Our Survivors Chronology
January 1871 – Unification of Germany over defeat of France; Jews receive equal rights.
August 1, 1914 – World War I begins.
May 27, 1917 – SHEP ZITLER is born in Vilna (Wilno, Vilnius), Lithuania, then under German occupation (formerly a vassal of Tsarist Russia).
November 11, 1918 – World War I ends; independent Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia are established.
October 1919 – Hitler’s first public rally in Munich.
May 20, 1920 – FELICIA FUKSMAN is born in Lodz, Poland.
January 1, 1923 – EVA GALLER is born in Oleszyce, Poland.
May 6, 1923 – ISAAC NIEDERMAN is born in Satu-Mare, Romania.
June 12, 1925 – MARTIN WASSERMAN is born in Warsaw, Poland.
July 18, 1925 – SIGGY BORAKS is born in Wielun, Poland.
May 16, 1927 – DORA NIEDERMAN is born in Bhuce, Czechoslovakia (Carpatho-Ukraine).
October 1929 – Collapse on Wall Street leads to world-wide economic depression, abetting the rise of Nazism in Germany.
September 1930 – Hitler enjoys success at the polls; many rush to join the ascending Nazi Party.
September 1, 1931 – Mark Skorecki and Ruth Tempelhof marry. They begin life together in Lodz, Poland, where their daughters Anne and Lila will spend their brief childhood.
1933
January 1, 1933 – Eva Galler, in Oleszyce, Poland, celebrates her tenth birthday.
January 30, 1933 – Hitler (legally) assumes power in Germany. The first concentration camps are the makeshift torture chambers in the basements of Berlin buildings.
February 27, 1933 – Reichstag goes up in smoke.
March 1933 – Hitler passes Enabling Act and assumes dictatorial powers.
1935
March 1935 – Hitler announces German conscription and rearmament, violating the Versailles Treaty.
July 2, 1935 – ANNE LEVY is born in Lodz, Poland.
March 1936 – Hitler remilitarizes the Rhineland in further violation of Versailles Treaty. With the French army no longer threatening him on the Rhine, Hitler achieves freedom of movement in Central Europe.
July 1936 – Hitler sends German transport and fighter planes to Franco, rescuing the Spanish general at the start of the Spanish Civil War.
October 1936 – Hitler officially recognizes Franco’s government. His support, notably the crack Luftwaffe detachment known as the Condor Legion, was decisive.
1937
April 26, 1937 – German bombers lay waste to ancient Basque town of Guernica (Gernika); German and Italian fighter planes chase civilians across fields and machine-gunned them.
November 15, 1937 – LILA MILLEN is born in Lodz, Poland.
November 1937 – Hitler instructs his generals to prepare for the war he intends to launch in the near future.
1938
March 12, 1938 – Hitler seizes his native Austria and two days later announces the Anschluss, the “union” of Austria with the German Reich. An “orgy of sadism” descends upon the Jews. Many commit suicide.
-
-
- The Times-Picayune, March 14, 1938 – JEWS IN AUSTRIA PLEAD FOR HAVEN IN UNITED STATES, Beatings and Plunderings in Wake of Nazi Coup Gain Momentum, (AP) p. 2
March 24, 1938 – President Roosevelt calls for a conference of thirty-three nations to address the refugee crisis in Nazi Germany.
May 6, 1938 – Isaac Niederman, in Satu-Mare, Romania, celebrates his 15th birthday.
May 16, 1938 – Dora Niederman, in eastern Czechoslovakia, celebrates her 11th birthday.
July 2, 1938 – Anne Levy, in Lodz, Poland, celebrates her third birthday.
July 6, 1938 – Refugee conference opens at Evian, France. Reflecting strong currents of anti-Semitism, the delegates refrain from uttering the word “Jews.”
July 18, 1938 – Siggy Boraks, in Wielun, Poland, turns thirteen.
September 30, 1938 – Czechoslovakia is forced by her “ally” France and her “friend” England to cede the Sudetenland to Hitler.
November 1938 – Hitler’s ally Hungary receives a disputed region in Slovakia.
