Litman family papers

Halina Litman (later Halina Yasharoff Peabody) was born on December 12, 1932 to a liberal Jewish family in Kraków, Poland. Her father, Ignacy Litman (Izak, b. 1902) was a dentist and her mother, Olga Schreiber (1909-1956), was a champion swimmer. They married in Kraków on December 25, 1928. After they married they moved to Zalishchyky, Poland (Zalishchyky, Ukraine) near the Romanian border. Halina’s sister Eva was born in 1939.

After the Soviet Union invasion of Zalishchyky in September 1939, Ignacy fled to Romania to avoid conscription into the Red Army. Upon returning, he was arrested, accused of being a spy, and deported to a labor camp in Siberia. He was later released from the camp and joined the Polish Army under General Władysław Anders. At some point he then went to Palestine to live with his sister.

Olga, Halina, and Eva avoided arrest due to the intervention of communist friends, but their house was confiscated. They moved to Tovste. After Germany violated the German-Soviet pact in 1941 and occupied the rest of Poland, the family moved back to Zalishchyky. Olga purchased false identification papers from a priest that allowed them to live as Catholics under the last name Lityński.

The family then moved to Jarosław, Poland whereOlga worked as a maid and in the kitchen in a German military camp. Shortly before liberation in 1944, a grenade was thrown at the house where they were staying. Halina lost her thumb and half of her little finger, and their landlady was killed.

Olga, Halina, and Eva were reunited with Ignacy after liberation. The family immigrated to London, England by 1947. Halina represented England in the Maccabiah Games in Israel in 1953 and 1957. She immigrated to the United States in 1968.