Lola Kamien photograph collection

Lola Kamień (born Laje Kirszenbaum) was born on October 30, 1913 in Domacyny, a small village near Tarnobrzeg, Poland. Her father, Hersz Mendel Alwajs, who was an orthodox Jew, owned a farm and a forest. Her mother, Dina Kirszenbaum (d. 1927) was the daughter of a Tarnobrzeg Rabbi and she was married at the age of fourteen. Laje was the youngest of eight children: Szifra Brajt, immigrated to the US before the war; Estera, perished together with her husband, but her two sons: Noah and Srulik Stern survived Auschwitz; Oskar, a musician, lived in Berlin and died in Zbaszyn during the forced deportation from Germany; Max, an engineer, lived in Germany and perished during forced labor; Mina, who immigrated to the US before the war; Ida, who perished with her family in Belzec and Mala Malka, b. 1906, who perished with her family.

Laje attended school in Rzeszow and later high school in Lvov from which she graduated in June 1933. She enrolled in a medical school and studied bacteriology under Prof. Gruze. In the two years of the Soviet rule in Lvov, Lola worked in a local pharmacy. In June 1941 Lola married Noah Kamień (d. 1991), a lawyer, who was originally from Lublin, Poland. Immediately after their wedding they were evacuated to Makhachkala in Dagestan, on the Caspian Sea. Noah and Lola worked in a mineral factory. In 1946 the Kamień family with a small baby boy repatriated to Lublin, Poland. The baby died soon after. Lola became a director of a hospital, but after her husband, Noah Kamień, refused to work for the NKVD, they moved to Dzierżoniów in western Poland. Their son, Adam, was born there in 1948. In 1950 they moved to Warsaw, where Noah became a prosecutor. In 1969 the Kamień family left Poland for Sweden.