowski). Aaron, a taxi driver, was born in 1898, in Zdzieciol. Dwora, a housewife and seamstress, was born on May 1, 1901, in Zdzieciol, to Abraham and Zlata Raswacki Medwecki. In 1923, Aaron and Dwora married. Chana had one brother, Moshe (later Michael), born on March 3, 1926. Of the total population of Zdzieciol, 75 percent were Jewish, approximately 3,500 people. The town was called Zhetl in Yiddish. Chana attended a local Jewish school and knew Yiddish and Hebrew.

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On September 17, Germany handed the eastern half of Poland over to Soviet forces in compliance with the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The agreement, in which Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland, had been signed on August 23, 1939. Fifteen year old Chana began attending a Soviet school. Following the invasion, many Jewish refugees from western and central Poland arrived in Zdzieciol, raising the population by more than 1,000. On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union and occupied eastern Poland. On June 30, German troops entered Zdzieciol. On July 14, the local military commandant ordered Jews to wear a yellow Star of David badge on the front and back of their clothing at all times. On July 23, 120 members of the Jewish intelligentsia were taken from town to serve as forced laborers. Two days later, the remaining Jews discovered the group had been taken to a forest and killed. In December, likely as part of a group of 400 men selected to construct an aerodrome, Moshe, a carpenter, was transferred nearby to a forced labor camp in Dworzec (Dvarėts (Hrodzenskaia voblasts', Belarus).)

In February 1942, German authorities ordered all Jews in Zdzieciol to leave their homes and move into a partially enclosed ghetto. Special passes were required to leave the ghetto and forced laborers entered and exited under guard. The Germans and their collaborators carried out selections in April and August, selecting thousands of Jews to be shot and buried in mass graves. Chana’s father, Aaron, was killed, likely during one of the selections when healthy workers were pulled aside and shot. In August, Chana and her mother, Dwora, were transferred to Dworzec to serve as civilian forced laborers at the aerodrome. In December, Chana, Dwora, and Moshe escaped from Dworzec. They joined other escaped Jews hiding in the Lipichanski forest, which served as a base of operations for several groups of Jewish partisans and Soviet resistance fighters. In July 1944, the Soviet Army advanced on the region and liberated all those Jews in the forest and the neighboring towns, ghettos and camps. In August, Chana, Dwora, and Moshe returned to Zdzieciol, where Dwora married Hersh Haidukowski (1889 - ?), one of approximately 370 Jewish survivors from their town.

On May 7, 1945, Germany surrendered. In 1945, Chana married Josef Matlowsky, a survivor that had escaped from Radun and Lida ghettos in Poland, before becoming a partisan and Soviet Army soldier following liberation in summer 1944. The couple went to Łódź, Poland. Abraham and Zlata Medwecki, Helen’s maternal grandparents, aunt, and cousin are presumed to have perished during the Holocaust. In May 1946, Josef and Chana went to Funk-Kaserne, a displaced persons camp in the American controlled zone near Munich, Germany. In January 1947, they went to Eggenfelden displaced persons camp. Chana’s mother, brother, and step-father went to Föhrenwald displaced persons camp. On January 22, 1948, Chana and Josef’s daughter, Fruma (Fran), was born in Eggenfelden. On May 29, 1949, Chana, Josef, and Fruma sailed from Bremerhaven, Germany, on the USAT General Holbrook, arriving in Boston, Massachusetts, on June 8. The family boarded a train to Ohio, settled in Cleveland, and changed their names to Helen, Joseph, and Fran Matlow. On December 13, Dwora, Hersh, and Moshe sailed from Bremerhaven, to New York City, New York, on the USAT General Blatchford. Dwora and Moshe changed their names to Dora and Michael. In May 1952, Helen and Joseph’s son, Aaron, was born. Helen’s mother, Dora, and brother, Michael, passed away. Joseph died on October 30, 2015, in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. Helen, 94, died in May 2017, in Beachwood, Ohio.