Irene Hass Shapiro collection

Contains the donor's recollections of the German invasion of Bialystok (Poland) in September, 1939, the Soviet occupation which occurred shortly thereafter, and the German return on June 27, 1941; the burning of the Jewish quarter; the mass executions of Jewish men; her transfer into the ghetto on August 1, 1941, along with 60,000 other Jews, where she stayed until the ghetto was liquidated in 1943; her transfer, with her mother, to Blizhyn (Poland); her transfer, again with her mother, to Auschwitz concentration camp in May 1944; her transfer to a munitions work camp at Lippstadt (Germany); and her mother's death from exhaustion and starvation in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Irene and her sister, who became a Christian ward of a Polish family, were the only family members who survived. Two black and white photographs and a fragment of a third black and white photograph of members of the Hass and Finkelstein families, as well as a captioned photocopy of each photograph, are included.