November 9-10, 1938 – Kristallnacht (Pogromnacht) devastates Jewish communities in Germany and newly annexed Austria and Sudetenland.
1939
January 30, 1939 – Hitler threatens the annihilation of European Jewry in a speech to the Reichstag, eliciting no comment in the American press.
February 1939 – Shep Zitler, in Vilna, Poland, is drafted into the Polish army.
March 15, 1939 – Hitler seizes the rump state of Czechoslovakia, violating the Munich Pact signed five months earlier.
1939 – Hitler hands over Carpatho-Ukraine, Dora Niederman’s region, to his Hungarian allies.
May 13, 1939 – The ocean liner St. Louis, with over nine hundred Jewish refugees aboard, departs Hamburg bound for Cuba.
May 17, 1939 – British White Paper limits immigration to Palestine with stated intention of halting immigration altogether in five years.
May 20, 1939 – Felicia Fuksman, in Lodz, Poland, celebrates her 19th birthday.
August 23, 1939 – Hitler and Stalin sign a non-aggression pact that prepares the way for Germany’s attack on Poland, followed by Russia’s attack on Poland, and the division of Eastern Europe.
September 1, 1939 – Hitler attacks and overwhelms Poland; Anne and Lila’s father Mark Skorecki heads east, fleeing the Germans.
September 15, 1939 – JEANNINE BURK is born in Brussels, Belgium.
September 17, 1939 – Stalin invades and occupies the eastern half of Poland. Mark Skorecki is caught on the Russian side of the new border and unable to return to his family.
September 21, 1939 – Heydrich issues memorandum detailing plans for “the final solution.”
September 27, 1939 – Warsaw surrenders to Germans; Poland is partitioned by Hitler and Stalin and wiped from map of Europe.
November 16, 1939 – The Nazis torch the synagogues in Lodz, Poland.
Autumn of 1939 – The Jews of Lodz are ordered to wear the Star of David patch; expulsion of Polish population from region begins. In Warsaw, Martin Wasserman is seized in a German round-up and dispatched to a labor camp, never to see his family again.
1940
February 1940 – The Jews of Lodz are ordered to the ghetto.
April-June 1940 – Nazis conquer Western Europe; Hitler’s popularity in Germany soars to new heights. Jeannine Burk, in Brussels, Belgium, is eight months old. Hitler instructs Romania to cede northern Transylvania to his ally Hungary. Isaac Niederman is now a Hungarian citizen.
November 15, 1940 – Warsaw ghetto is sealed and five hundred thousand Jews are cut off from the world.
1941
June 22, 1941 – Hitler invades Russia; the systematic slaughter of Jews begins, the Holocaust by bullets to the back of the head.
August 27, 1941 – Germans torment Jews of Oleszyce in market-square, while a crowd of local Poles and Ukrainians jeer.
October 1941 – The Nazis and Lithuanian collaborators transport Shep Zitler’s niece Zerna to the killing fields at Ponary Forest near Vilna.
October 15, 1941 – Disguised as “resettlement” for work in the “east,” deportation of German, Austrian, and Czech Jews begins.
December 1941 – Mark Skorecki slips into Warsaw ghetto (on a Saturday) and is reunited with his wife Ruth and daughters Anne and Lila.
December 5, 1941 – The Russians go on the offensive and repel the Germans at Moscow.
December 7, 1941 – Japanese attack Pearl Harbor.
December 8, 1941 – Murder of Jews, using gas vans, begins at Chelmno death camp in western Poland, a region annexed by the Reich.
December 11, 1941 – Germany declares war on the United States, and the United States declares war on Germany.
- The Times-Picayune, December 12, 1941 – U. S. BOMBERS SMASH UP ANOTHER BATTLESHIP IN DEFENSE OF PHILIPPINES, Congress Declares War on Germany, Italy After they Act; Knox Flies to Honolulu; Army Fending Off Repeated Blows at Luzon, (AP), p. 1
January 1942 – Deportation of Jews from Lodz ghetto to Chelmno death camp begins.
January 20, 1942 – Wannsee Conference is held in Berlin suburb to organize annihilation of European Jewry, which is already underway.
