Sara Zyskind (1927–1995)

Sara Zyskind, née Plagier, was born into a well-to-do Jewish family in Łódź, Poland. In 1939, at the age of 11, her world came crashing down when Nazi Germany invaded the country. Within three months of the Occupation, the Jewish citizens of Łódź were forced into a Ghetto, which was sealed off from the outside world in 1940. Sara's mother Mindla died that year, and Sara began work in a corset sewing workshop. She and her father Anschel Plagier successfully evaded arrest and deportation until he died in 1943. The following year, the Nazis liquidated the Łódź Ghetto and Sara was deported to the death camp at Auschwitz and then to slave labor camps. She survived and returned to Łódź in the spring of 1945, at age 17. All her relatives and friends were dead, so she decided to emigrate to Palestine. She left Poland with forged papers and, aided by a Jewish relief group called Escape, traveled across Europe for two years before entering Palestine in May 1947. In 1948, she married Eliezer Zyskind, a fellow Łódź survivor, and they both fought in Israel's War of Independence. They later had three children. Sara Zyskind described her Holocaust experiences in her memoir Stolen Years, first published in 1977. In her other book Struggle (1988), also known as Light in the Valley of Tears, Sara Zyskind told her husband's story in the first person from his point of view.