Biography
Zvia Levy (born Tsivia Korenzyer) is the daughter of Sarah Nojgeboren (b. Chelm 1904) and Mordechai Korenzayer (b. Chelm 1896). Zvia was born in Warsaw on Feb 19, 1936. Sarah's parents were religious and her mother was one of 8 siblings: 7 girls and one brother. Only two survived the war. Her father Mordechai manufactured sweets in his own shop which he sold to small stores. He had 2 siblings. Zvia's parents were married in Chelm in 1923 when her mother was 19 years old. They belonged to the Poalei Zion Youth Movement and were religiously observant, but not Orthodox.
The family remained in Chelm until 1939 when the Germans occupied the city. They then escaped to Lvov which was under Soviet occupation together Sara's brother Yaakov Leib, who was 17 years younger than Sarah. They had an aunt living in Lvov and they remained there for a short period of time until the Soviet authorities rounded up Polish Jewish refugees and deported them to Siberia. There Zvia's father and Yaakov Leib worked in forced labor battalions cutting down trees. Her mother was occupied looking for food to feed everyone. They remained there for a year until 1941 when the Soviet Union granted amnesty to Polish internees. They then were sent to Bukhara in Uzbekistan, where Zvia continued her schooling. There one of her Sarah's sisters and her husband, who had lived in Lodz before the war, joined them, and they all lived together. Zvia's cousin Aryeh Farbiash was born in 1944. Yaakov Leib married a woman named Donya. Her father and uncle together with the women made candies and lollipops. They bought molds and poured in material and sold them. They remained in Uzbekistan until 1946 when they returned to Poland by train via Silesia. They remained there for around half a year and then began their long immigration to Palestine which took about 3 years via DP camps in Eichstadt, Germany. They arrived in Israel on Feb 1949 on the Negba.
