Lila Lam Nowakowska papers

Lila Lam Nowakowski was born in 1922 in Stanislawów, Poland (Ivano-Frankivs'k, Ukraine). Following the German invasion in summer 1941, she and her family were forced into the Stanislawów ghetto where her father was briefly chairman of the Judenrat. She obtained false papers along with her mother, brother, and uncle, and they escaped the Stanislawów ghetto in 1942. Using false papers, Lila went to Warsaw, Poland, and lived under an assumed identity, Leonora Leska, until the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. Then she was taken with other Warsaw civilians to the transit camp, Pruszkow, then to Mauthausen where she was quarantined for three weeks. She performed forced labor at the Steyr labor camp near Linz, Austria, until January 1945 and then at the Znojmo labor camp in Czechoslovakia until she was liberated by the Soviets in May 1945. She returned to Poland after World War II and was reunited with her mother who was working at a Jewish orphanage in Chorzów, Poland. Her father and brother both perished during the Holocaust