Ellen Echeverria photograph collection

Elke Plech (later Elke Bozena, now Dr. Ellen Echeverria) was born in April 1942 to Maria Plech who was living in the ghetto in Lubartów, Poland. Maria left the baby with Stanislaw and Janina Wysocki before fleeing the ghetto and assuming a Polish identity. She was subsequently sent to Germany as a Polish forced laborer. Maria survived World War II and when she returned to Poland in 1946, she immediately sought to regain custody of her daughter. The Wysocki family refused, and the matter went to court. Elke eventually was reunited to Maria. The two subsequently left Poland for Germany. They settled for a time in Lüneburg, Germany, where Maria married Mieczyslaw Watnicki, a Jewish survivor who had been imprisoned in Auschwitz as a Pole. The family later immigrated to the United States.