Regina Gothelf photographs

Regina Gothelf was born Regina Klajman on Feb. 1, 1919, in Łódz, Poland. Her father, Icek Rafal Klajman, survived the Łódz ghetto and Auschwitz. Her mother, Chana Rawet Klajman, died in 1945 in a hospital in Łódz after surviving Auschwitz and Mauthausen. Regina had five siblings: Helena, who survived in the Soviet Union; Dawid and Abram, who were killed in battle in the Red Army; Manes, who was deported from the Łódz ghetto to Auschwitz and perished there; and Genia, who survived in the Soviet Union. In Nov. 1939 Regina fled Poland via Malkinia to Białystok and then a month later to Krasnoyarsk in Siberia. In May 1940 she was transferred to Taganrog, near Rostov, in Russia, but after the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, she was evacuated to Tashkent, Uzbekistan. In 1944 Regina spent six months in a hospital in Belarus, and in May 1946 she returned to Łódz. She lived with her husband and two children in Zgierz, Poland, until Nov. 1969 when she and her family immigrated to Sweden