Biography
Guta Tyrangiel (now Genevieve Tyrangiel-Benezra) is the daughter of Moshe and Rachel Tyrangiel. She was born August 26, 1940 in Minsk Mazowiecki, one day after the establishment of the ghetto. Guta had a younger sister Esther born one year later in the ghetto. On August 21, 1942, the SS officers assisted by Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian and Latvian units surrounded the ghetto and rounded up 3,500 Jews and sent them to Treblinka where they were murdered. Among those killed were Guta's grandparents, Cyrla and Nahum Korman. Moshe and Rachel, together with their two young daughters, managed to escape and hide. After the immediate danger had past, they smuggled themselves into a small slave labor camp, Kopernik, to join the other surviving Jews of Minsk Mazowiecki. Since it was illegal to have children in the camp, the girls were kept hidden in the attic of the building until Moshe and Rachel could find a better solution. In October 1942 they smuggled Guta out of the ghetto in a wicker basket. A local Catholic priest named Hert, who was working for the Zegota Polish rescue organization, made arrangements for Guta to be taken in by Josef and Bronislawa Jaszczuk, an older, childless Polish couple who lived in Minsk Mazowiecki. They claimed she was their niece, Genowefa Filipak. The Jaszczuks later had to flee their home to escape denunciations from their neighbors. Esther was hidden separately; Guta never saw her again or learned whether or not she survived. After hiding the girls, Moshe escaped to the Warsaw ghetto to join some of his relatives and try to find a better arrangement for his family. He perished during the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto in April 1943. On January 10, 1943, the Germans began liquidating the Kopernik camp. Faced by unexpected armed resistance from the prisoners, the Germans firebombed the camp burning alive those inside including Rachel. Following the war, Guta's paternal uncle and only surviving relative, Meir Tyrangiel, tried to take her back, but the Jaszczuks insisted on keeping the child. Guta remained in Poland with her adoptive parents, and Meir immigrated to Israel.
