Ruchla Zylberberg

Ruchla Zylberberg was born on May 6, 1936.

She lived together with her family in Zawichost, a small town by the River Vistula in Poland.

Ruchla was hanged on April 20, 1945, at Bullenhuser Damm in Hamburg.
She was eight years old.

When the Wehrmacht occupied Poland, Ruchla’s father Nison Zylberberg, a shoemaker, was able to flee to Russia with his brothers Jankel and Henryk as well as his sister-in-law Felicja.

The others, like his brother Jozef, were to follow them, but the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1944 made that impossible.

Ruchla was deported to Auschwitz with her mother, Fajga, and her little sister, Esther.

They were both murdered there.

Ruchla’s father Nison survived the war.

After the end of the war, he went back to Poland and in 1946 to Germany.

There, Nison became the father of two more daughters, Frieda and Rosa, and emigrated with them and their mother to the United States in 1951.

His brother Henryk, after returning to Poland after the war, emigrated to Hamburg, Germany, with his family.

Jankel׳s fate is unknown.

Jozef survived the Shoah in Poland and first emigrated to Germany and then to Bolivia