Sonia Shainwald Orbuch (1925–2018)

Sonia Orbuch was born Sarah Shainwald to a Jewish family in the small town of Luboml, Poland (present-day Ukraine). She was 14 years old and just about to begin high school when World War II began. In 1941, Germany invaded the town and and forced the Jews into a ghetto. When the Nazi atrocities began, Sonia's brother and some male friends escaped to join a partisan group -- but as his group only accepted young men, Sonia and her parents fled to the forest. In the bitter winter of 1942-1943, they hid among the trees in wretched, desperate conditions. Tichon Martynetz, a Ukrainian peasant, took pity on them and gave them food and guidance to stay alive. Sonia's uncle, a trained scout who knew his way around the woods, persuaded a Soviet partisan unit to accept the entire family into their group. Sonia was given a Russian name and began a new life in the forest encampment, which served as a base for sabotage and resistance activities. She was trained to work in the field hospital, using makeshift supplies, but also participated in attacking German trains. In 1944, the partisans were drafted into the Red Army, and Sonia and her parent sought refuge on their own in an abandoned house. There her mother caught typhus and died. Sonia and her father survived the war, although her three brothers perished, and returned to Luboml. She married Isaak Orbuch, a fellow survivor, and the couple made their way to the American zone and to a displaced person’s camp near Frankfurt, Germany, where their daughter was born. In 1949, they emigrated to the USA, settling in Northern California. Her memoir Here, There Are No Sarahs, written with Fred Rosenbaum, was published in 2009.