Fela Warschau

In Memory of Fela Warschau
October 15, 1926 - September 20, 2006

“Remembering the Holocaust is for everyone–those who care and those who should care. It is important to the history that is the past–for the truth of what was. And, it is important to the history of the future–to maintain the truth. And to the choices the world can make from such knowledge.”

Fela Warschau was a young schoolgirl in Ozorkow, Poland, when the German Army occupied the city in 1939. In 1942, her family was taken to the Jewish ghetto in Lodz, Poland. Two years later, they were transported to Auschwitz where she and her sister were separated from the rest of the family members, none of whom survived the Jewish Holocaust. After a short time in Auschwitz, Fela Warschau and her sister Helen were put to work in Hamburg, Germany, picking up large pieces of debris resulting from Allied bomb strikes. Toward the war’s end, they were taken to Bergen-Belsen where they nearly died from starvation and exhaustion shortly before being liberated by British troops in 1945.

She met Anschel in a resettlement camp and they married on May 10, 1946. In 1951, they came to Sheboygan to join Fela’s sister under the sponsorship of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration. They raised their two daughters, Martha and Sally, here.

In 1978, Fela returned to Poland for a very emotional visit to her homeland, including Auschwitz.

After a story about her experiences appeared in The Sheboygan Press in 1985, Fela began getting requests to tell her story to school children and others in the Sheboygan area, and throughout the state. In 1995, she was interviewed and videotaped for the archives of the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.