Ester Fiszgop - Holocaust Survivor

Ester Fitzgop was born in Brest, Poland in January 14 1929. Her parents were Abraham and Rachel Fiszgop. In the video she said she remembers him being a car owner in a small town. She also had a little brother named Beniek. You can see in the first part of the video how the holocaust affected her, especially the death of her brother. Ester was only ten years old when the war broke out. Her brother was just one year younger than her, so they were close growing up. They both attended a Zionist school.

She goes on to say how close her and her father were, everything they would do together and memories she had of him. During all of this, she was very emotional. Same for when she described how beautiful her mother was.

The Soviet Union occupied Poland in 1939 which she said was part of the Nazi-Soviet pact. During this time she wanted to go visit her grandmother who lived in Drohiczyn which was not too far from where she lived. During her visit, the Nazis turned the city into a ghetto. They were all forced to wear the yellow starts and had to trade around things just to get food. Right before their ghetto was liquidated, her family that was there was able to escape, except for her grandmother, who was taken to an extermination camp later on in Treblinka.

Ester, her great aunt and cousins were able to escape Drohiczyn and they hid wherever they could manage to find shelter. She got word that everyone in her family had made it out of the Brest ghetto and that they were all safe. But none of it was true. Shortly after Poland was liberated, she discovered that her mother and brother had been taken to Treblinka for extermination, and that her father had been killed by the Gestapo. After the liberation, she flew to Italy and met her future husband there. She had to try and recover from her life changing experience and try to move on. She and her husband lived a happy life together and had four children. She graduated from Women’s Medical College and became a doctor. “Don’t take me to Treblinka, because I promise you, I will fight.”