Miodownik family papers

Anni Miodownik (later Anne Miodownik Fried) was born on 2 December 1938 in Sosnowiec, Poland to Bina and Abraham Salomon Miodownik. Her mother Bina Miodownik (later Bina Szereszewski and then Betty Scherr) was born Bina Studenberg on 2 February 1916 in Sosnowiec to Jakob and Liba (née Goldberg) Studenberg. Her father Abraham Salomon Miodownik was born on 10 November 1908 in Sosnowiec, and his mother’s name was Perla. Anne had one sister, Ruth Christine Miodownik (b. 6 April 1941). The family lived in Sosnowiec prior to the war.

By 1940, Anne, her family, and her paternal grandmother Perla were forced into the Sosnowiec ghetto. In June 1943 the ghetto was moved to the Srodula district of Sosnowiec. To evade deportation, the family hid on the top floor of a building where they constructed a hiding place with a false wall. Anne’s father was shot and killed one night when he went out to search for water. The rest of the family fled the hiding space the same day. Bina obtained false-identification papers and bribed a guard to let them escape the ghetto. Her goal was to join a partisan group, but after failing to do so, they returned to the ghetto.

Bina then befriended a Polish conscript guard, Erich Siodmok, whom she persuaded to help her escape the ghetto. He also agreed to hide the family in the attic on his farm. Perla declined to leave the ghetto with the rest of Anne’s family this time. Erich’s wife Gertruda, their children Alfred and Lucia, and his parents all lived on the farm during the war. Erich worried that hiding two small children posed too great a threat, and it was decided that Bina would put Ruth in a nearby Catholic orphanage. In late 1943 or early 1944 Erich was sent to the front line and was likely killed.

After liberation, Bina went to the orphanage to get Ruth, but discovered that she was no longer there, and the nuns did not know where she was. Ruth’s last known whereabouts were a children’s home in the Rybnik district of Katowice, but her family never learned her fate.

Anne and her mother went to Katowice where they lived in an apartment with several other survivors, including Moses Szereszewski (Misha, later Morris Scherr, b. 1911), a survivor of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Bina found work in the black market smuggling alcohol. Anne, Bina, and Misha then went to Zeilsheim displaced persons camp in Frankfurt am Main around January 1947. Bina and Misha married while in the camp, in part to improve their chances of getting visas to immigrate to the United States. The three of them immigrated to the United States in April aboard the SS Ernie Pyle. The ship broke down and they were transferred to the SS Marine Marlin for the rest of the journey. They settled in New York, and Anne began taking piano lessons and later attended Barnard College.