March 17, 1942 – Operation Reinhard is launched in General-Government of occupied-Poland; the first transport of Jews from the Lublin ghetto is sent to the Belzec death camp.
July 23, 1942 – Deportation of Jews in Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka death camp begins.
July 1942 – Deportation of Belgian Jews to Auschwitz begins; Jeannine Burk, two years and nine months old, is entrusted to the care of a Christian rescuer who lives in a Brussels suburb.
September-October 1942 – Forty thousand Jews in Czestochowa ghetto, including Siggy Borak’s family, are deported to Treblinka and gassed on arrival.
October 14, 1942 – Jews in Oleszyce, Poland, including Eva Galler and her family, are ordered to the Lubaczow ghetto.
November 15, 1942 – Lila Millen turns five while hiding with her sister Anne Levy in the Warsaw ghetto.
November 24, 1942 – Under-Secretary of State Sumner Welles hands over documents to Rabbi Stephen Wise that “confirm and justify your deepest fears.” This is the long-awaited, and long-suppressed, recognition by the State Department that the annihilation of the European Jews is underway.
December 17, 1942 – The United Nations announce a War Crimes Declaration emphasizing the Jewish catastrophe at the hands of the Nazis and promises to seek retribution against the guilty.
1943
January 8-9, 1943 – Jews in the Lubaczow ghetto are deported to a death camp; Eva Galler jumps from train and finds momentary shelter with Christians.
January 1943 – With their mother, the sisters Anne Levy and Lila Millen are smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto and given shelter by a Polish mother and daughter; Mark Skorecki slips out of the ghetto and joins his family.
March 1, 1943 – Speakers at a huge rally in Madison Square Garden demand that the Allied governments rescue the remaining Jews in Europe.
March 1943 – Siggy Boraks is transported from the Czestochowa ghetto to Blizyn labor camp near Radom, Poland.
March 25, 1943 – A refugee conference at Bermuda, involving the British and Americans, is announced.
April 19, 1943 – The refugee conference in Bermuda opens, and the uprising in the Warsaw ghetto breaks out.
Autumn of 1943 – Anne and Lila’s family, “passing” as Christians on Aryan side of Warsaw, is betrayed by a Polish neighbor and move into lumber yard.
October – November 1943 – Representatives of the three major Allied nations meet in Moscow and announce a post-war agenda that includes a Declaration on German Atrocities.
March 19, 1944 – Nazis occupy Hungary with aim of deporting its 700,000 Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau.
May 6, 1944 – Isaac Niederman’s birthday; he is nineteen.
May 15, 1944 – “Resettlement” of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begins. Dora Niederman and her family as well as her future husband Isaac’s family were among the first deported.
May 16, 1944 – Dora Niederman turns sixteen.
July 1944 – Siggy Borak is transported from Blizyn labor camp to Auschwitz-Birkenau. He turns nineteen on July 18, 1944.
July 8, 1944 – Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Budapest in effort to save remainder of Hungarian. Responding to international protests and defying the Germans, Regent Horthy halts deportations.
July 1944 – The Red Army liberates the Skorecki family on a farm east of Warsaw.
August 1, 1944 – Fighters of the Polish Home Army, mostly young people, rise up against the Germans in Warsaw. Sixty-three days of merciless fighting leaves the Polish capital in ruins and 250,000 civilians dead. What remains of Warsaw is dynamited by the retreating enemy.
August 1944 – Felicia Fuksman and her friend Bronia are sent from Lodz ghetto to Ravensbruck (women) concentration camp in northern Germany. Felicia contracts typhus. Bronia nurses her back to (relative) health.
September 1944 – Dora Niederman is sent from Auschwitz to Stutthof concentration camp in northern Poland.
October 1944 – Felicia Fuksman is sent from Ravensbruck to a labor camp at Wittenberge, Germany.
September 3, 1944 – The British and Americans liberate a starving populace in Brussels after four years and four months of German occupation. Jeannine Burk, hiding for over two years in the home of a Christian woman, is twelve days shy of her 5th birthday.
