Biography
Stephanie Portnoy (born Stefania Celine Hoffman) is the daughter of Rudolf Hoffman and Regina Polland Hoffman. Stefania's parents married in 1937, and she was born on February 9, 1940 in Krakow Poland. Her father managed the family optical factory, "Specturm", and her mother had worked as a book keeper prior to her marriage. Regina was one of the few women to have attended university, she also did private typing and tutoring. Even after the Germans established a ghetto in Krakow, Rudolf continued to run the business for the Germans, and the family may even have continued to live above the factory for a while. After a year or so, Rudolf was sent to the nearby Plaszow concentration camp. From there he was deported to Mauthausen where he perished on October 3, 1944. In 1942 Regina went into hiding with Stefania until she was caught while trying to visit her brother-in-law and sent to Auschwitz. However, her younger brother, Adolf (Dolek) Polland, had escaped from Plaszow and joined the resistance. He knew where Stefania was hidden and found another hiding place for her with an impoverished washerwoman. She left Stefania unattended each day when she left to go to work. After liberation, Stefania was cared for by the Derre family for two years before joining a children's transport organized by Rabbi Schoenfeld who had come to Poland looking for Jewish orphans. Dolek by that time was living in a displaced persons' camp in American zone of Austria. Of the large Hoffman family only Stephanie and her cousin Jerzy survived. Rabbi Schoenfeld brought Stefania to England on March 17 1947 and placed her in a religious hostel in Stamford Hill. Stefania was extremely happy here and did not want to leave when the Swift family legally adopted her in 1950. Stefania lived with them in England, then came to the United States and eventually immigrated to Israel.
