Biography
Larry Warick (born Lova Warszawczyk) is the son of Josef Warszawczyk and Masha Beckenstein Warszawczyk. He was born on May 2, 1936 in Warsaw, Poland where his father sold women's silk lingerie. Since the family lived in the section of the city that would later become incorporated into the Warsaw ghetto, after the start of World War II the Warszaczyks remained in their own apartment. However in 1940, before the ghetto was hermetically sealed, Masha bribed a guard so that the family could escape from the city. They fled to the home of her parents, Rochel and Aaron Beckenstein, in Bialystok, which was then under Soviet control. The Warszaczyks were not permitted to remain in Bialystok for long. The Soviets deported them and many other Jewish refugees to a Soviet Siberian labor camp in the Archangel Region near the Arctic Circle. They were always cold, and Josef was forced to work outdoors chopping lumber. The Warszaczyks remained in Siberia for approximately a year. However, following the German invasion of the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941, the Soviets relocated the Jewish refugees to other republics. Lova and his parents were sent to Kutaisi in West Georgia; they lived there for three years, from 1941-1944. After the war ended, they returned to Poland where they first learned of the Holocaust and discovered that all their relatives had perished. They settled in Lodz, a gathering place for Jewish survivors, while seeking ways to flee to the West. They first attempted to cross the border through East Prussia. Soviet border guards caught them and threatened to execute them. For a while, they had to remain in Stettin and then they returned to Lodz to try another escape from southern Poland into Czechoslovakia. Again, they were captured and were held in a beer hall in Moravska Ostrova. The Red Cross eventually intervened and transported them to the Neu Freimann DP camp near Munich. They lived there for nine months and then in 1946 were transferred to a diplaced persons' camp in Stuttgart. Unlike Neu Freimann, which consisted of former army barracks, the camp in Suttgart was made up of a designated section of city streets. There, for the first time, Lova received a formal education. Former professors taught the classes in a one room schoolhouse. Lova also joined the Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, took music lessons and participated in amateur theatricals. In May 1949 the Warszawczyks departed from Bremerhaven and immigrated to the United States under the sponsorship of Masha's brothers. Lova, now Larry, quickly learned English and graduated from high school at the age of sixteen. He attended City College of New York and the Albert Einstein medical school. He went on to become a neurologist and psychiatrist, and later a clinical professor at UCLA.