November 1944 – Siggy Boraks is sent from Auschwitz-Birkenau to Kaufering concentration camp in southern Germany.
January 18, 1945 – Warsaw is liberated by the Red Army.
January-February1945 – Isaac Niederman survives the last months of the war in one of Wallenberg’s “safe houses” in Budapest, while Hungarian Nazis (Arrow Cross) roam the city slaughtering Jews.
March 1945 – Shep Zitler is liberated by the Russians in Gorlitz, Poland.
April 1945 – Dora Niederman, having escaped from a “death march,” is liberated by the Russians in Western Poland.
April 29, 1945 – Dachau concentration camp, where Siggy Boraks and Martin Wasserman were slaves, is liberated by the Americans.
May 1945 – Felicia Fuksman is liberated by Russians at Wittenberge, Germany.
May 8-9, 1945 – Unconditional surrender of Germany is declared.
Summer of 1945 – Felicia Fuksman returns to her family’s apartment in Lodz, Poland, and is cruelly rebuffed.
1945 – Mark Skorecki informs his daughter Lila, eight years old, that she is Jewish.
Summer of 1945 – Jeannine Burk waits for her father to return from the Nazis camps. He doesn’t.
1946 – Siggy Boraks marries Margot Neuberger in Frankfurt, Germany.
April 1946 – Eva Galler joins other survivors in Wroclaw (Breslau), Poland, where she and her pre-war sweetheart Henry Galler are reunited. She immigrates to Sweden. He smuggles himself out of Poland and joins her.
December 24, 1946 – Eva and Henry Galler are married in Sweden.
1946 – With their parents Anne Levy and Lila Millen escape Russian controlled Poland and, by way of Czechoslovakia, reach Tirschenreuth, in the American zone of occupied-Germany.
1947 – Felicia Fuksman smuggles herself out of communist Poland and lives three years in the French zone of occupied-Berlin.
1948
May 14, 1948 – Israel is established.
1949
November 1949 – With their parents, Anne Levy and Lila Millen arrive in New Orleans.
December 1949 – Shep Zitler arrives in New Orleans.
1950 – Felicia Fuksman settles in New Orleans where she meets Max Fuksman, a fellow survivor from Lodz, Poland.
February 25, 1951 – Felicia marries Max Fuksman.
1950 – Martin Wasserman arrives in the United States and serves in the U. S. Army. He marries Diana Baber, born in Belize.
1950 – Dora and Isaac Niederman, in a Displaced Person’s Camp in Italy, immigrate to U. S.
1950s – Anne Levy is compelled to obey the segregation laws in New Orleans, a traumatic experience.
1950 – Jeannine Burk’s mother dies of cancer.
September 15, 1951 – On her twelfth birthday, Jeannine Burk arrives in New York.
1952 – Siggy and Margot Boraks, married in Frankfurt and with three children in tow, arrive in New Orleans.
1954 – Eva and Henry immigrate to the United States with two daughters (another on the way) and live in Brooklyn, where they are miserable.
1956 – Anne marries Stan Levy. They will have three daughters.
1961 – Lila marries Norman Millen. They will have two daughters.
1962 – Eva and Henry Galler, with their three daughters, move to New Orleans.
1972 – Jeannine moves to New Orleans and marries Maurice Burk.
July 23, 1973 – Ruth Skorecka dies in New Orleans.
1979 – Eva enrolls in University of New Orleans.
1985 – Eva graduates from UNO with degree in history.
May 14, 1991 – Mark Skorecki dies in New Orleans.
January 5, 2006 – Eva Galler dies in Dallas, Texas.
July 18, 2008 – Siggy Boraks dies at his youngest daughter’s home near Tampa, Florida.
August 6, 2009 – Dora Niederman dies in Metairie, Louisiana.
November 30, 2009 – Shep Zitler dies in New Orleans.
June 20, 2010 – Martin Wasserman dies in Metairie, Louisiana.
October 14, 2012 – Henry Galler dies in Dallas, Texas.
October 17, 2012 – Felicia Fuksman dies in New Orleans.
January 19, 2015 – Isaac Niederman dies in Metairie, Louisiana.